Mark Chalmers

The giants of industry crank themselves into gear for the first time in five years.  Luffing jibs have appeared on Dundee’s skyline again, this time with brand new names on them.  The economic depression turned many titans into an after-dinner burp – but soon there will be new things to design, construct and experience.

In the pits of recession, we needed a little guidance to get us through.  So, here are some notes on the most important person you’ll come across in your career - whether in the latter years of architecture school, or early years of practice.  I’ll try to explain why the relationship some of us develop early in our career is formative.

A long time ago, I worked with someone who I count as a mentor.  He was in middle age then, between thirty and forty-five, a man while I was barely that.  His youthfulness had been stripped away to leave intensity, and at his core more determination than in anyone else I’ve met.  He was a progressive, a self-described lapsed communist, and he mistrusted academics who did not go out into the field, as he did.  He was a practitioner.

Here is my experience. 

It’s getting late in the evening.  We sat in on a Planning Committee meeting.  He wore a dark tartan shirt with a grey woollen tie; as he sat waiting, with his dark hair swept off his forehead, the heel of his hand lay against his cheek, a dog-end fumed between two splayed fingers. 

In the chamber, the talk was quiet and trivial, like the voices of sleeping birds.  He sat, absorbed, thinking.  Inside a timber-lined chamber with its dead green drapes and points of light overhead.  Application papers were spread in front of us, a notebook, diary, and ashtray.  In the centre of the table – a metal tray with paper lace napkins bearing a water decanter and glasses lined up around it, upturned on their rims.

The talk turned.  When the cue came to speak, he suddenly animated himself.  He stood tall, looked candidly at the elected members in turn, and spoke in terms that were thoughtful, quiet, detailed.  They knew he meant what he said - and there’s the lesson - and so I learned by example one way to deal with committees.  His phrases stuck, for their intonation as much as the intent of the words.

He seemed to be willing another kind of architecture into existence, something with timeless value, but most of all architecture as a “discipline”.  His dextrous fingers twitched with expression, as if reaching their tips towards a lead-holder. 

To a few who hit it off with him, his face opened with candour, and he shared his confidence in you.  It isn’t a systemic thing, it’s not something which can be taught, but can be taken in by osmosis and relies on a connection forming between humans, a meeting of minds.  A nurturing environment comes down to one thing: finding someone prepared to discuss ideas with you.  That’s all.  Somebody to contend with and force you to test what you say.

To others he seemed dry and remote, and his insistence on clear-eyed truth was irksome.  But I never saw that side of him.  Instead, I gradually discovered that we had things in common, the roots and background of our parents were similar, surprisingly so, and I guess that created a level of fellow-feeling.  From that grew trust and ultimately a loyalty that wasn't asked for or offered, but was there nonetheless, unspoken.

I owe him a great deal, but it’s an unacknowledged debt.  Most of the valuable stuff sank in sub-consciously.  Those were chunks of impenetrable rock and uncut diamond which would become character much later.  I was reminded of the steel founders William Cook, who made the torso nodes for Heathrow Airport Terminal 5’s roof.  Their guiding principles describe the same effort:

“Press on. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

He demonstrated the role of a mentor - to show a glimpse of what might be possible.  In some ways he was the most stimulating of the people I’ve worked with, but of all those, I disagreed with him the most.  He might have had communitarian sympathies, but he was an individualist.  How's that for contradiction?  He took particular pleasure in playing Devil’s advocate with ideas, and was always on-the-one-handing/ on-the-other-handing.  Albeit he knew when to balance those views, and come down with a decision.

He was very certain that original thought always pay off, and is recognised.  None of what he produced was old, hack, or devoid of consideration.  It was all fully thought-out and justifiable.  That bore out his rigour, an obsession with integrity, and a bloody-mindedness about following things through.

Who knows which things I truly learned, and in what measure.  However, like everyone else’s experience of life, the people who I learned from have become part of me.  Those illuminations and examples were a life-saver on many a dark night – including when I found myself at a low-point a couple of years ago.  Late one evening, I found myself standing waiting in the winter darkness in a godforsaken part of the country, pursuing something I then realised that I did not believe in.  He gave me the mental strength to keep going until I found something more worthwhile.

I hope that if you’ve taken the time to read this, you’ve recognised something from your own life in it.  Thanks.