Bill Hansell is an architect who has taken risks and gone through different routes, sometimes unconventional, to be able to achieve his goal. Hansell has his own practice and can be seen through http://hanselldesign.com/ .

Hansell grew up in Pennsylvania and was based in the East Coast where his family once operated a theater where on Friday through Sunday, live dinner theater and performances were held. Hansell grew up in this environment and dabbled in acting, singing, and photography. When it came time to pick a major for college, Hansell’s father suggested he look into architecture and the first image to pop into his head was Mike Brady from the Brady Bunch which was an architect. With that in mind he applied to the University of Virginia for his BA in Architecture and spoke about how the studio class were filled with men and how their competitive nature kept them trying to be the best.

In 1986, Hansell graduated with his BA in Architecture and went to work in a firm in Washington DC doing hand drafting and blueprints. Before he graduated, upperclassmen would warn him that there were no jobs in their field and once Bill graduated he was offered his position because there was a boost in the economy and room for growth in his field. To him, the actual practice of architecture in a firm is a huge different environment then what they teach you in architecture school, he mentions that in your architecture education, there is so many things they can’t teach you and you have to learn in the real world. With this in mind, many people in the architecture field branch out and do their own thing ranging from going to work at a firm, starting their own firm and even specializing in one aspect of architecture. When one works in a small firm you get a diverse portfolio of projects versus some larger firms that specialize in one project like residential or only hospitality.

Now when it came to going back to school for his masters, Hansell was faced with two options either going to Yale for 3 years and having to learn everything again or to go to the University of Virginia for 2 years and have his scholarship fully paid for. Hansell went to the University of Virginia and realized that undergraduate is basically advanced highschool and that in his undergraduate program no one held his hand and told him what to do but expected them to do their own thing. The dynamic of the class shifted from student/teacher to peers equally collaborating.

After receiving his graduates, Hansell wanted to move to England because he liked the revolutionary architecture happening there and went there for spring break of 1990. He didn’t find work so he moved to San Francisco and found work there and was under the false impression that California would never have a recession and didn’t fully take advantage of opportunities and once he got there the recession began and did some work in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Once he move to LA, Hansell began working with Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill LLP. (SOM) and noticed the dynamic shift from a small firm to a massive firm that has been around since the 1930s. There were offices all around the world and Hansell and around 30 others he worked with were unhappy being stuck in the same routine.

Hansell left and went to complete many projects with other firms or even his own. Hansell worked on the Mercedes-Benz of San Francisco on Bryant Street, the San Francisco International Airport, residential work in San Francisco, an office space located on Gough Street in San Francisco and much more!

With Bill Hansell coming in I realized how nonstandard architecture is. This field is active and ever-changing to be different with each change of style. It made me actually think what kind of architecture I might be interested in and maybe if I want to work for a firm, big or small, or if I want to be my own firm. Will I specialize? Will I instead become a teacher and get my PhD in Architecture? I have a lot of unanswered questions yet so many more opportunities have opened up to me.