THROUGH THE EYES OF A DESIGN STUDENT
THIS ORIGINAL ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN IN 2009, THEN AGAIN IN 2016, AND NOW ON
AUGUST 26, 2025, LISA B. WELCH
"As a student, I conceived of spaces with such unrestrained imagination: fanciful, bizarre and completely unrealistic."
- LISA B. WELCH, FOUNDER
Looking Back Ten Years Later
When I first wrote Looking Back on March 15, 2016, I had no idea it would resurface again, almost like a conversation I keep having with myself across time. This is not the first return. In 2009 and again in 2006, I reflected on Education of an Architect, a book that shaped my early thinking. Now in 2025, I find myself here once more, revisiting, reframing, and reimagining. This is a twice recycled post, but perhaps that is the point. Some ideas refuse to fade because they still have more to teach us.
This time I have added images influenced by the fearless vision of Lebbeus Woods. His work cracked open my imagination and gave me permission to think outside the box, to stretch architecture into something wilder, freer, and more human. Architecture school was always a laboratory for me, a place where failure was fuel and the sketchbook was both map and compass.
Ten years later I hope that other students, standing where I once stood, will also find the courage to move past the weight of codes, restrictions, and real world limitations. Innovation does not come from following the rules. It comes from daring to sketch beyond the lines.
Looking back is not about nostalgia. It is about gathering the fragments of who we were, the experiments that shaped us, and carrying them forward with new energy. May this recycled reflection remind you, as it reminds me, that the bravery to think differently is always worth it.
As I was looking through an old blog site I once managed long ago in 2009, I stumbled upon this little entry I published titled 'Education of an Architect.' The title is directly borrowed from a book by architect, artist and educator John Hejduk. This book contained a cross-section of studio projects ranging from practical to utopian..all from the influential architecture school Cooper Union.
THESE IMAGES STRAIGHT FROM MY SKETCH BOOK - REPOSTED ON AUGUST 26TH, 2025
Per my entry, you may notice that I gravitated towards the utopian or even quixotic. As a student, I conceived of spaces with such unrestrained imagination: fanciful, bizarre and completely unrealistic. I wanted to share these pages from my sketchbook (a very personal glimpse of that time) because, although the drawings are so completely different than the type of work our office Welch Design Studio creates, what is undeniably similar is the process we go through as architects and designers to get to the end result.
THESE IMAGES STRAIGHT FROM MY SKETCH BOOK - REPOSTED ON AUGUST 26TH, 2025
And what I am always remembering about my own education as an architect, regardless of what it covered and what it lacked is, as Louis Kahn so eloquently states, “Architecture is the thoughtful making of space.”
INFLUENCED BY MOVEMENT AND HOW HUMANS MOVE THROUGH SPACE. HERE THE ARCHITECTURE CREATES THE MOVEMENT
THESE SKETCHES WERE INFLUENCED BY LEBBEUS WOODS - WHOM I HAD STUDIED IN DEPTH AT THE TIME.
THESE IMAGES STRAIGHT FROM MY SKETCH BOOK - REPOSTED ON AUGUST 26TH, 2025
It was during my university years that I learned the adventurous and exploratory approach to understanding spatial possibilities. In school, as architecture students, we relied upon the active dialogue among other students and our professors. Now, we have a similar dialogue in our own studio-based architectural firm. It is in this energized atmosphere that we discuss design decisions and thought processes that create successful spaces that our clients will enjoy for years to come.
'EDUCATION OF AN ARCHITECT' - May 4, 2009, LISA B. WELCH
REPOSTED ON AUGUST 26TH 2025.