“Many practices present themselves as family-friendly – here they genuinely are”

In many industries, young people complain about fixed-term jobs – for a long time this was a problem in architecture too. This year you are celebrating your eighth anniversary at OOW. Looking back: how has the industry changed?

Quite dramatically! Back then there were mainly fixed-term contracts, and it was almost standard practice to move from one office to the next after graduating. Today, by contrast, there is so much being built that there is a shortage of skilled professionals. Now it is the applicants who get to choose the studios. The whole thing has turned a full 180 degrees.

You started at OOW on a fixed-term basis too, but a permanent position followed quickly. How did that come about?

By now you are even a mother of two and spent three and a half years on parental leave. You have now been back in the office half-days for three years. Can you work part-time well as an architect?

Here, yes! (laughs) Everyone knows that I only work in the mornings, and it really works without any problems. On top of that, I also work from home. I live on the edge of the city and would face a commute of over an hour to the office. With two small children that would mean a considerable amount of effort. But here too Sebastian and Mathis accommodated me and made it possible. Many companies these days present themselves as family-friendly without really being so. Here, by contrast, it is actually lived out, and the bosses look at how they can respond to each individual! I was even promoted while working part-time and from home. That was a wonderful recognition.

Is the profession actually how you imagined it?

Yes and no. (laughs) At school I took art and maths as advanced courses, and architecture really does combine the mathematical and the artistic aspect. But I definitely would not have imagined it to be so complex, and I had no idea that there are so many specialist planners that an architect has to “manage”. We did of course also cover some structural engineering during our studies, for example, but in everyday working life it is the structural engineer who does the calculations, not us – I had not been aware of that before. It is in any case an incredibly varied profession, and it is wonderful to accompany a project from the very beginning and, of course, eventually to see it built!

I was genuinely involved in everything, which is what made it so exciting. I joined the project during the design phase, then worked on the planning permission, and am now working on the detailed design. The tender is the next thing coming up for me. A colleague handles the site supervision at the construction site in Bonn, but on other projects I am of course on site as well. I also like the fact that I am not only responsible for a single thing, but can really watch a building “grow”. You simply develop a completely different relationship with the structure.