The Reality of the Traveling Architect: How Much Do Architects Really Travel for Work?

Movies make architecture look glamorous and mobile, but most architects aren’t jet-setting designers. From construction site visits to remote work realities, here’s what travel really looks like in the profession.

There’s Something About Mary

Do you remember the movie There’s Something About Mary?  I was in high school when it came out, but I remember Mary (Cameron Diaz) talking to her friends about the kind of man she wanted.  She describes this self-employed man, like an architect or something, that has a job that he can do anywhere.  That way he can just up and leave at the drop of a hat. 

Here are the actual lines from the movie:

My real-life experience of traveling for work as an architect

What architect can do THAT?! But it has me wondering, does this job exist?  Or is the perception of the architect in Hollywood totally fabricated on fantasy?  There are definitely some Hollywood stereotypes of the architect that don’t seem to match up to reality.  Let’s dig into the actual travel I have done for work as an architect, and my thoughts on if this fantasy career of an architect exists in reality.   

Traveling to Survey for remodels

Back in 2010 I worked for an architecture firm that was doing remodels on Walmart’s in California.  I know, dream job, right?  In 2010, being able to have a job in San Francisco and get to log hours towards getting licensed as an architect and have a regular paycheck WAS a dream job.  At that time, many friends that I knew from architecture school were unemployed, waitressing, or working some other job completely unrelated to architecture just to make ends meet.  I am serious about that being a dream job at the time, the bar was low.  I was happy to travel to survey Walmart’s in towns like Calexico, Duarte, Hemet… I’m guessing these locations are not on your travel bucket list.  They weren’t on mine either, and still aren’t.  The per diem we were limited to for a hotel room was extremely low.  I was staying in the cheapest motels I could find.  One room I stayed in had a shower cap over the smoke detector and smelled like cigarettes.  Motels like this always had doors directly to the outside.  I never felt completely safe, and I usually didn’t sleep much.  It was not glamorous, and this was my introduction to work travel as an architect. 

Traveling as a retail Design Manager

My next experience with work travel was also with retail, but this time it was as a design manager working on the client side.  I was travelling everywhere there was a remodel for one of the Pottery Barn Brands within the United States and Canada.  On average, I was on a trip every other week for 1-3 days.  After about a year of this, I had status with an airline.  I was getting upgraded to business class for free, my company paid for lounge membership.  I was accumulating enough miles to get free flights or hotels for my personal vacations.  I was staying in hotels that had room service.  I worked in airport lounges, restaurants, hotel bars, and hotel rooms.  This might sound like more of a dream job, but let’s talk about the less glamorous side of work travel. 

I was travelling to Pottery Barn locations, which most of the time meant I was travelling to malls in upscale suburban settings.  I ate dinner in my hotel room often because the only options nearby in many towns were at the mall I had been at earlier or at Outback Steak House in a suburban parking lot.  It was also common for me to land in one location, go to a site visit in a mall for four hours, then drive a couple hours to another location, go on a site visit and then go to my hotel.  I was often working at night to catch up on my emails from the day.  I was working long hours, often in different time zones, it was intense.  My Aunt once asked me how Delaware was, she had never been to Delaware.  I told her I arrived on a train at night, took a taxi to the hotel in the dark, took a taxi to the mall in the morning, and then took a taxi to the airport.  I had no idea what Delaware was like.  I could have been in any suburban mall in America from what I saw. 

Construction Sites as a Project Architect

I eventually went back to working on the Architect side, and was travelling mostly to local site visits.  There was occasionally a trip to a conference, or to one of the other offices that the firm I worked for had in different cities, but the travel part was much less intense than my previous job.  Most of the travel was every other week to a construction site within an hour drive from the San Francisco office I worked in.  This was technically “work travel” but I’m sure not exactly the glamorous image of travelling for work that many people have.  This is the most typical “work travel” for most architects that work in a firm. 

Remote Work

Let’s go back to the Hollywood image of the architect that can work from anywhere and leave at the drop of a hat. Prior to 2020, the only remote work I ever did was while actually traveling for work, or the occasional half day at home before or after traveling.  

Self-Employed Architects

One major difference between this Hollywood image of the traveling architect and the reality I described above is being self-employed.  The architects that I know that are self-employed (myself included) are either running a firm or they are solopreneurs.  Let’s dive into each of these options. 

For my architect friends that are running a firm, they have some work travel that is beyond just site visits.  They are the ones going to meetings with potential new clients, travelling between offices in different cities, attending networking events, they are the face of the firm.  This also means they are expected to be visible inside the firm and have an obligation to show up for the employees.  This hardly sounds like someone with the freedom to just leave at the drop of a hat or work from anywhere. 

For solopreneurs like me, projects and clients tend to be more local since the size of a project that can be accomplished by just one person is more limited than a large firm.  I have attended conferences in other cities, but most of my “work travel” has been local to the Bay Area.  One thing that working solo has allowed me is the flexibility to work remote more often.  I wouldn’t say that I can leave at the drop of a hat, but working solo does afford me more flexibility in my location than I had working for a larger organization where I was expected to show up in an office.  So far, I have experimented with a recent month-long road trip across Oregon, Washington, and Idaho and worked remotely during that trip.  As a solopreneur, I can also change my schedule at the drop of a hat and decide to take a Friday off if my work is slow or if I’ve taken care of enough obligations to afford a day off. 

Maybe it can exist?

As I am writing this, maybe Mary’s fantasy of an architect does exist?  Let’s go back to that conversation from the movie.

^{LISA: And where would you and your beer-bellied architect be leaving to?}

^{MARY: I don’t know. The Super Bowl, New Orleans Jazz Festival…maybe a couple months in Nepal.}

Some of these options seem feasible for most professionals.  The Super Bowl, New Orleans Jazz Festival?  A day or two off work last minute, pretty sure that is what sick days and PTO are for.  A couple of months in Nepal?  Now that is hard to imagine for even the most flexible of solopreneur architects.  I think reality is somewhere in between.  As a solopreneur architect, there is more flexibility involved.  I am still working on finding a balance between incorporating more travel into my normal life, finding a balance between enjoying life at home and spending more time exploring and working remotely.  Perhaps this fantasy of the travelling architect does exist? 

more to say about architects and travel

I have more to say about this topic, specifically about the value of travel (outside of work) for architects, the concept of the “Grand Tour”, and the perception vs. reality or “work travel” in general.  I will continue to dive into these topics in future blog posts.  If there is anything specific about these topics you want to hear, let me know.