Entrepreneur Architect Interview: ArCH

Rand Soellner, co-founder of ArCH: Architects Creating Homes, was recently interviewed by one of the highest-profile online webinar architectural entities in America. Mark R. LePage, Architect and creator of the Entrepreneur Architect series website and podcast, interviewed Soellner, who is the Senior Staff Architect of HOME ARCHITECTS.

Mark R. LePage has a practice in New York. His firm designs housing in the Westchester County area of New York State. Mark founded Entrepreneur Architect to mainly help other Architects be successful. He recognized the ArCH organization as having a parallel path to his own organization and decided to provide it with exposure on what he calls a “Podcast.” A Podcast is an online Skype session that is audio.

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Entrepreneur Architect ArCH interview — Click on the image above to see the introduction page and give you access to the podcast.

Entrepreneur Architect’s podcasts come off as being like the NPR (National Public Radio) of architecture. It feels and sounds a lot like the Prairie Home Companion of Garrison Keillor fame, with some nice folksy guitar in the background from time to time. And Mark’s guest are allowed and encourage to talk about how they became an Architect. That provides some interesting background. So was the case with the Soellner interview. Soellner described how his mother, at an early age, recognized his inclinations toward architecture and drive him to visit Frank Lloyd Wright homes in his home town of South Bend, Indiana. Then, in 1967, how his parents and brother visited Expo ’67 in Montreal, and how that was it for Soellner. He knew then that we wanted to become an Architect.

However, the main subject of the podcast concerned the ArCH organization, which Soellner established to help all residential Architects thrive, while improving residential architecture in general. ArCH has members from Colorado through North Carolina, and from Chicago down through Fort Lauderdale. They seek to have hundreds, if not thousands of members, as they grow.

Their mission statement:

An American organization of Licensed Architects focusing on residential architecture, professional excellence & achievement, Client value & service.

The idea is simple: like MDs (Medical Doctors) who become proficient in a particular specialty, like Neurology or Cardiology or Dermatology, they can become Board Certified in them. That signals to the public that these professionals are the best of the best at this particular activity. Same thing with Architects and ArCH: the organization offers a CRAfts program (Certified Residential Architect focus team system) that provides a series of learning modules for Licensed Architects and after passing all of them, they are allowed to use the term: CRAfts or Certified Residential Architect after their names. Nothing like this presently exists in the architectural world. Residential architecture has been lagging behind the “curve” for hundreds of years.

ArCH, the AIA, Canada, and State Governments all describe and indicate that the design of houses is one of the most complex tasks in which an Architect can engage. Therefore, it is about time that an independent professional organization help evolve the practice of residential architecture. ArCH: Architects Creating Homes.