Michael Meehan, AIA

by Heather Livingston
Contributing Editor

Summary: Mike Meehan, AIA, is a project manager with BWBR Architects in St. Paul, Minn. and the chair of the 2007 Young Architects’ Forum (YAF) Advisory Committee. Under his leadership, the YAF held its YAF 15 Summit, which brought together leaders of the architecture profession from all levels to celebrate 15 years of achievements. The summit provided a forum to talk about professional issues facing young architects. Together, they developed ways to provide support and programming for the future leaders of the profession.

Education: I have my BArch from Iowa State University. I graduated in 1994.

Last book read: I just finished reading Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire. I have a whole stack of books that I’ve started to read and need to finish.

Hobbies: I do a lot of renovation work around our house and I’ve been doing a lot of bicycling this summer. We have a six-year-old and a three-year-old. I’m amazed at how busy it keeps us. Keeping up with the kids, spending time with my family; that’s really the biggest time commitment in my life right now.

Professional influences: Lots of people: a lot of the managers and project architects I’ve worked with in my career and in the office here. The other members of the advisory committee in the YAF are a pretty inspiring group of people as well, and I draw a lot of inspiration and guidance from them at times. With me, really it’s the whole spectrum of people with whom I work. I’ve been lucky to work with a lot of people for whom I have respect and gain a lot of insight from each of them.

Biggest surprise on entering the profession: How much fun it was. It was such a shift from the kinds of things you do as a student to the kinds of things you do in an office. I remember learning new things constantly and being excited by that and glad to have the opportunity to dig into that information.

Favorite technological toy: I think SketchUp. It’s incredibly simple but incredibly powerful, and I think it’s allowed architects to experiment with forms quickly and relatively painlessly.

Getting involved with the YAF: At the state level, I was involved with the Minnesota IDP Committee and through people I met in that work I was encouraged to apply to be a regional liaison for the YAF. In 2006, I went from being a regional liaison to a member of the advisory committee, then became chair in 2007.

On the recent YAF 15 Summit: It was both [looking back and looking forward 15 years]. It was a really cool event. We looked at the historic mission of the Young Architects’ Forum and, as a group of about 50 young architects and invited guests, identified the top 10 issues that young architects need to know about. We then split into working groups and developed action plans for the first six of those issues. The YAF has used that information time and time again in making decisions about what programs to pursue and how to use our resources, so it’s been an incredibly valuable guiding tool for the YAF.

The most important issue facing young architects: Mentorship was far and away the most important issue that young architects are curious about, both in terms of how to be a mentor and how to seek out mentoring relationships with more experienced people. Young architects in general are at a point in their careers where they know what they don’t know and they’re hungry to fill in those gaps in their experience and their education. They see skills in the people around them. They also have quite a bit to contribute to interns and students and are anxious to give back.

One realization that we’ve come to is that there is a different kind of mentoring that happens in IDP versus what happens in practice. You know, IDP is a structured regulated mentoring whereas the kinds of mentoring relationships that people see after IDP are more informal and issue driven rather than regulated.

What’s next? I’m not sure yet. I’ll be able to be involved with the advisory committee for another year as past chair, looking specifically at the issue of mentorship for the group. After that, I think I’d like to strengthen my connections with our state group a little bit, but that’s a year and a half off, so I’m not entirely sure what direction I’ll take.