Claudia Seligman

by Heather Livingston
Contributing Editor

Summary: Claudia Seligman is the owner of CADSEL Design in Mandeville, La. Seligman, along with three other women in her class of 1974, graduated with a BArch. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., at a time when few women were entering the design profession. The daughter of a ship builder, Seligman was drawn to the building arts from an early age. Her unique career trajectory has successfully melded her love of design with a hands-on approach to construction management.

Education
I have a BArch from Rensselaer. There weren’t a lot of women at that time who were going into careers like that; 1970 was a time when a lot of women were beginning to go into other fields. Architecture and engineering were two that were not highly populated by women. I did have a professor who thought we were taking the spots of some capable men at the time. In my class at RPI, we started with around 50 students, 6 of whom were young women. When we graduated, there were four women in that class. Now it’s about half and half. A greater number of women today are going into architecture as opposed to when I went. But it was interesting and it was fun. The guys were great.

Why did you become an architect?
I had always grown up around building. My father was a shipbuilder, and I would always go with him to his shipyard to see things being built. I’d look at the drafting boards and the drawings and go out in the shipyard with him. When we moved to Covington, La., when I was 10, my father designed our house and had a local architect draw it up and detail it. I would go with my father to see the architect and helped my father lay the house out. I’ve always been involved with design in some aspect.

The summer after my junior year in high school, I went with a group of students from New Orleans on a foreign study league tour in Europe. We were there for six weeks going through seven countries. On my bus was a nun who was an architecture buff. The entire six weeks she talked about all of the architecture we were driving by. It was after this summer that I came home and said I wanted to be an architect.

There’s something genetic about it, though, because in high school I remember pulling all-nighters to finish science and other projects. I’ve always enjoyed planning and design and layout, making things and doing things. Add all of it together: being involved with building, being involved with seeing things designed—houses and ships—and then that wonderful summer in Europe. I just said I wanted to be an architect and that was it.

Early career
I had a wonderful summer after my fourth year in college. I worked in midtown Manhattan for a large architectural/engineering firm, Haines Lundberg and Waehler. They had a wonderful student program that summer, and I had an incredible opportunity to work with all the different disciplines. They had offered me a job full time when I finished college, but I came back home to New Orleans and began working for a firm called August Perez & Associates. It really was the firm to work for when you were out of school. It was a second-generation architecture firm, the largest in New Orleans, and truly fun and wonderful. I had a great opportunity to work with one of the project managers of the firm, Walter Ernst, and do a variety of things, not just redlines. I got involved doing a lot of contracts, doing design.

One of the things that I designed was a laboratory for a Nobel Prize winner in physics. I was just out of school a couple of years, and we were doing a new research and laboratory building for the Veterans’ Administration. They were constructing an eight-story medical and research tower to supplement and complement the existing VA hospital. Additionally, I had a lot of fun working on the programming for the New Orleans convention center. We were really excited, because we were in a competition to get that project and, even though we were in New Orleans, nobody thought we had a chance competing against other firms that had strong backgrounds in convention center design. We put together an incredible presentation—a wonderful concept—and got the project! I had a chance to do all the initial programming for the Phase One of the convention center, so I did and learned a lot of things and had some wonderful mentoring on building codes, design, and projects. I worked there for six years.

Then I left and took a hiatus from building architecture and worked for my father at his shipyard for 15 years, designing and building boats. I did all types of things at the shipyard, and after we closed the yard I did some building construction, which was invaluable for me. I did a little bit of shipyard work, as well as a casino boat for Caesar’s and a little architectural work. I’ve had my own practice for about five or six years. All my previous lives play a part in what I do today. I’ve learned so many different parts of the industry, so many different facets of what we do—not just design but construction, codes, management, and the financial end, so it’s been a lot of fun for me.

How has the profession changed from when you first became an architect to now?
Things are not done the old-fashioned way! We were talking about this the other day. When I was first out of school, we’d call contractors in to go over the construction details to make sure that everything we were doing was constructible; that it made sense. I found that there was a strong working together. I think in today’s world, on a design-build project you’re going to have that working together, but a lot of the projects in the public sector are very competitive.

I’m old fashioned. I still draw by hand. I still get compliments on the work that I do because it is thorough. It is correct. It is complete. I’m looking at younger kids today, and there may not be that full grasp and understanding of how a building goes together. We were really trained in how a building goes together, all the component pieces and parts. It’s a faster world. It is a variety of different projects, with less time to get them done and perhaps less money.

Advice for young architects
Learn to be a good steward of a client’s money, to understand that it is a big investment for them. It is really important to find their needs, to find their wants. It may take some time, but it’s really important, and although in the end my final product may be something that I like, my client has to be really happy with it. If it’s a really bad decision, I will let them know. If it’s something that technically doesn’t make sense, if it’s something that is color- or design-wise really bad, I’ll suggest that to them, but they have to be happy.

Another bit of advice I would give young architects is to find the opportunity to spend some time working for a general contractor. Go work for a general contractor for a year or for two years in the field or in the office of a project manager or project engineer. It opened my eyes when I was working for a general contractor to try to build something off somebody else’s drawings. Contractors down here have told me they would pay to have a program for architects just out of school to come work for them. If you can work for a contractor, go do it. It will make you such a better architect.

Most interesting project
I’ve had a ton of interesting projects that I’ve worked on: the laboratory for the Nobel Physicist, the convention center project in New Orleans. I worked on the Caesar’s casino boat, which at the time was the world’s largest casino vessel. Recently, I did a house right before Hurricane Katrina for Tyler Perry’s mother in New Orleans. It was really fun. It was a little Victorian-style house on a very narrow lot.

Right now, I’m working on a grocery store renovation and expansion. It’s in the downtown of the little town where I live. The owner is somebody I grew up with. I see everybody I’ve grown up with there. It’s a real local family project. I’ve learned so much about retailing and grocery stores. I think I could keep going on and on.

Currently reading
Just about anything I can get my hands on about politics, which I thoroughly enjoy, being in Louisiana, where the political arena has its own interesting nature, and with this being an election year. I’m not reading any books right now, just in a lot of articles and op-eds. Current events are what I love right now.

Favorite place to get away
There are a couple places I truly love. One is Sun Valley, Idaho, to ski. I go there on a family trip with my father every year. He’s 82. My father has skied his whole life, and he taught skiing out there. I’ve skied on and off since I was little. I’m not real good, but it’s a fun family trip that we go on to Sun Valley for two weeks. Also, any spa—such as the Phoenician—I enjoy for a couple of days.

Professional practice tip
I was talking about this last night with some colleagues and again this morning. I think we are obligated as professionals to be morally and ethically responsible in what we do. Sometimes your client may not like what you’re saying at the time, but as a professional we have to live with it, and it is our responsibility for whatever we design that gets built. It needs to be safe. It needs to protect, and we need to be good stewards in what we do. I think that that is so important. When you consider that something you’re doing can affect the safety of somebody, that is always the most important thing.

I think we need to be very morally and ethically responsible for what we do. I probably feel even more strongly about that since Hurricane Katrina. What we build has a lasting effect, but we need to make sure that it is safe, that it is good. You have to stand your ground and that is our responsibility as an architect. I’ve seen so many houses here that just got blown away because they weren’t done well. When you see that, you can say the responsibility is there. I stood my ground before the storm on a shopping center I did. I told the owner: “This is how it was going to get done.” He said: “No, I don’t want to spend the money.” I said: “Then I’m not going to do it.” He asked: “Why are you putting these ties in?” And I said: “Because if something hits, I don’t want your building to be washed or blown away.” And I won. We did it that way. After Hurricane Katrina, he had not one iota of damage to his building.

These are people’s lives and we hold that responsibility. It is in our hands to do it right and I think we always have to keep that in mind.