by Heather Livingston
Contributing Editor

Summary: Martin Moeller is senior vice president and curator at the National Building Museum (NBM) in Washington, D.C. He previously has served the architecture community as executive director of the Washington, D.C., chapter of the AIA and executive director of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. In addition, Moeller is the author of the fourth edition of the AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C. and co-editor with Jean-Louis Cohen of Liquid Stone: New Architecture in Concrete, a book based on the NBM exhibition of the same name.

Education
I have a BArch and an MArch from Tulane University in New Orleans. I also spent a year studying architecture at the University of Manchester in England.

Reading
I’m just about to finish a book called How the States Got Their Shapes. I’ve never really been crazy about the writing, but I love this sort of thing. It’s just fascinating historical facts that we all take for granted, but there are so many intriguing little stories behind the quirks: the little corners shaved off of perfectly square states or those weird panhandles that don’t seem to make any sense. Over the weekend, I just finished a biography of Frida Kahlo, which I read in Spanish. I try to do that every so often just to keep up with my Spanish.

Hobbies
I love foreign languages. I’ve always been interested in connections among languages and culture and geography, so a lot my reading relates to that. I’ve got tons of dictionaries of different languages and I’m always dabbling—trying to figure out connections and words, which sometimes gets me in trouble. For example, I travel to other countries and know just enough words to make it sound like I know what I’m talking about. Then they respond to me in their language, and I know nothing, so that can be a challenge. I love to travel in general.

Career trajectory
My career was completely unplanned. I was one of these people who wanted to be an architect from a very early age. I assumed that I would get out of architecture school, go into practice in a firm, and eventually have my own firm or be a partner in a firm. It just couldn’t have been clearer.

In my last year of architecture school, an opportunity arose that I never would’ve predicted. As part of my position in the student organization in the school, I organized a symposium on the interrelationship between architecture journalism, practice, and education. In the process, I invited several editors of different architecture journals and publications to come to the school and participate. One of them—without my knowledge—actually put my name in for a position as project manager at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. He knew I was going to be graduating soon, that position was coming up, and he thought that, given my interest in those kinds of issues, I might be a good candidate.

So, I got a call and I thought it sounded interesting. I hadn’t even thought about Washington as a place to move to at that point and thought maybe it was something I could do for a year or two. I came to Washington, interviewed, got the job, and ended up getting more and more responsibilities doing a variety of things for the organization: organizing conferences, editing publications, doing graphic design, running student design competitions, and getting the chance to meet an incredible array of prominent practitioners, teachers, and people from architecture and other disciplines. I got used to that and, after a couple of years, was given the opportunity to become assistant executive director of ACSA, so I ended up being there for five years. At that point, I thought it was time to go back into practice.

As I was thinking about that one day, I got a call from someone saying the local chapter of the AIA just announced that they were looking for a new executive director and they really wanted someone who has an understanding of architecture but also knew about nonprofit organizations. That seemed like an interesting opportunity, so I thought maybe I’d do that for a year or two. I got the job and ended up staying there six years. Then I got a call about ACSA, which then was looking for a new executive director and—long story short—I ended up getting that job and went back to ACSA as executive director for three years.

At that point, I’d pretty much given up the idea that I was going to end up in practice. Then, the opportunity to come to the National Building Museum arose. I was initially hired as executive vice president and chief operating officer, overseeing all the operations of the museum, exhibitions, education programs, development, etc. I came in that role with the president, who had been here for several years and was moving to a part-time schedule. So, my position was a new one.

After a few years of running a much larger organization, I found that I was spending all of my time worrying about spreadsheets and money, especially in a private nonprofit cultural institution. When you have to raise virtually every dollar for everything you do, worrying about money can occupy a lot of time, and I realized that I spent very little of my time actually thinking about content, which was the thing that brought me to the museum in the first place.

So, after a few years in that role, I had a conversation with the president and executive committee, and, after a lot of discussion, we came up with a new scheme in which I would be senior vice president and curator working directly on content issues—still with roles in other parts of the museum based on the experience that I had, but trying to focus on the areas of expertise that I brought to the museum based on my educational background. That’s what I’ve been doing since. It’s the smartest thing I ever did—get back and focus on the subject matter.

Critical issue facing architects
Not surprisingly, the first one that comes to mind is sustainability. I think that the fact that you hear so much about it is not just reflecting that it’s a trendy issue. It really is influencing how architects think about what they do, and I think that’s completely appropriate. To me, it’s the most encouraging development in architecture in decades.

It’s interesting to me, because as I think back to my time in architecture school and as one who has served as a critic or a juror for numerous architecture student projects, there have been so many occasions when I would sense that students were desperately looking for a rationale or approach to the making of architectural form. They were looking for either broader ideas or perhaps specific things derived from the program or clients, but often had trouble identifying what those things might be and developing them into great designs.

I think that one of the greatest aspects of the sustainability movement is that it provides a rationale for excellent design, because it gives you a structure for creating buildings that are unique, appropriate to their sites, solve multiple problems besides just the specific human needs and programmatic functions, but can contribute to the society of buildings in a way that the typical run-of-the-mill structure doesn’t. It can be a very rewarding approach to design and one that obviously has benefits for society and for the environment in general, which I think is absolutely critical. We can’t continue to do things the way we’ve been doing them—in this country in particular—for much longer, or we’re going to feel the effects.

Favorite exhibition at the NBM
The favorite one that I curated was an exhibition called Liquid Stone: New Architecture in Concrete. It was fun because when we started looking at the possibility of doing an exhibition on concrete, of course most people reacted by saying “ew.” It’s not the sort of thing that causes people to perk up immediately and say: “Well that sounds so exciting” It’s not like you’re saying, “I’m curating a show on Van Gogh.” Concrete: “hmmm.”

Knowing that people would be skeptical of this and yet also knowing that there was a lot of great, interesting, and beautiful works in concrete that were exploring the unique potential of this material, I thought this was a great opportunity not only to expose people to some of these great works of architecture, but also help them understand that there are fine points to issues of materials, technology, and developments in architecture that are not always apparent to the general public. They don’t necessarily weave these things together into a story. That’s what we tried to do with that show.

It wasn’t just about a bunch of concrete buildings. We also tried to make connections between the technology and the design so people understood in each case why that building is possible because of this particular technological property or development in the material. It was a technical show but one in which the technology or the material science was always applied to create good design. And it got great reactions in the press and from the public. I loved it when people wrote in the comment book that they were dragged kicking and screaming to see a show about concrete but ended up liking it.

What steps can be taken to make the public more aware of the importance of architecture?
Well, that’s a lot of what we’re trying to do, of course. Through exhibitions and education programs, we’re hoping to help people to understand what architects do and what architecture can do for them. We talk in our mission statement about the impact of the built environment on people’s lives. We don’t just have a laundry list of subject matter that we cover: architecture, engineering, construction. We re-examine the relationship of those disciplines to the actual experiences of human beings, and we reveal how important design can be to the health and contentment of their lives. I think that’s what it comes down to. People need to understand that while buildings can be beautiful—they can be presented in an exhibition, magazine article, or book essentially as works of art—but that is only part of the story. They go beyond works of art because they incorporate issues of use, and that’s what makes the discipline of architecture so challenging but also so interesting.

When people understand that it’s not just about the sketch on a napkin but also about the integration of environmental technologies or responses to particular human needs or client desires and how all of those things are brought together to create something that works holistically, that’s pretty fascinating. I think they react very well to that story when it’s presented to them in a way that is understandable.

Advice for young architects
I guess my advice for young architects would be to get outside of the profession every now and then to understand other aspects of society and culture and expose yourself to other ideas and issues that go outside of the narrow realm of architecture. I think it’s always been a problem. Architecture is such a demanding profession and requires so many different skills that it’s easy for practitioners to get trapped in their own little world. Finding ways to expand on that is very critical.

There was a report issued 12 years ago by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching known as the Boyer Report. [The complete title is Building Community: A New Future for Architecture Education and Practice.] I think the most fundamental message to come out of that report was that architecture as a discipline and profession needed to be much better about placing itself in society. It talks about everything from architecture students not doing enough coursework and activities outside of architecture and design to professionals who spent too much time in their own studios and offices and not necessarily making connections outside the discipline. It’s an easy thing to say and it’s perhaps harder to do. We all get focused on our priorities at work very easily, and it’s sometimes hard to get out of that, but I think that’s critical. We really rely on architects as being generalists, still in this day and age at a time when it’s hard to be a generalist and people keep pushing you in the direction of greater specificity and specialization. The idea of the architect as a critical thinker still has great value and critical thinking relies on a broad range of knowledge and exposure to lots of different ideas representing different disciplines.