My mornings are getting earlier. These days I’m getting up at 6:30 or 7 a.m. I have two young kids, 1 and 3. To get things done around the house it basically has to be done in the morning because they are attention magnets. Two or three days a week I go surfing. I’m out and back by 8 o’clock and I’m in the office by nine.

I live in Venice and the office is in Century City. The commute is about 25 minutes. When I get in, I have quite a bit of e-mail internal and external. I’m in charge of design at the office so e-mail can have anything to do with design, from evaluating different projects we may be going after to coordinating between members of the design team. In the early days of a project, we incorporate information from a lot of sources. Some issues are technical, like what the walls are made of and how the landscape will affect the design.

The meeting I just got out of went over time because a helistop is part of the equation in a project we’re doing with Catholic Healthcare West, a clinic for Sacramento Methodist Hospital, and that’s going to affect the design. We were discussing it with a helistop controller.

I have three designers who I work really closely with. We’re a team and I’m their leader. There’s a lot of checking with each other in the morning. Design is a lot of problem solving.

It’s hard to predict what you’re going to run into. One answer will indicate a certain solution. For example, we’re renovating a plaza in Century City with a fountain. It is pretty substantial,about 45 feet long with a curvilinear shape and it is supposed to be made entirely of glass.

We are working it into the overall scheme of the design, deciding what is feasible. How do you get the water to the top? How do you make sure the water spills over the edge properly? How can it be made of glass but still hide the water as it moves to the top?

I’m involved in every design project in the organization. I’m juggling balls and trying to keep everything conceptually as clear as it can be.

I also have to think about costs. Construction costs have gone up an enormous amount. Someone said to me the other day that to be a designer these days you have to be a cost estimator. That’s true. You have to decide how much of a structure is going to be stone and how much will be made of another material and coordinate design with a budget. There are a lot of negotiations.

I usually take a lunch. I try to get out and spend some time away of the office. I end up eating at my desk a fair amount as well.

Meetings are more in the morning, and the afternoon is the quality work time. Some of the more productive time is 4 in the afternoon to 7 or 8 because the rest of the office is shutting down.

The designers hang things up on the walls and look at what everyone else is working on. I’m migrating toward being a morning person but the end of the day is one of the few times that is open-ended. There is nothing to stop you except getting home to the kids.

I spend time designing, too. I was a fine arts major as a sculptor in college. I have a sketchbook with me at all times. I do a lot of computer modeling as well. I’m pretty computer proficient.

I try to get out of the office by 7 but it has been later than that recently.


As told to Sarah Filus

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Stanley Lien Chiu



Senior Associate, HGA Architects & Engineers



Current Projects:

Building a 750-seat music hall as well as a 40,000-square-foot student union at Vanguard University in Costa Mesa.


Close to Home:

Chiu learned how to surf when he lived in Los Angeles in his younger days. He left when he was 18 to go to college.


Passion:

“Sustainability is something in architecture I care passionately about. We’re destroying the environment. As a designer it’s important to make sure that construction is not stealing resources that we need for the future.”