Richard Avery

Background

About Richard Avery

I'm a designer, educator, and architect, and I’ve been doing these things for a long time. You can find the resume stuff in the section below. If you're reading this what you want is the stuff that's hard to turn into bullet points. Architecture and design gets me closer to people. That's why I do it. I’ve been around the block a few times and been involved in more projects than I can remember. What we do is hard and easy to screw up. The risk and reward are often out of whack, but what brings them into balance for me is that everyday I get to connect with people through the act of doing the work and helping create things that are meaningful to others. I’ve learned some things on those trips around the block: it’s better to figure out the questions before you go looking for answers; knowing what should happen is important, but understanding what will happen is critical; if someone doesn’t understand what you are saying, it's your problem to solve not theirs; it’s better to mentor people than just manage them; and a big part of my job is to help the people I work with, whether they be clients or coworkers, be better at what they do.