“Don’t let obstacles discourage you. When in doubt, take the high road and keep the long view so that the big picture is always in front of you. Find your voice and find what is important to you. Identify what you love and go towards it.”
Janet Tam is a founder and Principal of Noll and Tam Architects. Janet grew up in Richmond, California, and studied architecture at UC Berkeley in the 1970s and early 80’s, when the university was a pioneer of socially responsible design. There, she encountered groundbreaking courses on social factors and user needs, and was drawn to the power of architecture to enrich people’s lives by serving the public good.
Janet and her business partner, Chris Noll, founded their firm in 1992, to establish a talented studio of architects that pursued the ideal of active community involvement and environmentally responsive design. Since its founding, the Berkeley-based firm has become a leader in Bay Area public architecture, and is noted for championing women in leadership roles. Janet’s work, and that of the firm, is regarded for its emphasis on recognizing and articulating shared community values with projects that bind people together in a common vision for the future.
In this episode, Janet talks about:
Her experience of starting a practice while raising two daughters
How introspection and surrounding yourself with experts is key to building a healthy firm
Working with a firm therapist
How the strength of the firm’s culture helped them get through the pandemic
What it means to stay “fresh” in the architecture profession
Succession planning, letting things go, and passing on knowledge
How architects never retire but morph into something else.
“I love the work that we do. We want to do projects that are contributing to the greater good. Especially now, there’s a really renewed consciousness of social equity and mission-driven projects, and it feels like we want to do even more.”
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Catherine Meng: Where you've ended up all these years later, is it a lot different from where you imagined your career would go when you first graduated from Berkeley?
Janet Tam: Yeah, when you start out, you just kind of put one foot forward, you keep walking, and keep going. The only time I ever thought I would start my own firm is when I was working at a larger firm, and I noticed that these other women who were in the suite downstairs had started their own firm, and they were in their late 30s. They said, "If you can start your own firm, you should start early". It was the first time I ever thought that's really interesting. But I never really accepted to be where I am and I feel really fortunate.
CM: What first made you want to start your firm, after speaking to those women in that suite? What made you want to take that next step?
JT: It was intriguing to me and I kept thinking, I want to still be young if I choose to start my own practice, but it was in the back of my mind. So actually, I started as a small single practitioner, and I didn't even think of it as a practice. But it was more like something that I was working on at that point in my life, which was having my first daughter. I realized that I needed more flexibility, and I wanted to take on my own projects. I had always moonlit - I know you're not really supposed to - but I always took other projects on, on the side, just to test out my own capability and to learn and do things on my own. So it was a natural extension of that beginning. And so after a while, I realized, Oh, I have a lot of projects here. So for a few years, I had my own small single practitioner practice, and didn't go back to a larger firm practice.
JT: My now my business partner, Chris Noll, and I went to graduate school together. We had always been good friends; he was one of my best friends in school. He had left his practice. Even in graduate school, we were kind of very similar in a lot of ways. So we decided that we would try have a practice together. By that time I had two kids. And so we started a bonafide business practice for me when my youngest daughter was six months old and my older daughter was almost four. It was that extra boost of having a good friend to share things with because working on my own was kind of lonely and I wasn't sure where it was going to go. The opportunity to really have a partnership felt like it was a launching of a real business. We struggled a lot in the beginning, but we were pretty determined and as a partnership, we shared being very entrepreneurial. I realized these things about me that came out when I was needed to build a practice. We were pretty hands on, just the two of us. We learned a lot about business that we didn't know when we were working for other people. We had our own contract together and our own mission statement. It was really an adventure, but it wasn't just like, "Oh, let's just see what happens". Somehow it felt like it was going to really continue on. We've had our ups and downs, but it really has been a very strong partnership that has developed into a firm
CM: Do each of you take on different roles within the firm?
JT: We have actually. In the beginning, we both really shared everything, but our natural inclination is - I end up being the chief worrier of a lot of things. And it's the holding the firm together as a collective, as a group, as a social entity. Chris is very good at organization, and he's actually more of the risk taker. Even though we're both pretty entrepreneurial, but he's very good at like, "Oh, let's do this!" and I go, "Oh, really? Are you sure? Okay". And so the complimentary personalities that we both have have been good for our practice. We both are very devoted to design, we're both very devoted to social causes and building community, so that's the foundation of what's made it really work. And also, we've been really old, old friends for many years.
CM: So starting a practice with your best friend hasn't ruined your friendship?
JT: No, it's changed it, it's evolved it. There are many years that we are doing different things. He runs the library sector in our firm, and it's quite clearly a sector that he feels a lot of ownership around, and I do other aspects of the practice. Honestly, one of the milestones in our firm is it stopped being Janet and Chris's practice, it really ended up being Noll and Tam, which is a lot healthier. It's not a family, and it really is a corporation and a business where we have a lot of really talented people who have been a lot of the engine and the energy of the firm in the last years.
CM: As I was preparing for this interview, I was browsing your website, and of course I'm familiar with your work, especially being in the Bay Area. There's a lot of like education projects, and library projects that you mentioned - it's such a beautiful portfolio of work. In those early years, what kind of projects did you first work on? I assumed they were smaller, maybe residential renovations or like smaller commercial projects. How were you able to grow it and get these larger type of library projects and education projects?
JT: We thought that we would be doing more residential just because that's how most people start. Before we actually even formed our formal partnership, we actually applied in an RFP for the Rockridge Library in the City of Oakland. It was our first real coming together and doing a response to a public project on our own. So we actually felt more comfortable doing public work, because that's where we both came from, from working for more design-oriented larger firms that did public projects. So even though we felt like residential could be a backup, we always went towards institutional. So our first projects were really one at UC Berkeley, and one for the Berkeley Unified School District. They were small renovations, and then we had one remodel, but the remodeling for residential always ended up kind of taking a backburner. So very quickly in our firm, we ended up gravitating towards responding to public proposals, because we knew how to do that. For many years, we did messy remodels and feeling like we paid our dues. There was one project in particular, that was kind of amazing for us. It was for the City of Pinole, and that particular city manager was pretty innovative. He said, "Okay, we love you guys, you haven't done anything before, you're really young, you have a really good proposal. I'm going to team you with a more senior firm. So you can be Prime, but you have to choose a more senior firm." So we chose a more senior firm who Chris had worked with before. It ended up being a really great break for us. And unfortunately, that project never went to construction, but it made us feel like, "Hey, we can do this." And also partnering with an older firm was a mentorship opportunity for us. That helped launch us and then eventually we got our first new building, which was kind of a really big deal five or six years later, and then one thing builds on itself. So here we are. But it's never over, now we're looking for the next thing. So we're trying to find our own identity and still reach for projects, whether it's through an association or whether it's really through our current clients.
CM: You just mentioned trying to find your own identity, and I love it when architecture firms have like a design philosophy, or a mission statement on their websites, because not a lot of firms do that. Your firm's motto is Uncommon Spaces for the Common Good. How did that come to be?
JT: I love that motto, I wish I could claim credit for it!
CM: You could I wouldn't know!
JT: Well, I'll be honest. Through the growth of our firm, we revamped our website, we, in a way, re-looked at who we were, when we were about to turn 25 years old. So that by the time we did reach our 25th anniversary, we would have launched a new look and a new brand, or a new recognition of what we had done in the past. One of our youngest partners was a lot of the energy behind rethinking what we do. It wasn't like being new, but it was in recognition of what we've done, all those past years. 99% of our work is public, and most of that is for communities. We actually hired this great branding firm, who interviewed all of us, and really looked at who we were, looked at our work, talked to some of our clients, and played back to us what they heard. One of their writers said, "This is how I see it. You put together uncommon spaces for the common good." And it so resonated with everyone, that it helped us also to become even more intentional about the work we do, and brought our whole firm together. All the people who work for us said, Yeah, that's why I'm here. Because I love the work that we do. We want to do projects that are contributing to the greater good. And through public projects, and especially now there's a really renewed consciousness of social equity and mission driven projects, it feels like we want to be even more - do even more contributions. And we did with some of our earlier projects.
CM: That sounds like such a fascinating process having a branding consultant come in. It makes sense. When you're in the middle of it, maybe it's harder to have a more clear eyed view of what exactly is the common thread between projects, because you're so closely involved to it. But it's interesting seeing a third party person make the connections.
JT: It was really great. It was kind of a luxury, because we got to be the client. Usually, we're the ones who have to think things through and we could hear ourselves. We could talk amongst ourselves and we had a facilitator. In our firm, which I think has also helped us really grow to where we are now, is that we always had really strong, great experts around us, from our marketing consultants, to our accounting, our firm management consultancies, we always talk to people outside of us and people we met through our larger firm practice, that really helped us think more broadly than if we just get more insular. We're not proud, we want to be who we are, we are not making up who we are. But we actually even had a firm therapist for awhile which helped us coalesce our leadership group and help us understand our organization.
CM: I have to ask about that. What does a firm therapist do?
JT: It was two people at first. One was literally a psychologist, and the other was a business executive who decided to join forces. And so there's a business side but there's also the sort of psychological-social component, because so much of practice is about relationships. And we always talked about you have to clear that swamp, or if you have issues around people you're working with, and how can you communicate better? How do you understand each other. We talked about our practice. We brought people in who were our young associates, and we brought in not just architects but also our marketing people and our business managers. It also gave us a container to spend time outside of the office and really be a little more reflective of where we are going. It was really healthy in a way. We haven't done it for a long time, but it has served its purpose for sure.
CM: It seems like one of the common themes I've noticed is a lot of introspection and inward looking and trying to improve things within the firm. And I find that, as you mentioned, it sounds very healthy.
JT: For many years we did do a lot of introspection, and it really included the whole firm. We'd have office retreats and really talk about our mission and have other people in the firm help us develop the mission. I owe a lot to our great staff and architects. For almost 30 years, we've had really amazing stellar committed people who I owe a lot to. Some of them have gone on to start their own practices, but we still seem to have a great group of people who really collaborate. We really do help each other and especially during COVID, it's really come through. Our culture has been built around people who really care about each other, and about the work we do.
CM: Has it been hard to maintain that culture throughout COVID, with everyone being apart?
JT: We've had to work a lot at it, but I've been much more aware of how the strength of the culture we've had in place has helped us get through COVID. Not to say that people haven't been exhausted, and we've all suffered from a lot of the isolation in working remotely. But we still have made an even stronger point of keeping together. I mean, Zoom is not so bad. Here we are on Zoom, and finding ways of still connecting. We can fit 45 people on a screen, so that works out pretty good.
CM: One thing you've also mentioned in your bio is that the most challenging aspect of your job is staying fresh. First of all, what do you mean by fresh?
JT: Fresh is energized. Or how to be energized. How do you continue to evolve. I've done some reading on organizations, and one of the books that I like a lot is The Living Company, which is about having continuity. In order to have continuity, I think you need to stay fresh, which is rethinking and this idea of pausing, and also staying current. We've done a lot of internal thinking, but at one point, we said, Okay, now we've got to look outward. We've also realized how important it is to look outward and to continue to learn from our colleagues and learn from the world and really be aware of what's going on. We've always been a woman ownedfirm. But there's always more one can do and always more awareness in realizing where our unconscious biases are. And so part of our staying fresh is continuing to educate ourselves as a group, not just on a personal level, but on our own organizational level. And then eventually, maybe that can affect our whole community. And eventually, beyond that, for example, we have just completed in our firm, a whole racial equity training of about five weeks, through the Pathways to Equity. It was the start of something but it's continuing to create dialogue and talking within our firm so that so we continue to develop, because as I said, it's just the beginning. We have a thing called Leadership Academy in our firm, where it's a series over the year of different sessions to talk about our practice and topics that are important to us as a group, and people in the firm lead them or facilitate. And so we're all learning as we do it. So staying fresh, in my mind means continuing to be educated. But it also means not taking what we do have for granted, in particular the people in our firm. Staying fresh means continuing to also appreciate and, you know, renew our appreciation for each other so that we continue to work together.
CM: A lot of this sounds like it relates to more organizational aspects, and I'm wondering if this idea of staying fresh also applies to the actual design work that your firm does?
JT: Yes, you're right. I mean, we also have a thing called design committee where we are always trying to keep the whole firm involved is not doesn't lie in the hands of just a few people in our firm. I mean, we really want to share it at all levels. So you know, we are trying to be aware again of what's going on well, but also, I have my personal feeling is I don't want it to be trendy that you know, I'm really looking for design, especially for community that's really specific to a place staying fresh, I guess is also making sure that our design process is thought through and so that it allows us to have the space to think about what's best for our particular community for our public clients, a lover you know, or pay to bring our own aesthetics and our ideas to it, but it's seeing Or developed in the context of what our users, it's really important to us.
CM: What would you say has been a highlight of your career so far?
JT: Maybe some of the same themes, such as seeing our firm evolve. I had no idea that we would be where we are now. I mean, we started with just Chris and me, just the two of us. And then when it got to be 11 or 12, I thought, Wow, this is pretty great. And now we're like, maybe 43 people, and it's never been about the size of the firm, but can this be as big as we need to be to do the work we need to do. The highlight is knowing that the firm is going to continue to evolve. The culture that developed that people have expressed appreciation for is kind of amazing to me. I feel very proud of that.
CM: What are your goals this next phase of your career?
JT: Part of the philosophy around living companies is to be sure that the future leaders of the firm are empowered to take us to the next step. And I think that's starting to happen. Chris and I have invested so much in this firm and we want it to continue. So we're taking the next steps. For me, in particular, my personal next step is a succession plan, starting to delegate and finding a new role for myself. I'm still developing what that will be, but through COVID, I'm finding some strengths that I have or interests that I didn't know I had. I want to figure out how I can continue to support the firm, but I'm hoping that others in the firm who are rising up it will take it to something that is meaningful to them.
CM: Is it kind of weird to think about a succession plan?
JT: No no. Some firms have succession plans two or three generations ahead of time. It's important to think about the future. Lately I've been thinking a lot about the future and how we can be smarter now through COVID. It's an opportunity as everyone’s been saying. How we can reimagine the way we work now, how is life going to be different? What did we learn? How can we morph into something that takes advantage of this quiet period which we have come through? I'm excited about the next steps. I'm very optimistic about the next steps and figuring out what my next role might be.
CM: Do you see yourself retiring anytime soon?
JT: You know, retirement is a funny word. It's overstated. I think architects never really quite retire. I think they morph into something else. One of the wonderful things about architecture is that it’s so broad and there are so many aspects to it. There are things that I haven't done yet. I just joined the City of Berkeley’s Design Review Commission, which is the new for me. I thought maybe someone younger should be on that but actually, I learned things about myself in that role that I hadn't known being on the other side of the table. I think it's also a lesson in how to let go of some things and how to pass on knowledge. It's part of the cycle of things, as hard as it might be.
CM: I wanted to go back to what we had talked about in the beginning, where you started your firm, when you mentioned, your youngest daughter was six months old, and then your older daughter was three or four years old. I know a lot of women do it because they want the flexibility. But in my mind, it seems like it'd be even more work than just working for someone else. Now that you're on the other end of this, what advice would you have for someone like myself, who is at the very beginning of this working mother journey?
JT: Yeah, I think it's really hard. I did it because I wanted to have both. But I knew if I worked in a practice of someone else's, I probably wouldn't be able to see my kids as much. So even though I ended up working all the time, at least I could see my kids when I wanted to. Your children aren’t babies for very long, even though it feels like it's going to last forever. I think it's also important to get support. I was lucky to have live in au pair, and I was lucky to afford to have someone clean the house – one of the advantages of having children a little older. I had support with friends who were around, but there's no question that it's really hard. I think that you end up prioritizing, and you end up being a role model for your own children. I realized now in retrospect, my own two daughters, one who is a licensed architect, and the other who just started her medical residency, they turned out great. I think my main advice is to still take time for yourself. I don't think I did enough. I was working weekends. But I think you need to take time for yourself, whether it's going for a run or taking an art class. My low energy point was when my elderly father also lived with us. So I had my father who I was caretaking, my children who at that point were preteens and teenagers, and my practice.
CM: That must have been difficult.
JT: It was hard. felt really responsible for my practice and clients. So I sometimes felt like my kids had to be on their own for a little while I finished a deadline. And then we would do other things to make up for it. But I put my head down and just look forward. I don't know if that's the right option. That's what I did.
CM: I’ve asked this question of a lot of mothers that I speak to, and, and like trying to get advice and tips, but really, it's just I feel like the true value is just seeing how so many people have been able to do it on their own terms. And there's like a million different ways. Everyone did it their own way. And so I feel like that’s, in a sense, very reassuring, that there's not one specific way you're supposed to do it.
JT: There's no magic bullet. And I don't think there's any particular glamour in being Superwoman. You do what's important to you and I wanted to have both. I feel now is a really nice period of my life because I have a lot of support at the firm. My children are launched, and we have a great relationship. So I feel like I can relax.
CM: To go back to the very beginning, what first made you want to be an architect?
JT: I had an immigrant father. He was from China and was trained as a civil engineer. And so he brought me up kind of like a son. Growing up, I just felt like I could do anything I wanted to do, and he would encourage me. In fact, he said don't ever get married before you go to college. And, and so he was always for me in that regard. Really, where it came from is I wanted to live in a in a beautiful place. And I didn't grow up in a beautiful place. I have pretty humble beginnings. I didn't think of them as humble at the time. My father, as I said was, was an immigrant. My mother was born in San Francisco's Chinatown. She was a working mother. So I had my own mother who was also a model of a working mother. We lived in Richmond, on a commercial street. My father was working in as a draftsperson, because when he came from China, he didn't have a license, but he ended up drafting for civil engineering firms. As a moonlight job, he had a Chinese herbalist practice. And so our house doubled as a storefront for a Chinese herbalist company. All my friends lived on in the hills and I always felt like, Oh, I wish, I wish I could have something that was more normal, whatever, whatever normal was. And so as long as I can remember, I tried to reimagine where I lived, what our house was like, so that I could make it more aesthetic. My parents really didn't have time for aesthetics, and maybe they couldn’t afford it. When I was 12, I wallpapered a couple of rooms of our house. By the time I was 15, I did all these silk screens that I put on the storefront windows. I tried to make the place feel like it was more me. And basically, I learned that by just sort of changing my environment, it felt really empowering. Even though it was just little things, it represented possibility. I didn't even know what design was, but I gravitated towards that. I think I really saw it as a way of shaping my own place in the world. And I never regretted it. I feel like I went into it not knowing anything but it felt very natural. Even though I felt pretty unsophisticated and pretty naive when I started, I feel very grateful for where I’ve ended up.
CM: That's such a beautiful story. This has been so great. I'm going to wrap up with the lightning round questions. What is one piece of advice you have for someone just starting out in their career?
JT: Don’t let obstacles discourage you. When in doubt about anything, take the high road. Keep the long view so that the big picture is always in front of you, you know if something's hard that moment in time, and there's always opportunity out there. If you can find your voice and find what is important to you, which I honestly am still doing, identify what you love and go towards it to be successful.
CM: What is something you find really inspiring right now?
JT: I find my daughters inspiring. I am in awe of them and I love to talk to them. They help me understand what's going on in the world, because they have a very particular perspective and view. They're kind of young activist women. And so I learn a lot from them. We're different generations, of course, and so I see them as being very confident, yet also emerging. I find that really inspiring - for me it represents a whole generation of young women.
CM: What is a funny or interesting fact about yourself?
JT: It's not really funny, but I've been doing ballet. I didn't really do it as a kid. And I don't do it because I love to watch it. But there's something about it using a different part of my brain. And it's challenging. I'm usually the oldest person in the class. It's very humbling. In COVID, I do like for Zoom classes once a week, and I feel like it's keeping my brain going. It's something I'm doing for myself, which is the best part about it.
CM: And then the last question is a mentor shout out. So who is someone who has been a great mentor or inspiration to you in your career that you'd like to give a shout out to?
JT: I've been fortunate to have a few different ones. And the shout out I’d like to give is to my husband Kit. He’s also an architect and 10 years older than me. So when he was going through something, I could watch that. He’s also been a mentor to me in terms of how you run a practice and how you treat people, and the relationships you have in your practice. It also gives me confidence to know that there's always a solution. I don’t think I always tell him, but I think that has really affected how I do my work.