Kat Dovjenko is the Senior Creative Director at Muse & Company. Inspired by the dynamic energy around architecture and urban planning, Kat believes that the more complex, ambitious, and unsolvable the problem, the better. She drives talented teams to unite and achieve outcomes they would not be able to do individually—at multiple scales and in multiple stages of the design process. She most recently worked at Google's R&D for the Built Environment where she oversaw workplace innovation projects.
Kat loves navigating speculative pockets of the future and weaving together how they might impact our built spaces. She never shies away from ambiguity, and is skilled at using foresight and storytelling to propel leading edge technologies into real products for the built world and beyond. She studied Finance in Vancouver, Canada, before earning her Masters in Architecture from the University of Toronto.
In this episode we talk about:
Kat’s role as Senior Creative Director at Muse & Company
Her career journey and pivoting from architecture to tech
Advice and resources for people who want to work in tech
Kat’s experience working at Google
How switching careers can often feel like burning off a piece of your identity
Why architecture as a profession has such a grip on people’s identities
On not tying your identity and self worth to your job
The climate and housing crises are two of the biggest challenges facing the world, and how the architecture profession needs to evolve in order to address them
Kat’s predictions for where the future of the architecture profession should head
Why we need to make the built world more like manufacturing
How architecture tools need a revamp
Resources Kat mentions:
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
Architechie Slack channel
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