Julianna Morais
ArchNative, meet Julianna Morais,
Julianna is a New York based architect and the Vice President of Design for Henrybuilt, a company focused on creating an integration of unique functional tools, beautiful and distinct details, and refined spaces that people use every day. Prior to her time with Henrybuilt, Julianna worked on the architecture side of the industry, starting her career with Morphosis prior to joining Gehry Partners.
Our conversation with Julianna dives into her professional career start in architecture and how it ultimately led her to her current role, what her experience was working for a starchitect, and how Henrybuilt is changing the built environment.
“Take the chances that come your way; do strong work; be gracious and graceful in how you enter and exit your opportunities. You will create a community of supporters, and you will build a range of knowledge that is invaluable.”
Tell us about yourself and describe your professional background.
I’m an architect living in New York City, and, for the past 16 years, I've worked with Henrybuilt—first as a design director and now as Vice President of Design.
After graduating from Georgia Tech with a Master’s degree in Architecture, I started my professional career with a 6-month internship at Morphosis in Los Angeles in 1993. From Morphosis, I went to Gehry Partners as a member of the Walt Disney Concert Hall design team, and I stayed with that office until 2005 when I returned home to the Gulf Coast of Mississippi for a brief period of time that, coincidentally, overlapped with Hurricane Katrina. It was in those two years after the storm that I felt a pull to return to projects that were smaller and more immediately engaged with how people live and how products are made. When I shifted my gaze to New York and the opportunities there, I very specifically sought out ones that were nothing like my previous years spent working on large-scale architecture projects.
What sparked your initial fascination with architecture and design?
My father was a naval engineer, and he was always sketching and drafting devices for ships, so the act of understanding something by drawing it and editing it through an iterative process was ingrained in me early. I loved to use his tools—mechanical pens, straight edges, etc.—to draw what was on my mind. It’s funny, I never drew freehand; my earliest memories are of drawing in a scaled and measured way.
That experience combined with a literature class I took during my undergraduate studies that exposed me to writers, such as Anita Desai and Attia Hosain, whose novels employed architecture as the “other” character in the room. I had never fully considered until then that architecture has a unique way of embodying ideals and values and even rules; it enables drama and intrigue—it’s so much more than a container. And the choices that we make about how we organize spaces and imbue them with meaning felt exciting and powerful to me.
After completing your Master of Architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology and relocating to Los Angeles, you spent seven years at Gehry Partners. How would you describe your experience there?
Being at Gehry Partners at that particular moment was quite exciting. Bilbao had just opened to much success. All eyes were on Frank—what could/would he do next? But what a lot of people may not have realized is that the technical process of constructing Bilbao resulted in advances in building technology that were quite remarkable. Yes, everyone has heard about the software advances, but in order to use that software, the whole team—consultants and subcontractors—had to make a shift. Standards of drawing certain types of information changed. Methods for building complicated shapes and forms changed. And all of this led to more control over results and budgets when it came to the complex forms Frank and other architects at that time were starting to generate.
To bring it back to my own experience, Bilbao led to the Disney Concert Hall springing back to life. And that’s the project I spent my first three years at Gehry Partners working on. I had never been involved with construction documents before, and I never thought I was even that interested in the construction process until I joined that team. I learned so much about how to communicate through drawings and models with the teams making the building and its parts.
Ironically, for the remainder of my time after Disney was completed, I worked on a series of projects that were never built—also a lesson in what it takes to make these types of large projects happen and a factor that eventually led to my desire to shift to a different form of practice.
Your career trajectory has been quite diverse. Could you share insights into your transition from architectural firms to material production?
That’s an interesting phrase - material production. Henrybuilt is creating an integration of unique functional tools, beautiful and distinct details and components and refined spaces that people use every day. It’s an entire approach to designing and making that ultimately has a big impact on the experience of living as well.
I had reached a point at Gehry Partners where I felt very distanced from design, distanced from the end user, and even distanced from “making” of any kind since so many of my projects were never built. When I was still working on the Disney project I had the unique opportunity to work directly with the orchestra members to design the back of house locker and rehearsal spaces. I participated in meetings with each part of the orchestra to understand their needs. The percussionists showed me how they wash and dry their drum skins. The choral group reviewed seating diagrams with me that illustrated the various formations necessary to replicate the stage experience. I spent a month gathering information about the programming and functions for the entire group and then worked with the design team, led by Craig Webb, to develop those critical spaces behind the stage. It was probably my favorite thing I did while at that office—and interestingly, was my first foray into millwork and systems for function.
I have to admit, when I first began to investigate shifting my practice from being in a traditional architectural office over to a design and production focused company like Henrybuilt, I didn't necessarily know what I was getting into. I flew out to Seattle to visit the studio and production facility, and I was very excited by the focus on design. Design of the systems, design of the product, and design of the method. I remember Scott Hudson, founder of Henrybuilt, alluding to the idea that it was highly likely I’d do more design thinking in my first year than I’d done in my entire career to date—and he was right. My interest in making space was combined with industrial design and manufacturing and it has been very fulfilling. I was engaged in multiple projects at different phases—talking with the homeowners, engaging with the architects, supporting the construction process and bringing back what I was learning through those experiences to our engineering and production teams and watching a very “live” and direct evolution of Henrybuilt’s product systems take place in response to that feedback loop.
Tell us about your role as Vice President of Design.
When I first started with Henrybuilt, the design of the product and of individual client projects in which the product is used, was undertaken in Seattle by a variety of people with engineering, industrial design, and architectural backgrounds. Since the system has always been our core starting point, most of the energy was initially focused on that, including the team makeup. I joined the company at a time when the idea of having a Design Group to interact with the client teams was just beginning to take shape, and I was fortunate enough to play a role in developing our approach and process. It was key to establish that, as experts, our responsibility to our clients was to ensure that they got an end result that was not just beautiful, but also deeply gratifying to live with and experience on a daily basis; this often means narrowing the decisions on behalf of our clients in positive ways and developing methods of communicating only the right choices.
Can you elaborate on your process and collaboration with design firms?
I think it’s important to say, first, that if you are working with me, you are working with Henrybuilt. And clients that choose Henrybuilt are doing so for a set of reasons: beautiful craft, unique functional tools, high quality, and a strong level of expertise when it comes to living well. That positioning puts me in the middle of a number of team members that each have their own focus. I start the process primarily by listening and understanding the primary objectives for the project and what the team cares about the most. I walk away from a kickoff meeting with cues that enable me to guide them through a process that is simple, and hopefully elegant, and that takes advantage of my expertise. I see and hear it all when it comes to possible ways to live and occupy a home. I lean into my own architecture background to understand the aesthetic goals. I also address the homeowner’s needs, including the ones they don’t yet know they have—to make sure that even if they haven’t thought about it, I have. I often find myself mediating between differences of opinion. That’s why it is critical at the beginning to establish a clear direction for the project that you can always refer back to. I serve as a critical consultant to the project and can often see paths or results steps ahead of where we are in the process, which is super critical to avoid backtracking. I diagram initial programming ideas; I understand the whole flow of the house, not just the spaces in which I’m working; I illustrate this back to my client team to make sure I haven’t missed anything; and then I proceed to guide them through a series of decisions, in the right order, with “gates” that enable us to get to a final design that is well resolved.
What advice would you offer aspiring Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) professionals?
Try many ways of practicing! There are so many directions you can take, and you can’t truly know what or how you ultimately want to practice until you’ve actually had a variety of experiences. For the first ten years of my career, I allowed myself to be open to all kinds of opportunities versus worrying about how quickly I could get to the top of a chosen track. I suppose we all come out of school with some idea or notion of being the owner of our own firm or the partner at a firm, but that kind of thinking can force you down a single path. Instead, embrace that first decade as a time for exploration.
When I graduated from Georgia Tech, most of my fellow classmates were pursuing entry-level positions with local firms of varying sizes. Georgia Tech has a strong connection to the local community and it was almost expected that most of us would transition into firms in Atlanta through those connections. But I stepped out feeling that this was my one chance to take a big risk and push beyond that trajectory. I chose four practices whose work I was intrigued by and who I felt were pushing architecture forward and into the next decade: Morphosis, Steven Holl, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and Eric Owen Moss. I had zero connections to any of these offices, and my professors definitely advised me not to expect a response. But, I ended up with two job offers, and I chose to head west to take an internship with Morphosis that has led to many other opportunities along my career path.
I think people at the start of their careers should remind themselves that many successful designers hit their stride more than 15-20 years into their career. There are always going to be some young guns getting there sooner. But the last thing anyone should do is be anxious about where they are starting and how long it might take to figure it out. Take the chances that come your way; do strong work; be gracious and graceful in how you enter and exit your opportunities. You will create a community of supporters, and you will build a range of knowledge that is invaluable. You will also know yourself better.
Photography by: Luis Garvan & Daniel Bernauer