In May he graduated from the architecture program at Columbia. He's been working since then for a firm in midtown, with celebrated large-scale commissions to its name. It's not the sort of job he'd envisioned for himself as a student; designing and renovating private residences was what he'd wanted to do. That might come later, his advisers have told him; for now, it was important to apprentice with the big names. And so, facing the tawny brick wall of a neighboring building across the air shaft, he works with a team on designs for hotels and museums and corporate headquarters in cities he's never seen: Brussels, Buenos Aires, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong. His contributions are incidental, and never fully his own: a stairwell, a skylight, a corridor, an air-conditioning duct. Still, he knows that each component of a building, however small, is nevertheless essential, and he finds it gratifying that after all his years of schooling, all his crits and unbuilt projects, his efforts are to have some practical end.
