Pantheon of Wonder

Essay

Abstraction of Colorful Light

Your Superpower as an Architect

by Maria Lorena Lehman

Philosophy

Architecture Drawing

Three Questions to Find Your 'Why'

As an architectural designer, your mission is to create environments that foster highest function, beauty, and meaning — all while striving to meet and exceed expectations involving project deadlines, review boards, emerging technology trends, and even budget requirements. With all of these demands pulling back on a project's overarching grand vision, it becomes easy for architects to lose sight of designing for the highest purpose their buildings can serve.

Over the years, many architects have written to me — sharing how they have lost their "why". After all, knowing why you became an architect, and designing to meet that dream is important: not only for your overall career success, but also for your overarching happiness as an architect. Ask yourself: How do I find meaning in the projects I create? How can my building designs leverage my fullest potentiality as an environmental designer? And what is the highest purpose of architecture?

By answering the latter three questions, you renew your sense of purpose, and begin to discover your superpower as an architect.

Using Happiness to Design Masterworks

Finding inspiration, passion, and alignment in the work you do is important. These "North Stars" help you to uncover why you design architecture, and they help you to uncover your own unique design strengths. These strengths can be related to innate talent and/or years of skill-building mastery. Yet, you must ask: How can I use my unique strengths as a designer to create architecture that reaches its highest purpose? And how can I grow in my own self-mastery to create architecture that transcends into poetic realms that touch the soul?

When designing, you are either creating a building, an architecture, or a masterpiece. Again, to actualize the highest level in a masterwork, it is imperative that you know your "why". When you align your own purpose as an architect with your unique strengths, inspirations, passions, and curiosities, you will be positioned to design environments at your highest potentiality — and this is critical to growing your happiness and fulfillment as an architect over the lifespan of your career.

In this light, your "why" becomes your superpower.

‍Image Credit: © HomePlansIndia | Pixabay

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Your invitation:


Dear reader,


I believe life is a continual process of awakening. As the journey of my own life continues, I always find myself connecting my experiences, studies, and ideas to new creative projects that bring beauty, inspiration, and hope for our world. For over 30 years, since starting at age 17, I have immersed myself in architectural design; and early on, I earned a Master of Design with Distinction from Harvard University, setting the foundation for decades of deep immersion in the field. Yet even before this, I held music close to my heart. At the age of 5, I began my first piano lessons; and since then, I began to see the world through a musical lens — even while designing architecture.


Over the decades, I grew closer and closer to music with a deep love for the design of instruments, their unique timbres, and for all the immersive ways their sounds could be interwoven into beautiful orchestrated compositions. I even began to develop a musical composition methodology, Spatial Symphonics, as I found my architectural design work becoming more and more emotive, soul-stirring, and yes: musical.


In recent years, I finally turned my focus to music composition. I hold a Graduate Diploma from the Film Scoring Academy of Europe where my works have been recorded by the acclaimed European Recording Orchestra (ERO), and I am founder of MLL ATELIER® — an award-winning studio now dedicated to my work as an orchestral composer, recording artist, and spatial symphonist — where I advance architectural design through music, and innovate music through an architectural design lens.


It is my hope that I can share my ongoing musical-design journey with you, directly from my studio through my video-newsletter entitled 'Orchestral Notes'. Expect video updates filled with first-access studio news announcing: album/book releases, concert premiers, sheet music publications, creative process sneak-peeks, and my own compositional philosophies as they develop to fuel my ongoing body of musical and architectural authorial works.


I would love for you to join me for this exciting adventure.


Simply click the button below to join my Orchestral Notes video-newsletter delivered every two weeks directly to your email inbox. Plus, get access to the full publication archives.

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Let’s enjoy the beauty, inspiration, and hope that music brings.


Thank you for joining me on this wondrous journey.


Warmly,

Maria Lorena Lehman


Founder of MLL ATELIER® | Orchestral Notes

Your invitation:


Dear reader,


I believe life is a continual process of awakening. As the journey of my own life continues, I always find myself connecting my experiences, studies, and ideas to new creative projects that bring beauty, inspiration, and hope for our world. For over 30 years, since starting at age 17, I have immersed myself in architectural design; and early on, I earned a Master of Design with Distinction from Harvard University, setting the foundation for decades of deep immersion in the field. Yet even before this, I held music close to my heart. At the age of 5, I began my first piano lessons; and since then, I began to see the world through a musical lens — even while designing architecture.


Over the decades, I grew closer and closer to music with a deep love for the design of instruments, their unique timbres, and for all the immersive ways their sounds could be interwoven into beautiful orchestrated compositions. I even began to develop a musical composition methodology, Spatial Symphonics, as I found my architectural design work becoming more and more emotive, soul-stirring, and yes: musical.


In recent years, I finally turned my focus to music composition. I hold a Graduate Diploma from the Film Scoring Academy of Europe where my works have been recorded by the acclaimed European Recording Orchestra (ERO), and I am founder of MLL ATELIER® — an award-winning studio now dedicated to my work as an orchestral composer, recording artist, and spatial symphonist — where I advance architectural design through music, and innovate music through an architectural design lens.


It is my hope that I can share my ongoing musical-design journey with you, directly from my studio through my video-newsletter entitled 'Orchestral Notes'. Expect video updates filled with first-access studio news announcing: album/book releases, concert premiers, sheet music publications, creative process sneak-peeks, and my own compositional philosophies as they develop to fuel my ongoing body of musical and architectural authorial works.


I would love for you to join me for this exciting adventure.


Simply click the button below to join my Orchestral Notes video-newsletter delivered every two weeks directly to your email inbox. Plus, get access to the full publication archives.

JOIN ORCHESTRAL NOTES

Limited availability each month.


Warmly,

Maria Lorena Lehman


Founder of MLL ATELIER

Author of PANTHEON OF WONDER

Maria Lorena Lehman has received the following awards and has been seen in the following publications: