Meet Laura Marion | Architect and Founder

We had the good fortune of connecting with Laura Marion and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Laura, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
I’m often asked why I decided to start my own business. I’ve always wished I could say it began with a rock-solid mission to revolutionize the industry. But honestly, it started with the birth of my second child. I needed a more flexible work schedule.

The high-end firm where I worked at the time offered no parental leave, prioritized advancing the careers of my male colleagues over mine, and failed to recognize me or change my hopelessly low compensation when I earned my architectural license—achieved after ten years of hard work, a master’s degree, long hours, and 7 licensing exams. (I don’t recommend it, but I took my structural engineering licensing exam at 9-1/2 months pregnant). It became painfully clear that if I wanted to advance my career, I would have to do it myself.

Once I was on my own, I realized I had a garden full of ideas, styles and ambitions to foster that just hadn’t seen daylight and water yet. With the chatter of a bustling work week behind me, I listened in to my own needs and those of my family, and cultivated new ideas. Afterall, empathy is at the heart of design.

It’s sobering to acknowledge, but many of today’s male-dominated architecture firms still operate with the outdated cultural norms of previous generations—both in pecking order, and in grueling work schedules. When I started my firm, though it may not have been conscious at first, I did things differently. I built Flight Architecture on the principle of extending the same sensitivity to lifestyle, care, and well-being for ourselves as practitioners as we do for our clients in a residential design practice. I went on faith that if we care for ourselves, we can better serve our clients.

I’m nine years in to this design practice, and while I don’t always get it right, I’ve found that when caring for myself as much as my work, the resulting designs are more creative, rich, and thoughtfully tailored to our clients.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
The practice of my work has almost become spiritual and intuitive. It’s taken me a long time, but I believe I have a unique ability to solve complex problems with a few simple elegant moves, and do this with friendship and collaboration. When it’s right, it feels like poetry. Even clients without experience in design see it and sense it on the page, like it was the missing puzzle piece for their property that was meant to be there all along.

To be honest, the flow state it takes to make these creative leaps and distilled solutions doesn’t always effectively happen in the four walls of my office during office hours. I don’t think I could have accessed this design generation space as effectively if I hadn’t started my own firm and set my own hours! I have to go offbeat: offline from my phone and email and social media, off hours to work in blocks super early mornings with no distractions, and off script to set aside other designers’ beautiful magazine spreads to find my own voice that serves the owners’ own story. I enlist my subconscious. I ride my bike, and work out design problems on trail runs. It’s getting harder and harder to shut everything out in today’s world.

There’s an iterative process to getting to the heart of what is the most essential answer to the most essential need in the project. It takes knowing myself and how I work best, building a meaningful connection to the client’s narrative, and being resourced enough within myself to make creative leaps. This doesn’t always fit inside an antiquated 9-5 manufacturing-rooted work week. It has been hard to trust myself enough to know that my way of working is good.

I want everyone—EVERYONE—clients, designers, my kids to know: cut out what others want for you. Turn off what anyone else thinks your life, your house, your work should look like. Social media, and its algorithm-driven “engagement” is a big culprit for drowning out our unique voices. Your own story for your life and space is so much better.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Brunch at Safta, an early morning hike at Chautauqua in Boulder, a show at the Boulder Theater, dinner at Jax in Boulder, a big long mountain bike ride between Boulder and Lyons, a music festival in Lyons, breakfast at Lucille’s in Boulder, and a trail run on the Mesa Trail in South Boulder. All the things!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My husband has never seen me as someone who plays second fiddle. His belief in me helped give me the courage to take first chair. Thanks Mark!

Website: https://www.flightarchitecture.com

Instagram: @flight_arch

Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/laura-marion-aia

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/flightarchitecture

Image Credits
Dan Tullos, Peter Eklund, Kristen Hatgi Sink, Krissy Blackband, Nicole Mason