museum plaza, louisville, kentucky, 2009
image courtesy REX architecture

was born in in 1969,
received a bachelor of arts in philosophy with distinction
from yale university in 1991and a master of architecture from
harvard university in 1996. joshua prince-ramus is president
of REX and principal in charge of all projects.

designboom met joshua prince-ramus in new york on may 13, 2009.

db: what advice would you give to the young?

yes. I have one specific piece of advice, which is actually:
don't follow conventional paths.
this is the best moment you could ever be a young architect,
because the playing field is even. for a long time, the older
generations have eaten the young. they're going down right
now and there's no definition of what architecture will be.
don't try to get a junior job at the best firm you can and spend
the next 30 years trying to work your way through.
this is the moment to move home, use all your contacts and
start operating locally and do great work locally and define
what architecture will be for the next 50 years.
the more general advice is that no one can teach you design.
no one's going to teach you in architecture school to be good.
they might teach you to be self-critical, but you're either going
to be self-critical or you're not. in school you should focus on
learning contracts (laughs) and spend most of your time
- if you're in architecture school - over at the law school or the
business school because that's where you're going to learn
the tools. the real things you can learn in architecture school
are tools. focus on tools not on your studio course.

read the interview in full

joshua prince-ramus