Dawood Rouben

What is your career story? How did you get where you are today?

I grew up in Bahrain and was always fascinated with design, technology and the urban environment. Having come to the conclusion that a society’s capacity for development was directly related to the design of productive places, I left home to study architecture as an undergraduate at MIT.

At MIT I had a very strong inclination toward computational—and specifically parametric—design. At the time, I was highly focused on developing what I believed would be highly sought after skills and wanted to put myself in a position of simultaneous scarcity and scalability. Leveraging computers for complex analyses, visualization, rationalizing geometric systems and their relationships, felt analogous to a kind of digital industrialization of the architectural design process, and yet, I continued to pursue and develop my interests in the qualitative, human-centric aspects of architectural design.

My nature is ever-curious and MIT was a great place to learn a lot about a lot—not just architecture. So, I dabbled in a UROP at the Media Lab, sat in on other lectures, took on several internships, and worked on various other projects to accelerate my development and further inspire my insights and understanding. My definition of what architecture was or potentially could be, became broader than simply designing and building buildings. My time at MIT was a defining moment and pivotal in my development, because of the people I met and spoke to. I must admit, it was a lot to absorb and I did not fully understand the seeds being planted at the time. I had to wrestle with my intuitions and nurture them for years to come.

Before graduating in 2009, the global economy was tanking. Finding a job in architecture, or the building industry in general—as a capital intensive industry—was highly unlikely, so I decided to go straight through to grad school at Yale. The pedagogy at Yale was very different to that at MIT—almost antithetical, but not in a negative sense and focused more on architecture as ‘building buildings’. It was often more pragmatic and analytical than adventurous, industry-orientated and structured than experimental or research-based, with a profound curriculum rooted in history, theory and analysis. In a manner of speaking, it was an experience that completed me. The experience provided me with a different way of looking at things.

Upon graduating Yale, I was fortunate to receive an employment offer from KPF, though it took me six months to land the opportunity. I was going through a lot at the time. I spent about five years at KPF, got licensed in three, but soon realized that fledgling architects do not have as much autonomy in design, never mind that the site, zoning, budget, schedule, team, and developers all impose further constraints on what is possible. So I considered experiencing other sides of the industry to become a more complete building industry professional, an idea rooted in my rather eccentric thesis at MIT.

I worked on many high-profile projects all over the world during my time at KPF, and looking back, I feel very fortunate that I was not put on one large, lengthy project such as Hudson Yards. My career felt hyper-accelerated. At first, this level of exposure was incredibly favorable—executing on several mid-sized tower projects and master plans as part of a smaller team, assuming greater responsibilities. Eventually, however, I felt I could go farther, faster. The relentless pace and hunger for self-development instilled in me at MIT, left me with a feeling of frustration that I could not shake. In retrospect, I simply wished to do what I willed with my time to grow—by developing new skills, expanding my knowledge and further compounding my experiences and in turn adaptability and capacity for leadership.

Torn between going back to school, for Real Estate Development and working in construction, I eventually settled on doing both full-time, joining a small construction company while pursuing a second Master’s in Real Estate Development at NYU. Upon graduating, my plans at the time were disrupted by the pandemic, so I took on a role as a project manager at Stantec and worked on several large-scale industrial facilities for clients such as Amazon. From there, I happened to land my current role at Related as a developer doing a short stint in New York, before eventually moving to Austin (Texas), to help set up our new office and grow our presence in the region.

The key takeaway from my career is to seek valuable skills, knowledge, and experiences that you can place into scarcity and scalability ‘buckets’ that are of greater value to others than they are to yourself when leveraged. Add and share value. Do not hoard it.

What were the biggest skills/mindsets/approaches you took away from your architecture education?

Versatility, nonlinear thinking, and tinkering as means of challenging my assumptions. There are many approaches to any problem and several solutions to the same.

Many of the people I went to school with, ended up working in very different fields—from product design, UI/UX design, film, fashion, visualization, additive manufacturing, robotics, and even aerospace. This speaks volumes to the strengths of a design-centric education, in developing one’s ability to creatively problem-solve, irrespective of the field we end up in.

What do you wish you had learned in your architecture education?

Looking back, I should have spent some more time trying to understand the industry and how to execute. Design education is somewhat abstract and studied in isolation of other facets of the industry. Building a successful project necessitates alignment from various stakeholders to obtain entitlements and successfully plan, design and engineer, permit, finance, and execute in construction.

The leap from design to execution is substantial. There are many pieces and people to the puzzle. Nothing gets done without the help of others. It’s a real team effort and you need to learn to deal with people, understand their pain points, and ask the right questions to enable your solutions to be accepted.

What advice do you have for students starting out in design?

Humble yourself. Architecture is not about you; it’s about other people and their relationship to the environment. Design is not to be taken lightly. A project can last a hundred years, so be mindful of and intentional about your contribution.

Learn as many hard and soft skills as possible and leverage them to assist you in clearly demonstrating meaningful solutions that perform an intended purpose. Seek clarity. Look beyond rhetoric, superficial, or aesthetic effects alone. Understand what you are doing by asking why.

Design is not entirely subjective. Ideally, we should want what is best for ourselves and others. Prioritize what is best. There is always a better way. Find it.