Grace Schlager is the Director of Schlager Architects and owner of SA Design Collective, a furniture store and design resource.

Kym Arnold and Caitlin Davidovic sat down with Grace to discuss her journey to success and the benefits of adopting an Architect in our everyday lives.

This interview was recorded as a bonus episode on our Lincolns Podcast ‘Tax and Stuff’. You can find the episode in full here.

Tell us about yourself and your journey to becoming an architect?

For me it wasn’t something I always dreamed of doing, but it evolved in my last years of high school. My family is all in building (if you’re a local to Albany you might already know this). My Dad use to take us to job sites when we were little and slowly it influenced (not in a purposeful way) us in life and I just loved it. I loved drawing houses even when I was little, I don’t know why but I just did. When I saw Environmental Design was something you can do at University I thought that sounds great, I might try that. It later turned me to Architecture and I fell in love basically. It is just a wonderful job, I love it.

How do you feel that architecture impacts an individual on a personal level?

I think this can impact in two ways, you have people that spend a lot of time in a space, their home or their office where they work. Then there’s the people that come into the space to experience it and they have new feeling when they come in. I think it impacts the way you feel about the space when you’re in their all the time and how positive or negative the environment is. Architecture can really lead to a great work or home life experience or a negative experience. If it’s not nice you instantly have a feeling, if you go into someone’s house or office you get a feeling of is it good or bad and that’s part of the way you design a space. The way you put things together in the end can have a huge impact on people’s emotions.

What inspires you for your design process?

All of our designs are custom, so for me it’s really getting into that idea of what each client wants to achieve with their project and seeing how that all comes together regardless of whether it’s commercial or residential. We really work into how they want to make something feel, how they want to experience the space and we get that vibe from them of what they are wanting to achieve and then expand that into styles, aesthetics and things for them to see. Sometimes it’s about providing options for people and we get inspired by listening to them describe how they live their lives. Some people write beautiful briefs about having coffee in the morning with their partner or experiencing lovely natural light in their space and we get inspired with ideas and learn from their interests. That’s what’s so wonderful with everything being custom, each person gets their own feel for each design.

What current or emerging trends do you feel are important in architecture and design?

I love keeping up with trends, it’s one of my favorite things. I love looking at all of the magazines, reading articles and doing that just for myself. I like ordering samples and that’s why our library always gets updated to see what the new thing is, what people are using, it always changes. You can’t just stick to one thing, you have to keep learning and get new samples in, it’s so fun. I think there’s a lot of things that go hand in hand like architecture, fashion, colours and everything leads into one another. If you follow enough, one type of design is doing something then everything else

all ends up flowing into one another. All the colours you see like mustard and seventies inspired things are really in fashion. But also in architecture, we get asked to do those type of houses at the moment and people love it. They want all of those colours and we are buying furniture that is in that style as well, then you can sort of see everything blending together. So if you’re interested in one aspect you can branch out into other ones and get an idea, I love it, it’s great.

So what challenges do you find running a business like yours in Albany?

Staff is hard because in Albany you have to choose to live here, I don’t think you want to just come for a job, you prefer to come for the whole atmosphere of it. You come because you love the lifestyle, so we are lucky younger people are moving back now. I find that’s really great and they are coming back to Albany on their own choices, not just for work. There’s also work here now which is great as sometimes there wasn’t. That’s probably one of the hardest things is staff and you probably see that all around town, people are having a hard time getting all types of staff even for waitressing etc. So that’s been interesting but also being in a smaller town, it’s hard just trying to work through things and identify yourself as a brand, a person and wanting people to get to know you. That’s hard especially if you’ve grown up here, sometimes they think they know who you are and coming back when you’re older, you’re trying to do something different and get people on board. You try and build your own brand and have people be positive about it, that’s probably one of the hardest things as well in Albany.

Lastly, what is your long term vision for Schlager Architects?

Originally I wanted to have me and my staff doing all kinds of different projects. The reality is that there is the pressure to have staff, look after them and to make sure you have enough work on all the time. In the future it’s going to be something where we don’t get too big and we just have that constant interaction with our clients. I really love that involvement and the bigger you get the more you have to step back from that as a Director. Keeping it to the three of us is a good amount of people and then that allows you to always have that interaction with clients which is key. I’m looking forward to working on different challenging projects in the future and of course keeping up with all the new design trends as they come along.