How I became The Grouchy Architect with Christian Ricardo Nielsen Palacios

Born and raised in Venezuela, Christian studied architecture at Universidad Simón Bolívar. After three years as a partner in his own firm, he traveled to Ithaca, New York, to attend Cornell University and obtain a master’s degree in History of Architecture.

His family left Venezuela the following year, so Christian needed a job as an architect to remain in the US. He was fortunate to be hired in the summer of 1987 when he also started the ARE process to become licensed, which he accomplished in 1991, the same year he met the woman who would become his wife. They married a year and a half later, had two sons, and lived happily ever after.

 

After more than 30 years working in four different firms, mainly designing multi-million-dollar public school projects, Christian is now semi-retired, working as a consultant to other architects, young and old, helping them with Quality Control reviews of drawings and writing technical specifications. He also works as a translator and proofreader in both English and Spanish. He recently published his first book about the history of teaching architecture between the 1920s and 1950s, when schools transitioned from the classical Beaux-Arts to Modernism.

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