Blue Ridge Design Studio - Harrisonburg, VA

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anna campbell

1. Why did you choose architecture/ design as a vocation?
After studying music (cello and piano) for 12 years I decided I did not want to practice every day for the rest of my life (plus though I loved playing in orchestra, I had terrible stage fright performing solo). My friend Agnes told me that I should become either a doctor or an architect. Since I didn't have stomach for medicine- architecture seemed much more pleasant alternative….:) Seriously though- I have always been very good with technical stuff while being quite artistic. Architecture seemed like a perfect combination of both.

2. Where did you go to school?
Technical University of Szczecin (in Poland).

3. Where did you start your career?
Started working for one of the university professors after third year of college. After obtaining Master's Degree I moved to US and got a job at the architectural firm (Wise, Surma, Jones Architects) in New Bedford, Massachussetts

4. Why did you choose to come to Harrisonburg?
My mother-in-law inherited a house in Harrisonburg and let us stay there until we got our own place (which took us 8 years!)

5. Is architecture important and if so why?
We shape our world to reflect who we are. Architecture to me is the clearest form of that reflection.

6. What characteristics define your career? A type of project?, A way of working? A type of client?
I love the variety! Very often the type of project or type of client dictate the way of working and this varies from project to project, which ensures that no one here is bored.

7. What do you do when you're not working?
What I love doing when I'm not working is reading. Ever since I was five and learned how to read I spent most of my free time buried in books. I read on a bus going to school, in recess (or during some boring classes), in a tub (just adding hot water) or on my bedroom floor, sometimes not even having enough time to take off the jacket or backpack before diving into the next chapter. Now I have to share that time between my family, house chores or improving the house we recently bought.

8. What would you be doing if you weren't working at BRDS?
Doing exactly the same thing- just somewhere else…

9. Share a little about your spouse and/or kids and/or pets.
My husband Rob is a juvenile probation officer (which fares poorly for Elizabeth when she becomes a teenager and starts dating, he will be one paranoid dad) Elizabeth will soon be 6 and start kindergarten this year. She is bilingual (English and Polish), loves to draw and can be occupied for hours making stuff out of BRDS scrap paper and Scotch tape (I can see her following my foot steps, though when officially asked who she wants to be when she grows up- she says: baby-sitter) We have a 20 pound cat- Marble (one of our friends said that because of his size we should have named him Bowling Ball instead of Marble). Also some fish (only three still alive), one frog and 4 salamanders.

10. What community groups are you part of?
I'm a volunteer for The Pilots Club of Harrisonburg and member of the Building Committee of Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church

11. What's the last thing you would give up for Lent?
Chocolate (if you mean what would really make me suffer). That's why it's exactly what I gave up for Lent a few times (we Catholics take that Lent or Advent thing very seriously)

12. What aspect of working here most makes you want to throw in the towel and do something else?
Sharing a single bathroom with 9 other people of which 5 are men?...:) I don't think there is anything here that makes me want to change my career. I'm glad though that Lois deals with all the money issues, because I would hate having to mess with that. I'm not too crazy about doing cost estimates or writing specifications for our projects, but being forced by Randy to do it on a few projects- it slowly grows on me.

13. What do we need to know about you that makes you uniquely you?
I think that everybody is unique and it that light- there is nothing special about me (except my accent- I do stick out like a sore thumb with it…) Probably because of it- people tent to remember me (though sometimes they call me "that Russian girl" instead of Polish, which would set me boiling if I didn't realize that they don't know what a faux pas mistake like that is ;)