In a November 1981 issue of the New York Times, a quaint-seeming story tells of a few architects getting their start designing homes for their parents. In the article, Joan Kron writes: 'In the beginning there is nepotism. It is hard enough for an experienced architect to get work today. What does a young designer do to get his first cornerstone laid? Build a house for relatives.' This exact story was so common as to eventually become a stereotype: architects getting a leg up in the competition with a little help from mum and dad. Designing a house from the ground up helped them prove their worth and gave them an 'in' to more commissions and the chance at sustaining a solo practice. Many of the architects that 'made it' - those whose names we now know, and who notably appear in that New York Times article, such as Charles Gwathmey, Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier - were people whose parents could afford to buy them some real-life land and some real-life Lego blocks to play with.
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