TIPCO, Bangkok, Skidmore Owings & Merrill, photo by Nick Merrick.Carolina Woo, a 30-year veteran and senior managing partner of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, is involved in firm-wide management and business development on the West Coast and the Pacific Rim. We met in her corner office at SOM in San Francisco. It was an opportunity to catch up with a former colleague and discuss how extensive travel, intercontinental client relationships and electronic communication have, over the course of the last 10 years, created a 24-hour lifestyle. Finding an overlapping hour where we were both in the same city and available to meet was in itself a feat.
In town, a typical day for Woo begins around 7:00 a.m., when she deals with paperwork, accompanied by low-volume opera music. The morning hours are quiet and productive. She puts in a full day in this time zone and then at 6:00 p.m. shifts to international client communication and project management as the Pacific Rim wakes up. For a few hours, she conducts business. It is not unusual, however, for her to awake for a 2:00 a.m. call in order to conclude some matter on the other side of the globe.
It may seem difficult to determine where one day ends and the next begins. And no doubt there is stress associated with such a schedule. But Woo is passionate about keeping the balls in the air. She has made the delineation between personal and professional life much less rigid than most and does not define work as sacrifice. It is also worth noting that when she takes the rare break from it all, she relaxes as decidedly as she works.
As an indication of Woo’s incredible travel schedule, in 1995 United Airlines named a passenger jet in her honor, commemorating her 1,000,000 miles of flight in a five-year period, largely between New York and London, San Francisco and Asia.
Not surprisingly, Carolina Woo has a formula for transpacific flights. She prefers to travel alone and never does work on the plane. She reads and sleeps and begins tuning her thoughts toward where she is headed. She arrives energized and mentally acute, takes a short nap during the day and goes to bed by 11:00 PM. In the morning she resumes her normal routine in the new time zone.
Though the Far East is more technologically advanced than we are, one-on-one professional relationships are as valued there as they are here. Woo is confident that electronics will not replace live communication. And despite her own choices, she has respect for the personal limits of others. “CAD may assist in speedier production, but the design process cannot be rushed,” she says. “Something has to give—and that is people.”
Woo acknowledges the hardships of a global practice but counters that foreign projects permit the architect more control. At SOM weekly client meetings are typical on local projects. For international work, meetings are limited to every two weeks or more, allowing greater time for the architect to digest and synthesize and resolve project issues.
Carolina Woo gains her greatest satisfaction and confirmation that it is all worthwhile when her efforts secure exceptional opportunities for the firm-and when she and her team are able to produce commendable architecture. “Maintaining a happy client, despite any aggravation and pain,” she says, is the challenge and the reward. Her profession is her life, and she couldn’t imagine it any other way.
Originally published in early 2000, in arcCA 00.1, “Zoning Time.”
