Blueprint for the future: Junior Aubrey Massoth is inspired by her father's job to consider a career in architecture

At the Kansas City Zoo and Aquarium, visitors often pause to watch penguins dive or orangutans swing across strategically designed beams. But for junior Aubrey Massoth, these exhibits are so much more than animal habitats. They're a reason she’s considering a future in architecture.

Long before Aubrey understood blueprints or building plans, she felt the joy of building. At three years old, she held a 3D model of the new orangutan exhibit in her tiny hands. Her dad Austin Massoth was a managing partner at BBN Architects, and got to be part of the team who designed the exhibits. He had brought the model home from work to show Aubrey.

“I’ve always liked that there is a physical representation of all the hard work hes done an other people get to enjoy it,” Aubrey said.

Austin is an architect and designed the orangutan exhibit in 2015, and two years prior, Austin also worked on the penguin exhibit. 

Watching those spaces transform from hand-sized models into real-life habitats shaped Aubrey’s understanding of what architecture could do.

“I loved being able to collaborate and come up with a project for these fun little penguins,” Austin said. 

Now, Aubrey is enrolled in courses to align with this potential career. She's enrolled in Honors Precalculus and AP Chemistry to prepare for her future studies. Depending on her AP exam scores, she has the potential to earn college credit for these courses so instead she can take more architecture-focused classes earlier.

A job shadowing experience at Burns & McDonnell, a global architecture and engineering firm, further solidified Aubrey's interests. After talking with professionals in the field, she learned the distinctions between engineering and architecture which helped her decide that this was a career path she wanted to follow. 

Architecture focuses on the design and how a user experiences a building, while engineering is more about the technical, structural and functional aspects of the structure.

Growing up with her father as an architect and her mother as a computer engineer, Aubrey is surrounded by problem-solvers and designers.

“I think regardless of what she chooses to major in, I hope that [architecture] has impacted her just to be able to think about design and be creative,” Austin said.