Mark K. Bratt, Architecture

After high school Mark attended Dordt College in Iowa and studied liberal arts. He took a year to work, travel and sail on the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River, southern Florida and the Bahamas. He returned to the Pacific Northwest and continued schooling at Western Washington University, working in the construction industry while going to college. I spent a school term managing a state representative’s successful election campaign and then went on to work in the Bill Room in the Washington State Legislature. Mark completed all the courses that Western Washington University’s technology department offered in architecture at that time and began designing buildings in 1983. Since then he has been involved in the design and planning of school classroom additions, church and religious building additions, office buildings, fueling stations and mini-marts, residences, agricultural buildings and commercial buildings. He applied for and received approval to take the ENCARB architectural exam in 1995. I passed all nine sections of the architectural exam within one year and became licensed as an architect in Washington State in 1997.