Dami Lee – Detailed Biography

Dami Lee is a popular architectural YouTuber.

She has over 2.4M subscribers on her YouTube channel DamiLee.

Introduction

Dami Lee was born on 17 August 1992 in South Korea. She grew up in Seoul.

Her family emigrated from South Korea to San Jose, United States when she was 7.

Then they moved to Frankfurt, Germany before settling in Vancouver, Canada.

Stumbling upon architecture

The young Dami was interested in art and painting.

In 2008, while in high school, Dami had no definitive plans about her further studies.

Dami wanted to study arts, sciences and business as she was interested in them.

She used to paint for long hours in the art room of her high school. She used to paint in her free time and after school and sometimes used to skip classes to paint.

Megan, one of her student and substitute teachers, noticed Dami painting in the art room and thought she might be interested in architecture. So, she suggested she apply to an architecture school.

Even though Dami had no idea of architecture, she researched it and found it interesting.

B.Arch & awards

In 2010, at 18, Dami wanted to move to a different city. After learning that Toronto had a couple of architecture schools, she readied her portfolio.

She moved to Toronto solo, in 2010, and joined Ryerson University (Toronto Metropolitan University) to study for a Bachelor of Architectural Science.

Even though Dami was excited to study architecture, in her first year at university, she felt left behind by her classmates, as unlike them she didn’t take drafting classes and knew to use AutoCAD and 3D modeling.

This affected her grades and she had to spend long hours learning them.

At the time, Dami was very lost and confused and felt she could never improve. She wanted to drop out of the university many times but persisted and improved herself.

While at university, she was on the student council and was also a part of Freedom by Design, a non-profit organization.

Dami worked part-time, from September 2013 to April 2014, while studying, as a Communications Officer at the Department of Architectural Science at her university.

She received the Frank Leva Scholarship in 2013.

After graduating, in 2014, Dami took a year off and moved back to her hometown, Vancouver and started working as a Junior Designer at Gair Williamson Architects.

But as she wanted to become an architect as soon as possible, in 2015, she joined Ryerson University to study for a Master of Architecture (MArch). She received a full scholarship (Ryerson Graduate Scholarship).

Dami graduated in 2017 with a 3.91 GPA.

She worked part-time, from 2015 to 2017, as a Graduate Assistant while studying at the university.

Dami received the Toronto Society of Architects Award and AIA Henry Adams Award. She is also a TD Bank Competition Winner and Small Cabin Design Winner.

Debt & fire

After her master’s, Dami moved to Vancouver and started working there. She had around $50K student debt.

At the time, most of her friends didn’t do master’s and were already working for a couple of years in their careers. She felt left behind them and this lit a fire in her to get licensed as soon as possible and increase her salary and market value.

So, Dami worked hard and got her architecture license relatively quickly, within three years and got 1.4 times salary rise the year she got licensed.

A varied career

Dami started working at 14.

She worked as a Setter/Hostess, in 2008, at Earls Kitchen + Bar in Vancouver.

She worked as a Sales Associate, from 2008 to 2009, at ALDO Group in Vancouver.

Then, Dami worked as a Graphic Designer, from 2011 to 2013, at Alfa Microsystems Inc in British Columbia before working at Ryerson University and Gair Williamson Architects.

After graduating from master’s, she started applying for jobs. Even though she won few architectural awards and had a good portfolio, she found it difficult to land a job as she was getting responses from only a few firms.

Then, Dami got offers from a large firm and a small firm. At the time, most of her friends were joining large firms and joining a large firm was the logical choice as it offered bigger projects and better pay.

But upon discussing with her alumni, she decided to join the small firm, even though the large firm offered her $5000 more than the small firm, because she was convinced that the small firm would help her get licensed fast.

Also, Dami felt that she can learn more at the small firm, work directly with the principals there and get a better work-life balance. The firm had only three people, two co-founders and an intern.

So, she joined MIZA Architects in Vancouver, as an Architectural Intern, in July 2017 and worked there until April 2020. In those three years, she learnt a lot and got her architecture license.

Initially, working as an intern, collecting hours and writing exams was tedious and Dami wanted to quit many times. But reading Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance book greatly helped her and eventually, she started enjoying her job.

She used to work overtime at MIZA Architects as the overtime pay was 1.5 times the usual pay.

At the time, Dami lived at her mother’s house for a couple of years and focused on paying back her student loans.

She was able to pay back her student loans relatively quickly, thanks to doing a lot of freelance work, renderings and architectural drawings.

Dami worked as an Architect, from September 2020 to February 2021, at Cutler, British Columbia.

After being self-employed from April 2020 to March 2021, she worked as an Architect, from March 2021 to November 2022, at FaulknerBrowns, Vancouver.

Dami founded Nollistudio, in November 2022, and produces architectural videos through it.

Anxiety & YouTube

While working at MIZA Architects, Dami was moonlighting for an owner of a fast-growing franchise bakery.

In 2020, she completed her hours, finished all the exams and got her license.

Dami quit her stable job in April 2020. Her plan was to travel and take a break for a yoga retreat in Mexico, which she wanted to go to for a long time, before starting to work for the franchise bakery remotely.

But as the COVID-19 hit, the market plummeted and this badly affected the bakery as most of its projects got cancelled and the franchise bakery could not hire Dami.

As many firms weren’t hiring, she became unemployed. Her trips and yoga retreat also got cancelled due to the pandemic.

Dami had a lot of free time which she spent on Reddit and YouTube. She observed that architects were spewing negativity on architecture on the Reddit forums.

Once, Dami observed a 14-year-old trying to learn about architecture. But the architects on Reddit discouraged the child, saying that the field demands long working hours and is without work-life balance.

The negativity annoyed her as she felt that the field of architecture has many positives too. She felt that architects should try to improve their field rather than discouraging the youngsters from entering it.

As Dami was unemployed at the time, she started becoming anxious. So, she started sketching and designing a lot to control her anxieties.

She was living in the West End, Vancouver with lots of birds and good nature. So, she started wildlife photography.

Dami also started shooting videos of herons, with the camera equipment of her boyfriend, who was a videographer. She also learnt video editing at the time.

As she wanted to earn money, she took construction finance and real estate finance courses. But as she didn’t like them, she didn’t pursue them.

At the time, Dami came across an Ali Abdaal’s video on YouTube where he explained how he was earning passive income on YouTube.

The video inspired her to start on YouTube. She decided to use her skill sets and interests of designing, storytelling and being an architect to earn money.

She started her YouTube channel DamiLee, on 16 May 2020, to inspire young architects by providing them with tools, strategies, and processes for a successful career in architecture.

Dami published her first video, “Using my Anxiety to Design,” on 17 May 2020.

Thanks to some of her viral videos, she secured the job as an Architect at Cutler.

Never looking back

Initially, when starting on YouTube, Dami was advised to not make videos on architecture but to make videos on popular topics which would interest a wide audience.

But as she wasn’t interested in popular topics like food, fashion and productivity, she started making videos on her passions, design and architecture.

In September 2024, Dami published the video “The Densest City In The World Had a Strange Secret…” and this was her first viral video.

Currently, she is a full-time YouTuber and has over 2.4M subscribers on her channel.

Dami loves storytelling and video production. She shoots her videos with Insta360 ONE RS 1, Black Magic PCC 6K PRO and Sony FX30 cameras.

Raffaele Di Nicola works as a filmmaker and technical director for her channel.

Dami lives in Vancouver, Canada.

Tidbits

• She loves the architecture of Venice and loves walking around the city’s labyrinth and alleys.
• Dami knows German and Korean and her favorite podcast is This American Life. She loves visiting buildings.
• She recommends the Building Construction Illustrated book for architecture and Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance and Principles self-help books.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Dami Lee?

Share with me in the comment section below.

Also read- The story of Ali Abdaal