Architecture School ≠ Being an Architect

This will be hard for a lot of you to hear, but there is a very big difference between what your experience in architecture school is like and what you do, on a daily basis, as an architect. There are a whole host of activities architects do which are not really taught in architecture school. In my head it’s divided into “the fun stuff” and “the boring stuff”. The fun stuff is a lot of the activities you do in school. This includes problem solving, sketching, collaborating, renderings, models, researching, etc. The boring stuff is all those things that they gloss over in school that you’re expected to pick up during your internship. This includes endless code research, estimating, board meetings, dealing with engineers, and a whole gob of business related activities (marketing, budgeting, business planning, etc.). This is all a part of the life of an architect. You’ll learn to be efficient at the boring stuff so you can get back to doing the fun stuff.

As most schools are currently taught, you shouldn’t go out of your way to focus on “real-world” considerations. By this I mean fire codes, accessibility, structural stability, etc. These are all things that are very important to the profession of architecture and should have a greater role in your education, but right now, they don’t. So if you do get caught up worrying about those details, chances are you’ll spend less time working through the design problem, which is the reason why you’re taking those classes in the first place. You should, of course, be applying all the information you have learned up until that point (codes, structure, etc), but your professors are grading you for effectively solving a design problem and not whether or not your egress doors swing the right way.

Why not both?

One of the great tragedies within architecture is the separation of academics and practice. For too long there has been a dividing line and you have to stand on one side or the other. There are schools who do a good job of integrating practice into their curriculum (Rural Studio comes to mind), and there are architecture firms who do a lot of research and are involved in academia. The two are very important and should be completely intertwined, not separated. Without research (or evidence based design as it’s come to be known), architecture becomes a slow linear progression. Architects know how to do one thing and continue to do it over and over. That doesn’t mean that one thing is bad, but it means that architecture from 50 years ago is the same as it is today. We as a society are vastly different, so shouldn’t our buildings change with our needs? Likewise, without practice based education, architecture graduates go out into the working world without any idea how architecture actually works. When I graduated, I was very naive about how a building went from start to finish. I knew most of the steps, but had no clue how a lot of them were actually executed.

There are those out there working to solve this problem, but until better integration happens, I would encourage you to get an internship working in the AEC industry while in school. It could just be over school breaks (Christmas, spring, summer), or if you can get a job that doesn’t put too much stress on your education, great.

Put in Work

Being good at anything comes from hard work. You’re not born being an expert at anything. To be a good designer/architect, you have to practice…a lot. The harder you work at it the better you will get. If you don’t believe me, read Outliers. Well, you should read Outliers anyway. It’s a great book. So don’t take anything for granted and go out of your way to seek out opportunities that will improve your skills. It may just seem like a waste of time, but someday you will be glad you pushed yourself to improve.

All Night Long…

Late nights and sometimes all-nighters will probably become a regular part of your life. They don’t have to, but I think when you’re 18-21, you just haven’t quite figured out good time management. It’s not a conspiracy that the older people in architecture school, mid-twenties on up, seem to be able to get their projects done on time without pulling all-nighters. With age comes wisdom, and having worked a regular job forces you to become good at managing your time. In the real world you have to get projects done by a certain date, so you learn how to schedule your time to effectively complete the task. Young college students are still developing this skill and thus, end up pulling all-nighters.

Work hard and work early and you can avoid the pitfalls of the all-nighter. Completing projects last minute is never good. If you do all the hard work early on, you’ll have the last few days before a project is due to organize everything and double check your work for mistakes. Set smaller deadlines for yourself along the way, so you can finish pieces of the project incrementally. It will get easier as you go, you just have to be rigorous in setting goals and getting them done on time.

When deadlines come around, the busiest places in the architecture program are the “plotting labs”. Sometimes there will only be one or two printers for the entire architecture program to use, so if you don’t get your plots done early, you may not get them done before the deadline. This ties in with the “work hard and early” stuff before.

During a particularly grueling stretch my sophomore year, I had been awake for 72 hours straight. Disclaimer, this is REALLY BAD for your body and mind. Don’t believe me? Read this. After 2 days, I started hallucinating. It was pretty mild, but whenever I was outside I would see a black dog running at the edges of my vision. People with me thought I was crazy. I was awake so long because of a studio project that was due, but I also had a sketch project due later that same day. After my crit, I went to sketch a hallway. I sat on the floor to do my sketch and when I stood up, I blacked out for a moment. I fell sideways and hit my head on the lockers that were lining the hallway and luckily managed to kind of slump sideways without hitting the floor too hard. That was when I went home to sleep. After that, I never stayed up for more than 24 hours at a time.

Document Everything

When you are getting ready to graduate, you will start to assemble your portfolio to help get a job. If you haven’t documented all your projects thoroughly up until that point, you will really regret it. For every model you make (including conceptual ones) and every napkin sketch you do, either take lots of high quality photos or get high-res scans. There’s nothing worse than having great work that you have no proof of, because you never took pictures of it. Also, BACK UP EVERYTHING. Buy an external hard drive and regularly back up all your work on it, then burn everything on CDs and bury them in your yard. You’ll probably become suicidal if you lose an entire years work to a computer virus.

Carry a sketchbook everywhere you go. In architecture school you will be required to practice hand sketching. One of the greatest skills an architect can have is to be able to quickly communicate ideas via the quick hand sketch. You don’t have to be an artist to do this, just good at communicating ideas. A stick person can convey as much meaning as a realistic painting. Practice drawing….a lot. Doodling counts. Try to make it a habit to sketch out your ideas regularly. You don’t get better without practice.

A sketchbook is also a great way to create a running journal of everything you do in school. You will get ideas in the least likely places and having a sketchbook will enable you to quickly jot down ideas to come back to them later. I can’t count how many times I’ve been somewhere unrelated to my design studio and suddenly gotten inspiration. As you can see above, pages from my sketchbook have not only sketches, but are full of jumbled thoughts and ideas. By keeping them all in one place, you’ll be able to go back and find new connections between things. I HIGHLY recommend you start using Evernote also. It’s a free web/phone/computer app that lets you create a digital notebook that you can access from anywhere. It’s pretty fantastic.

Get Used to It

I had a professor in my second semester freshman year. We had to design an ambulance entrance canopy for a hospital and then build a model of it. Keep in mind that we’re still learning the very basics of design. Naturally, my partner and I came up with a terrible design. Our professor looked at it, said a few choice words about how awful it was, and proceeded to dismantle it. I’m not saying that this is the norm, but you will come across professors like this. If you don’t grow a thick skin, you’ll cause yourself all sorts of problems. I’ve seen people sobbing after crits or get angry and flip out. You’ll need to learn to be able to step back from your feelings. You have to be able to accept your mistakes and try to learn from every experience, even when you’re being told how dumb you are.

Try to remember that the jury is there to ask questions and critique your project. Some jurors are better at this than others. In my experience, the more discussion the better your project is. You want the jury to ask you questions that don’t have one or two word answers. If they look at your project and don’t have anything to say, it’s a bad thing. No one is good enough to completely silence a jury of any discussion. You can be bad enough though. Keep in mind that a lot of professors will allow more sloppiness if you’ve tried bold design moves. If you have crappy renderings and a terrible model of a big boring box, they will punish you.

Make sure you have a good explanation for your design decisions. Saying “I thought it looked cool” will get you destroyed in your crits. Even if your reason is complete BS, it’s better than no reasoning. So if you design a wavy building, say it’s “in response to hilliness of the site” or “because the nearby lake invited a design that responds to it’s rippling effects.” I can come up with BS all day.

See the World

Most architecture programs offer some sort of study abroad program. My university had a summer travel program where you took a whirlwind tour of Europe in 2 months over the summer. I could never afford going on a prolonged travel trip, but missing out on it is my biggest regret from college. College loans suck, but you won’t have an opportunity to go on a trip like that for many years and what’s another $3,000 in loans when you already have $40,000 laughing at you every time you get a notice from the bank?

Travel as much as you can. It becomes much harder to find the time and money after you graduate. It will change your world view and educate how you design so much more than reading a book ever could. I was lucky enough to spend a week in Germany (while presenting the paper mentioned in Part 1) and it was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. Seeing how the rest of the world looks and operates opens up your mind to whole new possibilities of design.

Trixie the triceratops

For our last studio class before we graduated (with a Bachelors degree) our project was to design a dinosaur museum on the site of an existing dilapidated building. We had the entire semester to do the project so we had time to explore concepts and ideas that we normally wouldn’t have. Someone had the idea to build a full-scale replica of a dinosaur skeleton out of particle board. The logic being that dinosaur skeleton’s are much larger than most objects in a typical museum and it would help us understand the scale and be much better equipped to design a building for them. Someone had a small model that we scaled to life-size proportions. We then spent a week (correct me if I’m wrong Cedric) cutting out the pieces in the wood shop. Once everything was all cut out, we carried the pieces to the patio outside our studio and assembled it there. It turned out pretty cool. It may have seemed like a big waste of time and money, but I really do think it gave us a new perspective on the museum concept we had been designing for 3 years already. Anyway, moral of the story, sometimes approaching a problem from a totally different direction can be beneficial.

Use those sweatpants for good, not evil.

I’m convinced that architecture school is one of the hardest programs you can go into. You will be stressed a lot, eat junk food too often and sleep too little. Some students look like they’ve given up altogether, wearing sweatpants everyday and smelling like they haven’t showered in weeks. Don’t be a slob. It’s gross. You should take care of yourself whenever you can. The freshman 15 can turn into the senior 50 if you’re not careful. You probably have a free rec center, so go work out a couple times a week. You’ll feel much better when you’re abusing your body later. Plus, I shouldn’t have to tell you about the positives of going to a gym where everyone else is 18-30. You know what I’m talking about. Also, don’t let your personal hygiene slip. I mean, COME ON!

They will be your friends whether you like it or not.

Architecture school encourages camaraderie. You go through at least 4 years of classes with the same people, so you’re able to form a tight bond with each other. The more you hang out in the studio and working on projects, the closer you become. You’ll spend more time with architecture students than your other friends. As a result of this, you’ll have a lot of people to call on when you need help in class and for a few of them, you’ll keep in touch with for life.

One More Thing

Your university will probably have guest lectures throughout the year. You should attend them. They are a great opportunity to meet practicing architects and other people who are active in your field of study. These are also a great place for networking. If Renzo Piano gives a lecture at your school and you can make an impression on him, you could possibly leverage that into an internship. You never know. Usually local architects will also come out to these events, so if you’re looking for a job during school, these lectures are a good place to start.

That wraps it up for my special 2 part post on architecture school. I probably missed some good stuff, so feel free to leave comments about your own experiences or more tips for architecture students.

In the Beginning

So you’re thinking about becoming an architect? No? Well, I’m going to tell you what it’s like to go to architecture school anyway. If you talk to any architect, they will probably tell you a bunch of stories that horrify you, yet somehow seem to be amusing to them. Architecture school is a battlefield. It’s tough. There are a lot of late nights and failure, but there are also a lot of eureka moments and projects coming together at the last moment. Assuming you already know the basics about applying to architecture school and getting in, I’m going to go through some of what you’ll experience as an architecture student and give some tips to help along the way.

What is it?

There are commonly two paths to get a professional degree in architecture (in the US). You can get a 5 year professional degree in architecture or a 4 year Bachelor’s degree followed by a 2 year Master’s degree in Architecture. The second route allows you to get a Bachelor’s degree in another subject (business, art, etc) before getting your Master’s degree in architecture. Architects have always been expected to have a broad knowledge on many topics. A large part of our jobs is bringing together information from many different fields and then combining it into a single plan or idea. Naturally, architecture school puts students through a wide ranging amount of classes. You’ll have architectural history, structural classes, technical drawing, site planning, mechanical systems, studio classes and many others.

Don’t ask me why, just do it.

On top of all your architectural classes, you’ll have to take a lot of gen ed (general education) classes. Mostly, they suck. You’ll probably have as many non-architecture classes your freshman year that you have architecture classes. If you are still in high school, take as much college credit ahead of time that you can. Depending on where you go to college, having college credits will exempt you from certain classes. No matter what major you study, you will have to take gen eds. The more you can get out of the way now, the better.

I cannot stress enough how crappy taking general education classes in college can be. Most of the time you don’t want to be there and the teachers don’t either. Usually gen eds are taught by graduate or PhD students and they are only there because they have to be. At my university, every freshman was required to take two semesters of literature classes. When you have 5,000 students who all have to take the same class, you have a LOT of different teachers. Most of them were graduate students. My teacher took the class very seriously and made sure to give us 6 page papers every frigging week, while other students in different sections had teachers who would cancel class every other week and never give more than a two page assignment the whole semester. It gets me angry just remembering it.

By lessening the amount of classes you have to take, you can devote more time to architecture or sign up for other classes you’re interested in. Most architects will tell you to take business classes or get a business minor if you have the time. That’s all very nice and good and will come in very handy if you plan on running your own firm. I would argue that you should find something you’re interested in and become an expert in it. Having skills on your resume that aren’t architecture will set you apart from everyone else. Business classes, of course, will look very good, but being Spanish speaking anywhere within 100 miles of the Mexican border could make you much more valuable. Likewise, having a background in fine arts could give you an edge when applying to firms that specialize in that building type. By becoming fluent in an unrelated field, it will open your mind to thinking differently from what they teach you in architecture school. The better you’re able to understand and communicate across multiple fields and disciplines, the more successful you’ll be as an architect.

Watch Them Drop Like Flies 

I’m not going to lie to you. Architecture school is hard. A lot of people that you become friends with your freshman year will drop out. The first year is pretty easy compared to the years ahead, but compared to what most high school students are used to, it’s a huge adjustment. You’ll get enough architecture in that first year to decide if you’re cut out for it, and for a lot of students, they aren’t. If you make it to your junior year, those around you will most likely be the ones with you at graduation. As Bob Borson mentions in a similar post about architecture school, there aren’t many members of fraternities or sororities in the architecture program. You learn that architecture school will take up a lot of your time and you can’t afford to be out partying every night with your Ag buddies. It’s tough love, but if you can’t take your education seriously, you will never be an architect.

Architects like to say that architecture is a calling. It’s a profession that requires you to care about what you do. Sometimes that means going above and beyond on projects. The field of architecture is wide ranging and allows you to take many different paths. You’ll have to find your passion in architecture. If you don’t, you will burn out fast. Architecture school is a great place to start testing out things that interest you. Take the time to explore different aspects of architecture and when you graduate, you’ll be much better prepared to find the right career. If you want to be a residential architect who gets his/her hands on every aspect of a project and right out of school go to a huge architecture firm drawing roofing details for manufacturing plants, you will hate your life.

The Studio

The architecture studio will be ever present in your education. It’s the place where you spend most of your time. Studio classes are usually 9-15 hours of class in studio a week and a heck of a lot more time working on projects outside of your “classroom time”. When you have work for other classes, you do it in the studio. It will become your second home. Sometimes it will be your first home. Architecture students are even given keys to the building so they can be in their studios 24/7. They start off so clean at the beginning of the year, but by the end, they are a chaotic mess of failed models, scraps, tools, works in progress, takeout menus, stacks of Red Bull and Mountain Dew cans and anything else students need to live in the studio. I kept my guitar in the studio to take breaks with. We also had Frisbees, footballs, playing cards, Nerf guns, mini fridges, couches, the list goes on…

The reason your studio classes take the forefront in your architectural education is not necessarily the content, but the process you learn along the way. In the studio classes, you will be given a design problem which you will translate into a design for a building (or multiple buildings, urban plan, etc.) which will then be presented by you and critiqued. You may have 3-4 projects a semester or just one. Studios teach you how to assess problems and create solutions for them. It’s in learning how to think in that way and by actually solving problems, over and over, that you become a good architect.

It’s important to take time to step back and refresh your mind while being in the studio for hours on end. Get out and get some coffee with other students. Go for a 30 minute walk. Go home and take a shower (seriously, phew). Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to leave it alone for a bit and come back to it with a fresh mind.

Looks like a lot of hard work and late nights to me..

You will be forced to do group projects. Take a leadership role, do more than your fair share and do it well. It won’t go unnoticed by your professors and peers. Collaboration is a huge part of what practicing architects do. There is no way to get anything built without having multiple people with various viewpoints work together. Learning how to work well with others will only improve your final product. It will help you see things you didn’t before and allow you to explore your work from new angles. The best part of collaboration is having your peers evaluate your work before your professors. It’s a great way to hone your designs before your final critiques.

The Crits

Critiques happen at the end a project. You present whatever you’ve generated for your project (models, renderings, animations, etc.) and you’ll be critiqued by a panel. This is usually your professor, a couple other architecture professors and possibly people from other professions with an expertise in your particular project type. For instance, if you class is designing a museum, the curator from a local museum might be on the panel.

If you’re prepared and have a well designed project, crits can be a great experience to have others give you constructive criticism on how to make your designs better. They will also help you understand the significance of good decisions you made. If you are ill prepared or have sloppy work, crits can be your worst nightmare.

A crit at the Architectural Association in London

Modeling

Not that kind. You’re not pretty enough for that anyway. Models are used for every studio project, whether they’re physical models or digital models. Digital modeling has improved leaps and bounds in the last 10 years, but it cannot replace the act of building a physical model. Just like hand drawing, building a physical model for a design teaches more about it’s weight in the real world than a computer is capable of. Being able to hold a model in your hand and explore it’s proportions and spaces up close has a quality that is not replicatable on a computer. Since you will be building a lot of models, get used to deep cuts and using super glue as a quick fix. That way you can go get stitches after your crit in the morning. I still have scars on my hands from cuts received by building models in school.

The wood shop has been a fixture of architecture schools for years, but digital fabrication labs have started to become available at a lot of schools. In these labs, you’re able to take computer models and use either a laser cutter or CNC machine to make a physical model out of many different materials. Some schools are even equipped with 3D printers. They are able to “print” a model by layering plastic together. Very cool. I highly recommend taking advantage of these new technologies. They make much more complex modeling possible where it would have been very difficult with previous methods, plus they can save you a lot of time.

Speaking of technology and models, it doesn’t hurt to branch out to other colleges on your campus to see if you can use their equipment. The industrial design lab at my university had a much nicer shop and even gave us (if you asked nicely) some large scraps of high density foam, which is a very expensive material that’s great for modeling. It’s what industrial designers use to make all their mock-ups and models.

With everything becoming more digital and with the emergence of BIM, there is a lot of very expensive software out there that you will be expected to learn and use. You will have a computer lab that will have some of the software for you to use, but you might not have access all the time. You have to be able to work in the studio, at the library, at home, Starbucks, etc and you’ll probably need your own copy of whatever software you’re using. When you add up the cost of just the basics you’ll need, it might make your head explode. I’m not going to condone pirating the software, but I will say that if you were to ask around a typical architecture studio, how much of the software has actually been purchased, it would probably be something like 5-10%. Some companies do make student priced copies of their software, but they tend to put restrictions on them and they are still pretty darn expensive. Unfortunately for many students, the only way to afford the software is to pirate it.

When it comes to learning whatever your software of choice, you may be able to take a class either through the architecture program of another college. If classes are not available, your best resources are other students and the internet. Your peers may already have experience using the software and it’s really easy to get a mini-tutorial from them. YouTube is filled with video tutorials on every software imaginable. Sites like Lynda.com have extensive video tutorials for everything that you can access for a monthly fee.

Professors

Take advantage of your professors as a resource. They are all required to keep office hours so students can come and talk to them one on one. Creating a closer relationship with your professors will help you stay ahead of the curve in your classes. It can help create opportunities for you in school and when you graduate. One of my professors made it his duty to help his students find jobs across the country when they graduated. He has been around for a while and knows a LOT of architects. The more he knew about you, the better your chance of landing a great job right out of school. Another professor pushed me to learn a piece of software that turned into a few great projects, a thesis, co-writing multiple academic papers and a trip to Germany to present at an international conference.

Each professor is unique with a different background and specialty. If you’ve honed in on something that really interests you, find the professor that has experience in that field and learn from them. You may even be able to get an assistant job helping them do research or write papers. It may not sound like fun, but having your name on academic papers can be a very good thing.

Congratulations! You’ve made it to the end. Be sure to leave your opinions in the comments and come back next week for part 2.

“Unless you can begin with an interesting problem, it is unlikely you will end up with an interesting solution.”

I don’t know what everyone else’s design education was like, but I had one professor that made this statement (worded differently) his mantra. Every project in his class began with a problem statement and if it wasn’t “interesting enough”, we rewrote it.  Our job is not always glamorous and this does not work for every project, but there are many instances where we have a program or client that is simply unimaginative and it’s difficult for us to find a creative solution. Our best work usually comes from having something strong to react against. 

So I challenge everyone to think about this in your work. Is there a way you can redefine the problem and create a problem statement that gives you something to react against? It can simply be a one or two sentence statement that clearly and succinctly defines the problem. When doing this, your statement shouldn’t be a solution, but a framework for one.

It’s important to really think about what the most important aspect of a project should be. This could be it’s ability to serve the community, features to make it long lasting and cost effective, to make a specific statement, etc. Here’s one that I could have should have used for a recent project I worked on:

Create a building that teaches sustainable design simply by experiencing the spaces without costing more than typical construction.

This statement gave me the problem and a path to the solution. Any time you get lost, you can look back on your statement to make sure you are still on the right track. It’s funny that approaching problems this way is one of the first things you learn as a designer and one of the first things you forget to do when it comes to actual projects.

Huh?

So what’s the real world application for non-designers? Design thinking can be applied to all sorts of everyday situations. Trying to figure out what to get someone for Christmas? Make a problem statement that defines what type of person they are and how you would like the gift to make them feel.

Carl is a very practical person that loves grilling and working outside. The gift should make him laugh, but be useful enough that he’ll want to keep and use it.

Boom. Grilling apron with a [censored] bar over the front and a built in drink holder. Funny and practical. You probably do this sort of thinking all the time and don’t even realize it. If you get stuck on a problem, try coming up with a problem statement and writing it down. You might be surprised at the outcome.

So now you know how to create a solution based on an interesting problem, but how do you know if solution the right one? I’ll leave you with the another thing the same professor was notorious for saying. When looking at our work he would sometimes say, “That’s pretty interesting, then again, so is cancer.” Just because something is cool or interesting, doesn’t mean it’s good. What makes it good? It just so happens, my last post tackled such a subject.

I solemnly swear....

Sounds Pretty Serious

The other day, I was reading a blog associated with my alma mater, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, written by current students. One post mentioned the need for architecture to have an overarching moral code. I argued that it would be difficult for architecture to have such a code, citing constantly shifting modern culture. Instead, I proposed architects taking an oath similar to the Hippocratic Oath that doctor’s take, which basically states they will do no harm and other statements to treat the patient and not the disease, etc, etc. It wouldn’t be a strict set of can’s and cannot’s for architects, but a statement of intent to always do good.

I did find the popular Oath for Architects, but it is equal parts joke and seriousness. Mine is a genuine attempt at an oath, but there are some shared themes between the two.

Anywho, here’s my version of the Hippocratic Oath…

The Architect’s Oath

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:

I will respect the hard-won gains of those architects in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.

I will apply, for the benefit of everyone, all measures that are required, avoiding the twin traps of over-designing and narrow-mindedness.

I will remember that there is art to architecture as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the architects pen or the engineer’s scale.

I will not be ashamed to say “I know not,” nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a holistic solution.

I will remember that I do not design a single building. Every element of architecture is connected to the world as a whole. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to provide adequately for people’s needs.

I will remember to preserve and help regenerate the environment, both natural and built.

I will not waste materials, preferring to reuse what I can and recycle what I can’t. Above all, I will use quality materials and superior craftsmanship.

I will spread my knowledge whenever I can, for preventing problems is preferable to fixing failures.

I will not build to make a name for myself, but to make the world a better place to live in.

I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the handicapped.

If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of improving the lives those who seek my help.

*the Architect’s Oath has been created from the 1964 version of the Hippocratic Oath written by Dr. Louis Lasagna (via).

This is my first try at the oath. What do you think should be added or changed?

Once upon a time, an organisation came along with the intent to change the way we build buildings. Their goal was to create a rating system that would encourage clients and architects to design their buildings sustainably to better our world. That group is the USGBC and their method is the LEED rating system.

“The U.S. Green Building Council is a non-profit community of leaders working to make green buildings available to everyone within a generation.”

“LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is an internationally-recognized green building certification system. Developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) in March 2000, LEED provides building owners and operators with a framework for identifying and implementing practical and measurable green building design, construction, operations and maintenance solutions.”

So, what happened? It started off well. They did raise awareness in sustainable design. They helped bring it to the forefront of building technology and make it a large part of the design process. Somewhere along the way, they veered off course. There have been numberous reports showing that LEED certified buildings aren’t actually better performing than the energy suckers we’d been building. There are many people who are critical of the USGBC and LEED for taking a lazy approach on sustainable design and for good reason. LEED really only takes into consideration the construction process and types of materials and systems used. There is nothing to ensure that the buildings actually perform over time in the ways that they’re intended and there is no enforcement of the principles claimed by the design team. If you claim to be able to use natural ventilation in your building, but then never actually open windows and run the AC non-stop, then what good are you doing? What if your systems end up being inefficient or you use materials that need to be replaced too often because of their poor quality?

LEED Certified parking garage...seriously!?

There’s also the cost of going through the LEED process. It’s a very large chunk of change to have the title of a LEED building, whereas many other green rating systems cost considerably less with much better guidelines to ensure a more “green” building. I’m not going to break down any other rating systems since that would make this post considerably longer, but BREEAM, CASBEE, GBTool, Green Globes and Living Building Challenge are a few of the other options.

KAUST, You’re Doing it Wrong

The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Wow, that's a mouthful

Here is the problem with so called “sustainable design” and LEED especially. This is taken from the November 2010 issue of Arch Record from the article on the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST):

“Creating a city out of nothing so remote from much of its own country’s population, and farther still from the professors and students with whom it wishes to collaborate, defies the very notion of sustainability. Filling the campus with high-energy-intensity lab buildings – despite the well-intentioned research conducted within them – in one of the world’s most extreme climates, seems counterintuitive; blanketing parts of its desert site in turf grass and adding a golf course, downright absurd. These were decisions beyond HOK’s control. It was charged with making the design, construction, and operation of the buildings themselves as sustainable as possible within the project’s accelerated time frame. Despite the fact that construction of the buildings used more than 16 million cubic feet of conventional concrete and all of the buildings’ interior spaces require air-conditioning, the project still managed to garner the highest possible LEED rating, which speaks to obvious shortcomings of LEED.”

LEED was a good idea to get people to start to think about building more responsibly and changing the way we think about construction, but ever since it’s conception it has consistently failed in doing much more than making those involved in the program rich and turning itself into a huge organization more concerned with power and influence than doing anything worthwhile for the built environment. Situations such as KAUST should get nowhere near a positive rating in any “green rating system”. Our problem as architects and as a society at whole has been our inability or unwillingness to look at problems as a part of a larger system. Just because the building itself is “green” doesn’t hide the fact that its place in a larger whole is incredibly destructive. We (architects and citizens) need to take more responsibility for the things that we do. We need to stop saying how “green” we are when we don’t even know the meaning of the word. We need to start thinking of our buildings as a part of a much larger organism in which we live and work. If our work is regenerative (giving back to the system and benefiting our society and the environment) and not just sustainable (to just get by, but by definition can still be harmful to the whole), then we can truly say we are “green”.

Archrafieh 732

Woof. Yeah, those are potted plants...

I came across this building by Bernard Khoury Architects in my daily feed from ArchDaily last week and my eyeballs threw up immediately. I didn’t even know that was possible. It’s really from one specific building element. Can you guess what it is?

Clay pots, hanging from the front of the building.

It totally destroys the modern aesthetic the architects were clearly attempting. Just look at all the clean lines and simple colors. It’s amazing how having just one element out of place can throw the entire design into chaos (probably a bit exaggerated, but you get my point).

The building is in Beirut and I found myself hoping that maybe there’s some sort of cultural significance to placing potted plants on your building facade that would make this horrible decision acceptable. So, if you’re Lebanese or know about Lebanese culture, fill me in because, ugh.

There are so many ways to better incorporate greenery into the building facade. They used living walls (vertical gardens, like in the picture below) in other parts of the project, so what kept them from continuing that on the front of the building. This building was clearly not built on the cheap, as those living walls would suggest, so why do something so blatantly cheap on the FRONT of your building?

The back of the building. That's how you do it...

So here are my two quickly sketched solutions to make this facade not suck so much. First would be to use the horizontal faux balconies as a long planter box. You could fill it with hanging flowers or vines and it would create a really nice layer of green.

Option 1

Option two would be to use a fractured living wall on the front of the building. You could randomly fill in the diamond spaces between the existing lattice. This would tie in to the living wall on the back side of the building and create large patches of green while simultaneously creating shade and privacy for the tenants without blocking all their views.

Option 2

Two quick and easy design solutions of many that would be better than what was built. How would you make their design better?

It’s not a title that anyone likes having.

Intern makes me sound like an unpaid coffee bitch. I mean seriously. I spent 5-6 years of sleepless nights in the battlefield that is called architecture school and when I come out the other end I get the title of intern? Talk about a slap in the face.

“So what is this whole intern situation you’re so fired up about?”, you may ask. Let me break it down for you. Architects are actually a lot like other highly professional fields, i.e. doctors and lawyers. We have to go through 5-6 years of architecture school for either a 5 year Bachelor of Architecture degree or a 4 year Bachelors degree + 2 year Master of Architecture degree (this is what I did). Then there’s the internship. Three long years of working your way up from the bottom, getting on the job training.

When you’ve finished your requirements for your internship, you get to start taking the dreaded ARE exam. The ARE or Architect Registration Exam is a 7 part test (you heard right!) that includes multiple choice and graphic vignette sections on most of the tests. It’s no easy task to pass the 7 deadly exams. In my informal poll of people I know who’ve taken the tests, as long as you study hard, you shouldn’t have to retake more than one or two of them. Once you pass all the tests, congratulations, you’re a licensed architect!! Don’t get too comfortable though. You do have to have 24 hours of continuing education a year to keep your license (in Illinois, at least). This part’s pretty easy though. If you sit in on a couple lunch presentations from product manufacturers and go to a conference or two every year, you’ll be covered. Whew. I know, right?

And…

So what’s my beef? Intern is such a derogatory word. When I hear it, I think of summer interns, kids who don’t have a formal education in a given field gaining experience over the summer. You’re lumping me, a highly educated person, in with someone who has no education whatsoever. Eff off. Don’t even get me started on unpaid internships. One of the circles of hell is reserved for people who have unpaid internships for college graduates. I am working for you, hence YOU PAY ME NOW!

Personally, I wish they’d call us apprentices. That fits the job description a little better. We’re getting on the job training, not rubbing elbows with professionals to see if we want to go into a certain career. To become a licensed plumber (and many other similar trades), you go through an apprenticeship. The apprenticeship usually lasts 4-5 years and includes a set amount of classroom training as well. After you have enough experience, you can take an exam to become a licensed plumber. So in a field that requires no formal education, you get to go from apprentice to licensed professional. Nowhere in that process do you have to introduce yourself with a title that makes you sound like an useless peon.

What about those other professional fields? Doctors get a 4 year bachelors degree, followed by 4 years of medical school, then have 3-7 years of residency depending on their specialty. After that, they can go into a very specialized field which can take an additional 1-3 years called a fellowship. Even with all this education, doctors, like architects, get stuck with a period of time that people can call them interns. The first year or their residency is usually referred to as their internship and they can be called either an intern or resident. If I were a first year resident, I would never call myself an intern and I wonder if it bothers them as much as it bothers me… Oh, that also leaves out all the various tests and boards needed to pass to become a practicing physician or the fact that you have to continue to pass boards throughout your career. If anyone has the right to be annoyed about being called an intern, it’s doctors.

Lawyers go through a 4 year Bachelor’s degree, 3 years of law school followed by the 2 day long bar exam (dun dun duuuuuuh). Like doctor’s, you can continue your education to have a specialty, but after you pass the bar exam, you’re a big time law practicin’ man. Guess what, no interns! You go from student to licensed professional. Yipeee!

What have we learned? No one, other than those high school summer helpers, should have to go by the title of interns. It just sucks, man. It’s not cool. And if you have unpaid internships, you are a bad bad person.

So what do you think? Are there interns in your profession?

Big thanks to Bryan and Annie for clarification on what it takes to become a doctor and lawyer.

* I am still an unlicensed architect. I’m working on it..

A lot of people have misconceptions about what architects do. I think most of it stems from architects not being very good at explaining what it is that we do to the general public. Part of the reason we’re bad at explaining it, is because architecture encompasses a very wide range of tasks. Not only that, different architects specialize in different aspects of the building process, leading to definitions based on one specific branch of architecture.

Helping prove my point, is that the AIA (American Institute of Architects) doesn’t have a clear definition of what an architect is on their website. Come on boys. You are THE organisation for architects in the US and you didn’t think outsiders might want to know who we are and what we do? That’s when I turned to the good old Merriam-Webster’s dictionary to find the most basic definition for architects possible.

architect: A person who designs and guides a plan or undertaking.

This definition encompasses a lot of fields that aren’t architecture (like software architect, etc.), but it does provide the broadest example of what an architect is. Architecture includes much more than simply building buildings. We create master plans for cities, design public space, act as consultants and even do simple home remodels. The modern architect needs to have the skills to take on a myriad of tasks. To put it another way, architects solve problems.

So What the Heck Do Architects Do, Anyways?

Architects help the client realize their vision. Good architects will solve problems the client wasn’t even aware they had, making it possible for them to utilize their new space in the best way they can. Architects have to navigate their client’s vision through a sea of building codes, jurisdictions, inspections, etc. We coordinate all the different trades to ensure a seamless project. Architects oversee the whole building process from start to finish.

The Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago by Renzo Piano...sexy

The types of work that architects do is very wide ranging. We build schools, museums, skyscrapers, homes, zoos, offices, and everything else under the sun. In Illinois, where I live, a licensed architect is not needed to build any single dwelling or duplex on a parcel of land or any remodeling that doesn’t touch any structural or life safety elements. As you can see, to build pretty much anything that people occupy, you need to have a licensed architect’s stamp on the drawings. The architect doesn’t have to actually draw the drawings him/herself, but by putting their stamp on it, they are liable for it. This is why most architects don’t use their stamp lightly. They make sure that the set of drawings is 100% accurate, because if there’s any problems, it’s their ass. I’ve heard some architects jokingly say that you become licensed to earn your stamp and put it in your drawer and never use it. Once you have a set of stamped drawings approved by your local building department, you can start construction.

The process of working with an architect is goes through many steps and is worth having it’s own blog post. So until I get to that, you can read about the process on the AIA’s website.

Architects usually charge for their services with an hourly fee or a percentage of the construction cost. There are a couple of other ways we can collect money from you, but others have discussed the topic of money much better than I can or am willing to (like here, here, here and here).

Why do Architects Matter?

When I tell people that I’m an (unlicensed) architect, they always say, “good for you” and look at me for a second like I have some sort of special gift. “He’s the chosen one!” There seems to be a reverence for architects that I can’t figure out. It’s the same sort of respect reserved for doctors, lawyers and judges. Don’t get me wrong, I love having people praise me, but I don’t think people really get why architects are important.

Architects go through a similarly grueling process to become licensed in their field (like lawyer, doctors, etc.), but the uncertainty of what our role is in the building process causes confusion. So here is the reason you should look up to architects. Architects have a very unique job. We are at the leading edge of how our entire built environment is shaped. Think about that for a second. Every structure you’ve experienced in your life which has been built by human hands, is a piece of architecture. We may rely on others expertise for aspects of the process and not be the ones physically putting it all together, but we are the vision. We are the conductors of the built world. When cities fail, it’s probably our fault. When they work beautifully like a living organism, it’s because it has been thoughtfully guided by a architects and architecture over time.

That’s it for my first post! Let me know what you think in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @benjamindockter.