I’ve been in this industry now for over 30 years and my goodness has my perception of the industry changed! When I was finishing high school, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do as a career, what I wanted to be. Purely based on enjoying technical drawing at school and being good at maths the decision of commencing an architecture degree pretty much just fell in my lap having really no idea what it actually meant to be an architect. I was clearly not alone... I remember my first day at university and the lecturer asked our entire class (over 30 students) to simply name an architect - any architect. The lecturer was in disbelief when not one student could.
I quickly realised during my six years at university that architecture was an extremely broad career requiring a wide ranging skill set. Some students excelled in the technical areas, others in the creative areas. This realisation has only been reinforced in my professional career where being an architect not only means being an expert in building design but having in-depth knowledge (whilst not being an expert) on every other element required to produce a building - feasibility, environmental, structure, service engineering, construction, compliance etc.
Due to this the term architect is not all-encompassing. What I mean by this is that architects are all very different with differing skills…so much so that I would say it is impossible to place them all under the one umbrella. The differences, in my opinion, are directly influenced by the clients they work with, the types of buildings they work on and the firm they work for. For this reason, I have to state that MY opinion is purely based on MY experience, and I fully acknowledge that other architects will have a very different outlook on how architecture is perceived.
I have been lucky enough to work with some pretty amazing clients over the years, something I am very grateful for. I have also been exposed to some less-amazing clients, but that’s par for the course in any business. When I first considered architecture as a career, I knew it would be a HUGE challenge for me but one that I was certain would be worth it…if I could pull it off. Fast forward 20 years and I must say that the journey has most definitely provided the challenges and sense of accomplishment that I had predicted.
Architectural design is subjective – very subjective. This makes it difficult at times navigating through multiple stakeholders perceptions. Our brief is very rarely to simply design something beautiful. There are many hoops to jump through, and more often than not, many parties to satisfy. When we provide the architecture for a project, we not only take on the responsibility of designing, documenting and co-ordinating a building that is aesthetically pleasing (either to the client or to the market for which it has been designed to appeal to), but it must also be structurally sound, be compliant with all the regulations, satisfies council, doesn’t offend anyone, has all the services considered and allowed for, isn’t going to discriminate against anyone that might wish to occupy it, can be built within a specific budget…the list goes on. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about this, in fact it keeps the job interesting and keeps us on our toes, I am simply trying to raise the awareness of what goes into the design of a building behind the scenes…so perhaps the critics can cut us some slack when they analyse the success or failure of a building.
What architecture offers me is a sense of responsibility and accountability. One of our biggest assets is our unwillingness to provide irresponsible architecture (I can feel a future blog bubbling inside about this). When we put pencil to paper, and indeed finger to mouse, we do so with the intention to produce fully resolved, compliant and rational designs…while aesthetically meeting the client/developer/market exactly where they need and want to be.