Romancing the Profession
A few months ago, Architectural Record had a column that was hilarious for its description of something that everyone in this line of work goes through: You go to a cocktail party, and every damn person you meet says the same thing, “Oh, I wanted to be an Architect.” This is generally followed by a qualification that “I couldn’t do the math,” or a long story of how they either 1) designed their house or 2) do a lot of that kind of thing anyway. Then they wax rhapsodic about how great your life must be and how much fun it is. These people should be shot.
First, there is no math in Architecture. Well, there’s a course in calculus, and a few engineering classes, but anyone with even a halfway decent secondary education can pull through a five hour calculus class, and the extent of structural engineering is a little simple algebra that all of those liberal arts majors who were in eighth grade with me (you know who you are) would have no trouble with. (The trick, actually, is learning to do all of this on two hours of sleep.) In the real world? No math. Sure, I’ve been trained to calculate the development length of reinforcing, and do the first order quadratic equation for the sectional area of a steel beam, but do I ever use this information? No. The most complicated mathematics I’ve ever done is plugging a few numbers into the allowable area expansion for frontage equation in the International Building Code, and this I’m convinced a large ape could get by with. The average commercial building is a steel frame that we lay out and kick over to a structural engineer who runs a few simple formulas to arrive at the most efficient (i.e. cheapest) size of member. Even for those guys, it’s mostly knowing how to read a chart.
The second frustrating assumption is that guys like me have some kind of absolute freedom regarding what gets built. Sure, we’d all LIKE to just take a carte-blanche brief and put together a piece of sculpture, but that’s not the way it happens. You generally get some developer, or doctor, or city employee, or something else that either a) tries to draw a building for you and can’t understand why you can’t directly transcribe it (see “wanted to be” above) or b) thinks they’re ordering a pizza and can just say “just do a 600 bed acute-care hospital and be done by Friday.” And that’s just the half of it. The absolute first question is “how much will it cost” (this as-yet-undetermined complex three-dimensional object with thousands of pieces in a strict regulatory environment produced by the most opaque, corrupt, and variable industry there is) usually followed by a totally inadequate budget number that their cousin told them would work and a direction to “just do the minimum possible.” This is not a circumstance generally conducive to high art.
Of course, it is possible to do something interesting, but that involves having enough gravitas and reputation to win undying faith from someone that’s spending three million dollars on a scary, confusing, complicated object that they’re generally going into a great deal of debt to pay for. Then there is trying to squeeze everything into the tiny window of time you have to work on it while juggling the conflict and details of the six other projects underway. All of this while producing a myriad of over-detailed drawings and over-complicated specifications done in a desperate attempt to cover every tiny little issue that someone could use against you later. Then, you have to find someone among the army of high school dropouts (usually ex-football players, see competition below) that you can threaten, cajole, persuade, and leverage into doing work that is just a little more thoughtful and careful than “whut I bin doin for thirty years.” Even then, you’re probably working under someone who either a) has been beaten down by the whole transcription / bare minimum thing for so long he’s just stopped caring, or b) spent so long as an underling that the idea of “mine” has completely replaced the idea of quality.
Really, it’s a gig that does have its moments, but keep this in mind at your next cocktail party.
First, there is no math in Architecture. Well, there’s a course in calculus, and a few engineering classes, but anyone with even a halfway decent secondary education can pull through a five hour calculus class, and the extent of structural engineering is a little simple algebra that all of those liberal arts majors who were in eighth grade with me (you know who you are) would have no trouble with. (The trick, actually, is learning to do all of this on two hours of sleep.) In the real world? No math. Sure, I’ve been trained to calculate the development length of reinforcing, and do the first order quadratic equation for the sectional area of a steel beam, but do I ever use this information? No. The most complicated mathematics I’ve ever done is plugging a few numbers into the allowable area expansion for frontage equation in the International Building Code, and this I’m convinced a large ape could get by with. The average commercial building is a steel frame that we lay out and kick over to a structural engineer who runs a few simple formulas to arrive at the most efficient (i.e. cheapest) size of member. Even for those guys, it’s mostly knowing how to read a chart.
The second frustrating assumption is that guys like me have some kind of absolute freedom regarding what gets built. Sure, we’d all LIKE to just take a carte-blanche brief and put together a piece of sculpture, but that’s not the way it happens. You generally get some developer, or doctor, or city employee, or something else that either a) tries to draw a building for you and can’t understand why you can’t directly transcribe it (see “wanted to be” above) or b) thinks they’re ordering a pizza and can just say “just do a 600 bed acute-care hospital and be done by Friday.” And that’s just the half of it. The absolute first question is “how much will it cost” (this as-yet-undetermined complex three-dimensional object with thousands of pieces in a strict regulatory environment produced by the most opaque, corrupt, and variable industry there is) usually followed by a totally inadequate budget number that their cousin told them would work and a direction to “just do the minimum possible.” This is not a circumstance generally conducive to high art.
Of course, it is possible to do something interesting, but that involves having enough gravitas and reputation to win undying faith from someone that’s spending three million dollars on a scary, confusing, complicated object that they’re generally going into a great deal of debt to pay for. Then there is trying to squeeze everything into the tiny window of time you have to work on it while juggling the conflict and details of the six other projects underway. All of this while producing a myriad of over-detailed drawings and over-complicated specifications done in a desperate attempt to cover every tiny little issue that someone could use against you later. Then, you have to find someone among the army of high school dropouts (usually ex-football players, see competition below) that you can threaten, cajole, persuade, and leverage into doing work that is just a little more thoughtful and careful than “whut I bin doin for thirty years.” Even then, you’re probably working under someone who either a) has been beaten down by the whole transcription / bare minimum thing for so long he’s just stopped caring, or b) spent so long as an underling that the idea of “mine” has completely replaced the idea of quality.
Really, it’s a gig that does have its moments, but keep this in mind at your next cocktail party.
posted by KP | 19.7.05
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