or some inexplicable reason, many visitors to this site have disregarded the fact that I'm essentially an immature troublemaker / junkie / whore / loser with relatively limited marketable professional experience, but nonetheless think that I would be a suitable career counselor for thei sorry arses. Over the five years that I've been running this site, I have been asked so many questions regarding architectural education and profession that I feel compelled to post this page. From now on, I would happily address your queries only after you have thoroughly studied and memorised the following words of wisdom. Better yet, instead of taking advice from a jaded, untrustworthy freak like me, it's best to just get off your lazy arses and head for the local public library. Do some research there. For starters, I would recommend Roger K. Lewis's classic, Architect? : A Candid Guide to the Profession (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998). I even gave my parents a copy of this book so they could be prepared for the mess I was getting myself (and them) into. To some extent, I would also recommend Robert Gutman's Architectural Practice: A Critical View (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1988). If reading those books don't scare you away from pursuing this crazy business, then I wish you good luck. You're gonna need it. Otherwise, just be glad that you managed to get the hell out while you still can and didn't do something tragically stupid like me. I personally loathe most architects as people. More often than not, they're often boring, conceited, and intellectually myopic. Look for friends elsewhere.

would like to thank everyone who have furnished me with the following questions:

01. What's your excuse for going into this field?

I don't think I chose to get into architecture. Instead, architecture chose me. Ever since I was five or six, I was inexplicably drawn to design magazines. By the time I was in the fourth grade, I felt that my local public library's architecture section (which was unusually extensive) was my very own private library (partly since nobody else was checking out the books I was checking out). Architecture school seemed like an inevitable chapter of my life, sort of like acne, or losing your virginity, or getting your driver's licence.

02. What are the most important requirements I need to get into a good architecture programme?

I wouldn't know what a "good programme" is if it had hit me over the head. Different schools work for different people. Again, ask around, do some research, and find out what works for you. Visit the schools and hang out. As for preparation, I think it's important to get a well rounded, liberal arts undergraduate education no matter what field you're in. If you're in high school, just get good grades, ace the SAT, start paying attention to architecture trade magazines to develop a sense of what's going on in the field, and most importantly, read everything about everything. Too many architects are basically ignorant illiterates outside their field.

03. What level of education is needed for this job? How long was the programme you took for architecture?

It varies. In North America, usually it's at least five years of undergraduate education, followed by a few years of internship. Most five year programmes in the States get you a bachelor's degree in architecture and little exposure to anything else outside of the field of architecture. It's like going to a trade school. On the other hand, you can also get a master's degree by doing a graduate programme of one to three years, depending on the level of undergraduate education. In the States, this 4 + 2 years option seems to be the new standard. As for myself, I did five years of undergraduate work in which I received a bachelor's degree in history and another degree majoring in architecture. I continued my education with three years of graduate work in which I received a M. Arch. and a bundle of psychiatric medicine prescriptions. Needless to say, be prepared to be in school for awhile. I'm currently working as an intern.

04. What's the architecture programme like in Berkeley?

Read this page.

05. Descibe the duties and responsibilities of the job.

Again it varies from job to job, office to office. However, the most common duties are:

• After finding out what the clients' needs are through interminable meetings, you and your team members design a building to satisfy those needs. From beginning to the bitter end, you'll be attending an endless stream of even more meetings with clients, as well as with your own team members to coordinate the work. The bigger the project, the more people you'll have to meet with. You'll also be meeting with contractors, user groups, planning boards, consultants from virtually every imaginable discipline, structural and civil engineers, mechanical engineers, electricians, lighting designers, geotech engineers, plumbers, vendors of all sorts, interior designers, graphic designers, and landscape architects. You'll be attending so many meetings that you'll start to wonder when would anybody find time to do actual work (usually after regular business hours or weekends).
• After assigning tasks and schedules to your engineers and subconsultants, constantly coordinate with everyone in your assembled team. Architecture is an intensely collaborative effort. Think of an architect as the conductor in an orchestra.
• Essentially, an architect's job is to produce a set of drawings and documents that provide instructions and specifications to put the building together. Ultimately, that's what the clients are paying you for. Along the way, you may also produce presentation drawings as well as scale models and computer graphic models.
• Building scale models and computer models to help you study and arrive at your design.
• Searching for and researching products, materials, equipment, and furniture you'll be using for your project. You're always picking out materials and colours and presenting them to your clients.
• Researching codes and regulations that affect your project to find out what you can and cannot do.
• Writing specs for the project. Most large firms have a specialist who does this type of work (they're often well-paid because the work is so boring). Specs are essentially written instructions and specifications to the contractors on how to build your project.
• Make sure that the contractors are building according to the drawings and specifications you produce. Make sure that they're on budget and on schedule. With input from your various consultants and engineers, an architect would have to examine and approve shop drawings or material samples for equipment and components manufactured by subcontractors. This is also known as construction (or contract) administration.
• If you work in the public sector on high profile projects in politically active communities, be prepared to endure humiliation and abuse from vocal community activists, demagogues, self-appointed neighbourhood design experts (often other architects), and various public design commissions and review boards.
• If you work on private residential projects, you are also obliged to serve as a marriage counselor.

06. What hours are worked?

Again, it varies from office to office, job to job. I usually work about 45 hours a week. (Make sure most of your hours are billable.) When we have a deadline to meet, the hours may double. Working through weekends are common. Nobody would call it an easy job. You're married to it. Forget about having a life. No matter what the office, they own your ass.

07. What is the outlook of this kind of job? Do you think the field is rising in popularity or is it already popular enough?

It has always been feast or famine in this profession. You get too much work when the economy is good. You're out of work when it's bad. It was very, very bad in the early 1990s. It's pretty much tied to the performance of the economy. It helps if you have a back-up job or a wealthy spouse or partner. I wouldn't be too surprised when I wind up turning tricks on street corners again.

08. Do you think the field is competitive and pays well or will I be shaking a can for the rest of my life?

There are definitely easier ways to make a buck. I don't know where people get the idiotic notion that architecture is a high-paying profession. Remember that lousy movie Indecent Proposal in which the architect was forced to have his wife prostitute herself? Unfortunately, most hookers probably get paid a lot more than most architects. You better really, really like what you're doing in this business since most architects in North America would agree that the pay is downright shitty. Only a tiny percentage become stars and get paid like Frank Gehry and I.M. Pei. Realistically, the salaries of most architects are comparable to schoolteachers, clerks in government agencies, and postal workers. Partners in large firms can quite live comfortably, but most are not going to get there. I think you can earn a decent living out of it, but it really helps to have a wealthy spouse or sugar daddy to support your decadent architectural habit. Or maybe become a part-time hooker.

To make matters worse, architects tend to have tastes that aren't too compatible with their relatively modest incomes. As a matter of fact, living beyond one's means is a tradition that's been handed down from architectural legends like Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Kahn (both of whom have accumulated astonishingly high debts in their lifetimes). Most architects feel poor, and they talk about being poor all the time. If architects learned anything in their arduous years of schooling, it's the cultivation of snooty tastes. You definitely learn to be aesthetic snobs. For many of us, everything in our lives should be designed, and that often means paying more. Having a comsopolitan sense of aesthetics extends from what kind of furniture you would permit in your apartment to what you would put in your mouth to what you wear. Too many have became label whores. (There's no doubt that quotidian gastronomic expressions like reduction, foie gras, radicchio, pancetta, and sashimi are much more common among designers than the American population at large.) Architects appear to live well, but often at tremendous financial costs to themselves because, pathetically, they can't help it. Again, becoming a part-time hooker helps.

09. What do you like most about this job?

I don't know yet. You meet some interesting people along the way. Landscape architects are always great at parties. Seeing how your drawings eventually become actual buildings is perhaps interesting too.

10. What do you like least about this job?

Long hours, crappy pay.

In most offices, the cruel reality of economics often gets you down. Budgets are so restrictive that architecture often gets left out of the design process. If they do make it into the process, they often get compromised in some way sometime down the line. It helps to have enlightened clients. Unfortunately, most only care about the bottom line. Good and innovative design often entail considerable time spent on research, time spent on continuing refinement, quality materials, and most of all, risk. Most offices and their clients cannot afford risk. At the end of the day, architects get paid by their clients, who want to maximise their investments and pay as less in fees as possible. Paying architects extra for good design or explore alternative design issues is often not feasible to developers. Neither is spending more for better materials or complex design schemes. Anything too unusual or deemed inefficient would often scare clients as well as bankers. As architects, it's ultimately our job to create spaces that maximise efficiency, that are cheap to build, that are flexible, that are fast to build and perhaps replicate, and most of all, that have accurate construction documents that are delivered as quickly as possible. As a result of limited resources, we turn in tired, commonplace, and boring designs, and our built environment shows it.

One can justifiably argue that it's a good designer's duty to create projects that are fast, cheap, and beautiful. However, the perennial need to satisfy specified costs per square footage, allocated construction budgets, and space efficiency maximisation constitute restrictions that are as immovable as the laws of gravity. Anything that doesn't satisfy these requirements is going to cost somebody something somewhere down the line, and nobody seems willing to pay for it. Why would they? Why should they? There's almost no market demand for innovative design. Obviously, not much design went into our built environments since no one wants to pay for anything more. Most of the time, artistic merit of a project is an afterthought for developers, if at all.

Ultimately, our built environments look as good as we want them to look. Designers are as good as their clients. Unfortunately in North America, the public generally doesn't demand much, let alone clients who would pay for anything more. Our society doesn't care much about good design, and the public is uninformed about design issues. The governments are apathetic. Designers are generally not respected in our society. Designers and architects rarely appear in papers, let alone on television and other forms of media. On the other hand, some societies are more well-versed and appreciative of design, and their built and virtual environments reflect that (e.g., the Netherlands, Finland, or any western European country where not only the buildings and landscapes look good, but also everything else from tickets to tax forms). In those countries, there are people who are willing to demand it and pay for it. Sometimes governments there promote good or innovative design, and it's an integral part of mainstream culture through education, high-profile competitions, and patronage. Yeah, you've heard all of this before. If quality design becomes accepted, expected, and perhaps even commonplace, investors and developers would have no choice but to pay for it and provide it. Otherwise, their competitors will.

11. What special skills are required?

Are you good at blowjobs? Ultimately, I think patience, and an obsessive attention to details and consistency are all very important. It also helps everyone if you're a fast and accurate draughter. Like any other job, an ability to solve problems of any sort is important. Knowing what's ugly and what's not is also crucial. Knowing how to deal with people, and being tactful are some traits that may also come in handy. If you want to become boss eventually, the ability to network and bring in clients for the firm is very important. That's how you make partner.

12. Does this job have a regular routine or a variety?

It's not just a job, it's an adventure! Everyday's an adventure, and that's not necessarily good. You never know what kind of shit you'll have to deal with or clean up. (Oops! ...there goes your weekend.) Yet again, it varies from office to office, job to job.

13. Are there any special physical demands?

For school? Sleep deprivation. Remember to keep a toothbrush and toothpaste in the studio.

14. Is being an architect a chick magnet?

This clipping gets passed around a lot amongst architects a few years ago. The remnants of romance and mystique surrounding the profession still seem to linger in some circles. You'll definitely get a few questions out of it at parties. You'll always get comments along the lines of, "That's so interesting. You know, I always wanted to be an architect, but..." That's basically it, and usually that's about as much mileage as you're likely going to get. You're on your own after that.

19 August 2000