I am reading as a mother of a son interested in architecture and I think the person who DA-Mad-Cow cited is correct. I think those architects who are able to embrace "green technology and sustanability" in their design will be the desired group when older building are torn down to be replaced with more efficient, environmentally responsible designs in the future. I also can't imagine someone going to the trouble to become an architect to then plan on being a construction or real estate manager. Get a degree in a construction area and an MBA or management degree and for real estate go for a finance degree and specialize in real estate investing.

Certainly everyone has to think to the future of what they would do with their degree in any field and the answer is always the same: diversify. Get additional training in related areas to make yourself more marketable.

Right now we all have to face the reality that we are in a depressed real estate/building market. It really does not matter if you are an architect, mechanical engineer, developer, construction manager, or structural engineer. It is brutal out there. Most civil engineers that I know are involved with new developments, and projects with state and local authorities, and they are suffering. Only the civil engineers involved with major highway and infrastructure projects have been able to weather the storm.

The cyclical nature of the building industry is one of the hardest things to deal with in this profession. If you are now entering school you will be fine, by the time you get out the economy will have recovered. However, do not forget what you are seeing now, because it will come again. You need to make yourself as valuable as you can while times are good so you can survive the next one.

So what makes you valuable? The ability to either keep or bring in new clients. Clients are the life blood of an organization. So if you are a talented designer whose work can win competitions or attract new clients you are in good shape. If you are a project manager who has the primary relationship with an important client that provides ongoing work, you are safe (However, if your client is a retail developer who has stopped building, you are in trouble). If you are a skilled project architect who is great at developing in-house drawings but is not involved with the client, you should be concerned.

We will get through this, but we are going to lose a lot of valuable people in our industry, and I particularly worry about losing an entire generation of young graduates who will find other ways of making a living.

rick

Ok, I don't want to come off as some sort of an AIA fan, but are you two involved at all with the AIA? Have you seen what they are doing?

Point 1; raising wages. How would the AIA do that? We are under justice department oversight for trying to allegedly fix fees. This came about when the AIA used to publish recommended fee guidelines. Now anything that implies a recommended fee range, or a limit to competition among architects will get the institute into hot water and we risk having it closed down. We face the realities of a competitive global marketplace which no professional association can overcome. Without the ability to raise fees there will not be significantly higher salaries in the profession.

Point 2; the AIA is useless to the profession. Yes, I have to admit it sticks to my craw to hear a golf course designer of software guy call himself an architect, but there are bigger battles being fought. My wife travels to the state capitol every month to talk with legislators on issues which can have a serious impact on the profession. Right now the engineers through their association are trying to pas legislation that would allow them to design buildings without an architect involved. This has been a nasty drawn out battle that has been going on for five years. The state wants to put a sales tax on architecture fees, and that fight has been going on for a decade. They may not be able to do all you want, but without them the profession would be in much worse shape.

I used to think that the AIA was an elitist organization that did not do enough for the profession and complained to the president. Before I knew it I was the design awards chairman, commissioner of professional practice, executive committee member, and multiple other positions over the years. The AIA will only be as good as the efforts of the volunteers that do the bulk of the work. If you don't like what is happening get involved!

rick

Rick -

Even though many individuals may not need architects, large entities do. I work in government, and we hire lots and lots of consulting architects. Corporations will always need architects. Think about it - only the wealthy will ever need an architect. So, shouldn't our fees reflect that???

Kind of an interesting thread. For my own take on the question if there will be too many architects, there may actually not be enough. I don't think there are that many arch students coming in compared to other departments, although I wouldn't have trouble believing more than at any other time in recent history for architecture. The fact of the matter is that there are still not that many arch schools out there, and good ones are even more limited.

The paramount thing to consider is the extreme importance that architects will play in the "rise of the creative class" that we are currently seeing. The only other competing workforce trend, which sort of ties in, are the so-called "green collar jobs" which arch schools have responded to with environmental design programs and upping the ante on LEED. So under either the "rise of the creative class" as detailed by Richard Florida's book, or under the political-influenced "green collar jobs" system, architects will be VERY important. Win-win.

osucowboys, you make a very valid point. The rise of the "creative class" will play a very important role in all aspects of business as well as the building industry. Many industries are suffering due to lack of creative thinking. Hiring people that can actively "think out of the box" is very difficult these days. People with those skill sets are just hard to find. The first thing to be cut in pulic school systems are the arts - the primary vehicle for the development and nurturing of creative thinking...cuts like these have been going on for quite a while and we have a generation of high school graduates that have little formal arts exposure. I think that the training architects receive is going to be in high demand - even if arch students don't pursue a classic arch career. Just one person's opinion.

Future imperfect: Architects must use their talents wisely if the more extreme visions of a dystopian future are to be forestalled

If the AR was a fashion magazine, it would probably be Vogue; the classic, authoritative, elegant, journal of record, unswayed by the attention seeking vagaries of more arriviste organs. And, in the same way that fashion magazines publish seasonal surveys of the latest trends, so we cast our gaze towards the architectural catwalk to try to discern what lies ahead. As with Vogue's seasonal array of immaculately styled models and breathless commentaries (Is puce the new black? Can we still wear wedges?), there is a slight air of unreality about this enterprise. Buildings yet to be constructed are still fermenting in the minds of their creators, brought to life through the Frankensteinian exegesis of digital renderings. As it is with haute couture, so it is with architecture; the effects of light, weather, time, use and people have yet to impact upon visions which tend towards hyper idealised forms of representation.

But clearly, though certain architects now enjoy the status of indulged and over feted fashionistas, buildings are not clothes. They are the very slowest form of fashion, generally, the products of a collaborative vision (whatever individual superstars might claim), certainly much less disposable, and intended to last decades, if not centuries. That does not preclude them from being products of their time, or surfing the Zeitgeist or exploring new and improved ways of doing things, but the central premise should still be a historic and enduring responsibility to society.

However, in a world that is becoming more insatiably neophiliac (certainly in its developed parts), crunching through consumer durables with obscene rapidity, where does that leave thoughtful slowness? Though architectural production has been fast forwarded by advances in technology, does being able to have it all now really make for a better world? Though the economies of new city states such as Dubai and Guangzhou thrum with manic activity, is the breakneck pace of such development ultimately sustainable? And what of the much maligned public realm, now increasingly under threat, as the spatially infinite, phenomenologically abstract digital world (where interaction is entirely non-physical) supersedes the more grungy realities of the Plaza Mayor?

But, paradoxically, it is the more modest programmes that really require architectural imagination, rather than the opera houses and art museums. And, mindful of how deeply implicated buildings are in climate change, the growing green agenda also urgently needs input. Architects have always been known as generalists, capable of assimilating a wide variety of information and converting it into a plausible solution, Sustainability tests and challenges that ability as it encompasses areas as diverse as ethics, economics, sociology, ecology, history and biology. The analytical and deductive skills of architects can be used to make sense of the complex systems and interactions of global ecology. Though architects on their own cannot save the world, there is hope that the profession can become instrumental helping to guide and stimulate change. Seductive though it is, beyond the giddy whirl of the architecture catwalk there is a job to be done in which everyone's future is at stake.

Posted by Paul Malo on April 15, 2002 at 04:56:54:

In Reply to: Re: Future of the Architect?? posted by Paul Malo on April 14, 2002 at 20:22:12:

To continue, if the World Trade Center may be symptomatic of a larger trend, we recall that it was developed by the Port of New York Authority in the tradition of Nelson Rockefeller, the New York State governor who was a great patron of architecture, and of Robert Moses, the powerful czar of public works project in the metropolitan New York City area--a tradition going back to Baron Haussman in nineteenth-century Paris, and to French urbanism under the monarchy.

As architects, we hope for such grand clients--even if the results are not always so grand. The World Trade Center was mediocre as architecture, largely distinguished merely for its size, which was counterproductive in an urbanistic sense and tragic in the historical end of the project. Rockefeller's greatest monument, the overblown state government plaza complex at Albany is tediously banal while surrealistically pompous. Nevertheless, we remember more successful large undertakings such as Rockefeller Center in New York City. Perhaps it's not coincidental that that was not a government project, but privately developed.

A colossal project is now underway at my city , Syracuse, in the center of New York State. Larger than anything built by the state government since the Alabany governmental plaza, it is being privately developed. It is a sort of commercial mall and theme park, containing large hotels, intended to be a major national destination for tourists. Clients of this sort (like Disney) have become major patrons of architecture--but again, not always distinguished architecture (as we critics see it).

To work with these commercial developers, the architect has to know how to play hard ball. It's no game for sensitive wimps. Developers have been notorious as exploiters of naive architects. But if one has a tough enough skin and the taste for the mercenary culture of the competitive marketplace, this is where there is much action--and probably much future.

Understanding of finance, large economic issues, marketing, and public relations are critical assets for the architect in this game. Clients like to work with an architect who understands their problems.