Cautionary Advice To Anyone Thinking Of Becoming An Architect
My Adelaide Architectural Officereceives many enquires about pursuing Architecture as a career. The truth is that Architecture is bitter-sweet….
Architecture is a hard and long haul with not much money at the end of it. Most fail and do something else… even the ones with distinctions at Uni & great creative talent. I usually try to discourage students from taking on the challenge.
Expect 5 years minimum of Uni, then around another 5 years of workplace experience before you can take the exam & pay your registration fees. You then need to pay around $500 a year for registration and another $1500 a year for insurance. At this stage you can finally call yourself an Architect and become a Sole Practitioner. There still will be no guarantee of getting work. If you can find work it will take at least another 5 years or so before I would consider anyone competent.
My advice is to be an Accountant or Financial planner…. Basically any job that works 9 to 5, pays well and gives you the weekend off to have a life.
The Down-side of being an Architect
Architecture is one of the worst paid professions and it has one of the highest unemployment rates. Due to this everyone that has a job needs to compete hard to keep it. This means that Employers abuse the power they have. You will struggle to get work and when you do it will be mundane and inconsequential… disabled toilets and access ramps, stairways and fire-exits. All the things no-one else in the office wants to do. There will be no-one to ask how to do the job and if there was they probably don’t want to tell you…. as they don’t want the competition. You will be yelled at, humiliated in front of others and expected to work 12 hour days up to a month at a time. You will have to do jobs that you are not trained for and there will be incredibly short deadlines and tight budgets…. There will be no thanks or extra pay for the extra work & when the busy period is over you will be told to have a break & come back in a couple of weeks….short for “Sorry we need to let you go but since we may need you later we will just let you dangle”……You will often be owed money for your work and so you will start to live off Credit cards or any meagre savings you may have been able to put away. Having gone through this and passed through the other side I can say the secret to life is a healthy cash flow….
Most Architects socialise heavily with other Architects & often marry them as they don’t have time to meet anyone outside the Profession. Life can get unbalanced & you may end up with depression as everyone you know is doing it as tough and there seems no way out. This brings me back to becoming a Financial Planner or Accountant. You will earn a good wage, you will also have time to enjoy a social life…. If you really want to design then you can draw things on the weekend and employ an Architect to document them for you. You get to do the creative stuff and they get to supply the technical know-how. There is nothing stopping you from designing your own home or even making a living as developer by then on-selling for a profit. You will also be able to do this around ten years earlier than if you actually studied Architecture. Only around ten percent of people that enrol in Architecture actually end up as practicing Architects. If you dream of being an Architect then you probably dream of being a designer. This is what most people think Architects do. In an office of 20 Architects there are usually only 2 designers. The rest do Administration, site supervision or documentation. The reality is that if you want to be a Design Architect in a big firm you have about a 1 percent chance of achieving this.
The up-side to being an Architect is that after ten years of struggle you have a fulfilling job that can take you anywhere. You can be an instigator of social change. You can make a difference in the world (if you want)…..you can also be your own boss & get to work from home. You get to meet nice people and design not only buildings, but consequently lifestyles. You also get to take the morning off and go for a surf. The question is “How much do you want this?” Is it really worth ten years of hell?
