Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc)
Pratt Institute
Tulane University
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Temple University
University of Oregon
Cranbrook Academy of Art
I am a future student looking into Architecture as an option.
I have been holding off on continuing my higher education and I feel strange that I'm looking for others thoughts. But, I'm a bit stuck.
I originally planed to go into electrical engineering, but while working as an industrial technician I slowly found myself loosing interest in what I thought I wanted. Thanks to this I found that what I love is remolding, designing and building homes and or buildings. I enjoy all aspects of the process and I for once have found something besides writing that I enjoy.
The problem is that my mechanical side tells me to go Civil Engineering. I already have over two years with an engineering focus before I took this pause in my education. But my creative side which plays a big part in my life between writing and designing the things I like to build, tells me to look at being an Architect.
What I was hoping was to just get opinions on the career field from people who work in it. I am not sure if this is even a good place to gather peoples experiences and opinions on the career field, but it is worth a shot.
I have also picked up books that I have seen people recommend on both career fields. So, I will be doing a lot of research into both on my own. So any book recommendations would be really appreciated.
if you care about the money and finding creativity in the little things do engineering, specifically civil.
if "your passion is design" do architecture and wait for 20 years before you will really be doing architecture at next to nothing prices
if you really care about design, design a life plan that ends with you marrying a kardashian! preferably the mom, that way you put up with her nagging for only a couple years and escape the succumbing to what got bruce and you end up with all the fortune. :D
Thank me later
I’m already a very happy wife. But, I will keep the Kardashian life plan in mind, to my husbands dismay.
If you genuinely value your career and life, pray about it. It is a highly personal matter and one of the most significant decisions in a person's life. To air in public is only adding confusion to misdirection. If you don't believe in God, you'd make an ideal post modernist.
Prayer has never done anything for tangible for anyone. God is not dead tho, as something that does not exist cannot die. It's simply irrelevant.
Q: Do you believe in God?
A: Yes!
Q: Do you believe in unicorns?
A: No.
Q: Why?
A: I've never seen a unicorn.
Q: Do you believe in God?
I’ll fight you if you don’t abide by my unicorn-centric world view.
Happiness is not doing what you like, it is liking what you do.
If you get your CE degree and then a few later decide you want to get a two year master's in arch. you will have a worst case scenario of six years of total schooling and likely an PE license to fall back on as well. If you just go the arch. route you will have five years of schooling to get a BS in arch and zero appeal to employers outside of the unstable architecture field.
Do you like the front-end design side, drawing, sketching, etc, or the actual building and realization of a project?
What scale are you trying to work at? Single family homes and interiors or commercial, educational, Civic and multifamily housing?
You could always complete a structural degree and see where that takes you. Would be flexible enough to work on any project type. Civil would likely take you towards large planning projects, or an ancillary role in building scale projects.
Either of these would likely be a good foundation for a two year M. Arch degree.
Whether architect, structural or civil engineer, this scale of projects takes years and sometimes decades to see to fruition. If you like physically building, maybe take a more trades oriented route?
There are some amazing design-build firms out there and are generally more open to people coming through non traditional routes. Do you already make beautiful things? You may be able to cultivate this while finishing a structural degree, supplement with some art fabrication classes or an architecture minor, and position yourself well for a variety of things.
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