why are we about to get into this whole architecture mess? it is interesting and mind expanding and sort of gives you something to live for. and you get to hang out with smart people and learn cool concepts. but if i am asking this question in the first place is it worth going to arch school?
i'm a consultant, and it sucks. i need a profession where i like the process, not just the results ($). did the gsd summer program and loved it. but architecture is exceedingly difficult...
i have offers from columbia, upenn, ut, which really sucks because it is hard to turn schools like those down.
Wow. Either you have cold feet, or you seriously need to reconsider the major lifestyle change on which you are embark.
Architecture as a discipline is exceedingly difficult, but studio is the only part of my life where I feel alive, and get the same feeling (well, mentally) when I had my braces. They used to hurt like hell but if I bit down, the pain disseminated into this peculiarly intense pleasurable feeling. A lot of people would gnaw off a limb (or two) to be in the position you're in now, but if your heart isn't into it and you accept the challenge, you'd be doing a disservice to your fellow studio mates who'll immediately sense your negative energy. I got into UPenn, Columbia and MIT, and I'll have to let two down... but these past few days have been the happiest of my entire existance on this DAMN PLANET.
i don't necessarily buy the whole braces as pleasuable pain bit as a sane, smart or useful way to think about architecture school or for that matter, the profession. how old are you? that mentality and the hideous, alarmist culture that it can breed are the things that most freak me out about the profession. people seem to simply accept the backwards, often abusive nature of the industry. the fact that a person is thoughtful enough to seriously question it is a good, responsible thing. excuse the generalizations, but perhaps if enough architect-students began to look at themselves as more than artists and form givers--and therefore all other practical considerations hardly matter in the name of art and cool mysticism--then more architects could make enduring, meaningful contributions to the world. by the way, we could also make a decent living--not lavish but something you can really live on. smart organizations and smart industries realize that they’re only as good as their ideas, so they actually value their talent and pay accordingly. there can be a more balanced approach and just because you aspire to have one doesn't mean you're somehow care less or are less. i'm deciding between harvard and mit and i'm not even sure if what they can offer is the smartest way to go about my interests if i want to have, like i said, meaningful, enduring impact in the world and take the necessary risks (without being saddled by debt) to do it.
my ideal, is to build spaces for people.
for any client, disregarding social status..
architecture is a tool to help others, its not an end in itself.
what is the point of taking pride in a mass of metal and glass?
sometimes i get depressed looking at architectural photos of buildings without people in them, they are so empty.
nice try getting a rise out of me. i'm 24, and thanks for questioning my mentality, you presumptuous beast. i guess it was my insanity that got me where i am now, choosing between MIT and Columbia.
My mind is a mess. I cannot keep myself in the world long enough to be sure of my own existence. The images that pour through my mind, both what I assume to be perceptive and what I can identify as illusory, are beyond my ultimate control. I begin to worry that I am losing my mind. I begin to worry that this internal panic, looking out through my own eyes as if from the precipice into vast chaotic abyss, is caused by the slow onset of schizophrenia. When I close my eyes and try to focus, try to recollect, the panic follows in the flickering of my eyes trying to make sense of the uncontrollable stream of images between me and my eyelids, the ceaseless chatter of silent voices I become.
Is this what everyone feels? Is this what I have always felt? I paw through memories of myself, trying to remember if this is what things have always been, if the clarity I have previously formed was some transient artificial capacity, a comforting invention. Perhaps that is all that my mind took the effort to remember? Has the substance of my nonsense life been discarded for the lies I have told myself?
When I look within, I find only the terror of my own inexplicable being. If nonsense is truth, then purpose is the ultimate self-deception.
Every morning, I wake to find myself, still me, and I it makes me want to die. I loathe this life. I loathe my itchy skin. I loathe the phlegm in my throat. I loathe my bleeding fingers. I loathe women. I loathe men. I loathe teachers and I loathe students. I loathe parading myself in this crawling monkey suit to please them. Every morning I wish I could die, and every night as I withdraw from the world, I regret not having done it.
The only thing that keeps me to walk to class, that keeps my feet from walking drugged into the ocean, is moral obligation. I go on, because I must. I walk all night, tired, raw to the bone, wishing to sleep.
I wanted to know what I was. I wanted to peel away the onion. I chewed away the skin that could not feel around my fingernails. I probed with a knife at my teeth. I chipped away at crown and gum. I dug and probed until I found the root. I dug and pried until I struck a chord. I chewed at raw pain, exposed root, singing bleeding struck its note and held. I lay on my back arched and clenched as the death of a spider. Tight as a tourniquet. Bleeding and sneering. I pushed at the pain until I was nothing. I strained and pressed against my nothing pain like soft fire. I stretched and cut myself to pieces. In that singing pressing darkness. Singing dull nothing.
I relaxed.
I breathed.
Im still in this bed.
Im still me.
Just be aware if you have doubts about going into school, that school is pretty different from practice. Once you get a job, the stuff you do in school (for most people) will occupy maybe 5% of your time. The part will be filled up with drafting, project management, paper pushing, etc. Probably stuff similar to your consulting job. You will probably make less money, and have less free time.
This is a particularly bleak picture, but I think a fairly common one for the average architecture employee.
my ideal, is to build spaces for people.
I applaud your noble efforts, but again, unless you are independently weathly, this ain't happening..
You'll have clients who want to design the building themselves, who aren't interested in your social aims, who only want to make money, etc.
That 5% can be great, but it's not enough for everyone.
huckin,
suck it up and be thankful that you have the opportunity to attend these schools. You can attend these programs and still be successful while not working in the architectural field.
lena V, sorry to break your ego, but i've known many people with absoltely deplorbale portfolios who have gotten into mit and columbia, but congrats anyways. and i also agree that the whole attitude of 'living with the pain' of being an architect - the whole starving artist phenomena is a really big factor contributing to the decline of the profession. If we think that way, then clients are surely bound to screw us over.
well getting back to the question, if you want to do architecture, just go ahead and do it. Its difficult and its a big f...ing mess, but you live only once. Its going to be difficult, and if you really want to build stuff, then keep in mind that its going to be at least 6-7 years from now that you might be doing a small remodel.
But there are many avenues that will open themselves up to you during the course of your studies, and your prior experience will surely help.
you are not wrong, who deem
that my days have been a dream
yet if hope has flown away
in a night, or in a day
in a vision, or in none
is it therefore the less gone?
all that we see or seem
is but a dream within a dream
man you must have had to bust a hump to get into those schools. i wunder why the sudden disillusionment?
Architecture school was absolutely fun 100%; working for an office with different ideas about architecture is...well, less so. but it is easy to move on in this business, and the career ain't as straightforward as it used to be. Lots of ways to be creative, do your thang, even make money, long as you're motivated.
If you really ain't up to it, then turn the schools down. no worries. no shame. there are many other ways to make money and have fun. say starting a hedge fund...
or you can always ask to defer your enrollment a year, while you work and try to figure this stuff out... that way you hang on to the opportunity to attend one of those great schools, but aren't pushing yourself to do something you're not into anymore, and can come back to it the next academic year if you rediscover your passion for architecture. you may just be a bit burnt out- I've been going to school for five years, working for three of those, and thought about applying to grad school, but realized that the last thing I need is the continual pressure I've been under for the past three years. Take some time for yourself, and see if you don't come back around to architecture.
My advice is always the same: if you question it now, forget it. It's even more significant choosing from those schools. You can do it, but if you are questioning it now, I can't imagine after staying up a week in a row, just to get killed by your politically inclined jury (you'd see that many juries at bigger name schools are more about the schmoozing than the crits - at least this is how it was at UCLA, and many of the sma profs teach at Columbia).
Columbia has some kind of hybrid arch/realestate development masters, right? I almost thought about that when I got accepted, many years ago. It looked pretty cool and I am sure they taught you what I am struggling to learn on my own now.
I love architecture, but I don't like being poor. Had I questioned things before grad school, not a year into it, I may have done the Columbia thing (although I can't say I'd ever want to live in Manhattan and pay those rents, no outside, etc.).
Good luck. At least smile that you got accepted to those schools. Keep in mind the $$, unless you have it already. Even with the $$ they offered, it was still outrageous.
it's hard to get a job in the field without a degree, but depending on your situation (location, experience, desires) it isn't entirely impossible.
i questioned being an architect the whole way through. i still question what my place is in the field. and that kind of feels okay, i'm young, i'm not supposed to have it figured out yet.
so i wouldn't be completely discouraged by having doubts, unless you live your life based on absolutes.
i don't like the process also...i'm lazy and i don't like drafting, building models...i like the conceptualizing part...i'm doing this because i like the accomplishments...
I read you dammson - I can totally rock and roll in autocad but it's not where my passion lies. What I enjoy is designing and seeing something get built. Also I get a pretty good feeling about working out very difficult details. Guess that's enjoying the accomplishments. I also love telling CAD techs what to do - ha ha!
As for huckin - what type of consulting work do you do now? Without a doubt you will earn far less in a traditional architecture career. Do you want to invest what a UPenn or Columbia education would cost into earning a meager income if you already have cold feet? This isn't a profession for the unsure.
There is a CAD tech in my office who said "drafting" is the only thing he wanted to do. If he wasn't doing that he'd want to be a farmer and "sit on a tractor all day."
yeah, hand drafting is fun!...i especially like seeing the drawing make a transition from lightly drawn construction lines all over the paper to a more legible drawing...
before they had CAD im sure people said they hate hand drafting. Well i still hate both CAD and hand drafting.
Gimme sketching, even 3d modeling, im happy
I went to college and picked the first thing on the list
A - Architecture.
Everyone always said I would make a good architect, and I didn't want to get a business degree. At 18, there was no way I wanted to wind up selling insurance for my dad's company....come on, i was young, no way.
Freshman year there were masses of hot young women all in the same freshman classes. I was hooked. Later, I found out that they were interior design majors that I would not only look down on me, but also have a deep hatred towards what I was going to eventually make my career.
The years passed by and before I knew it, I was in graduate school, having studied in Italy and worked as an intern in Chicago.
Well then graduation what the hell know.....on to the big bucks.
Huh.
What future may hold.....not architecture as a practice.
I don't remember who said it, but they nailed it.
Architecture should not be a career or a means for income.....
Architecture should be a Hobby.
There is no other way to give it as much attention and love that it deserves.
good luck to all that don't know this......and to those who don't care.
I love drafting! By hand OR cad!!! I quite enjoy screwing with the line weights in CAD, and wish there were a revival of LINE WEIGHTS IN CAD! Come on---all you really need are four.......
I have to agree with LBG huck, suck it up!
Mar 31, 05 10:55 pm ·
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why are we doing this?
why are we about to get into this whole architecture mess? it is interesting and mind expanding and sort of gives you something to live for. and you get to hang out with smart people and learn cool concepts. but if i am asking this question in the first place is it worth going to arch school?
i'm a consultant, and it sucks. i need a profession where i like the process, not just the results ($). did the gsd summer program and loved it. but architecture is exceedingly difficult...
i have offers from columbia, upenn, ut, which really sucks because it is hard to turn schools like those down.
Wow. Either you have cold feet, or you seriously need to reconsider the major lifestyle change on which you are embark.
Architecture as a discipline is exceedingly difficult, but studio is the only part of my life where I feel alive, and get the same feeling (well, mentally) when I had my braces. They used to hurt like hell but if I bit down, the pain disseminated into this peculiarly intense pleasurable feeling. A lot of people would gnaw off a limb (or two) to be in the position you're in now, but if your heart isn't into it and you accept the challenge, you'd be doing a disservice to your fellow studio mates who'll immediately sense your negative energy. I got into UPenn, Columbia and MIT, and I'll have to let two down... but these past few days have been the happiest of my entire existance on this DAMN PLANET.
Good luck man.
dear Sisyphus..
every building collapses..
every name is forgotten..
except ...
i don't necessarily buy the whole braces as pleasuable pain bit as a sane, smart or useful way to think about architecture school or for that matter, the profession. how old are you? that mentality and the hideous, alarmist culture that it can breed are the things that most freak me out about the profession. people seem to simply accept the backwards, often abusive nature of the industry. the fact that a person is thoughtful enough to seriously question it is a good, responsible thing. excuse the generalizations, but perhaps if enough architect-students began to look at themselves as more than artists and form givers--and therefore all other practical considerations hardly matter in the name of art and cool mysticism--then more architects could make enduring, meaningful contributions to the world. by the way, we could also make a decent living--not lavish but something you can really live on. smart organizations and smart industries realize that they’re only as good as their ideas, so they actually value their talent and pay accordingly. there can be a more balanced approach and just because you aspire to have one doesn't mean you're somehow care less or are less. i'm deciding between harvard and mit and i'm not even sure if what they can offer is the smartest way to go about my interests if i want to have, like i said, meaningful, enduring impact in the world and take the necessary risks (without being saddled by debt) to do it.
my ideal, is to build spaces for people.
for any client, disregarding social status..
architecture is a tool to help others, its not an end in itself.
what is the point of taking pride in a mass of metal and glass?
sometimes i get depressed looking at architectural photos of buildings without people in them, they are so empty.
swell,
nice try getting a rise out of me. i'm 24, and thanks for questioning my mentality, you presumptuous beast. i guess it was my insanity that got me where i am now, choosing between MIT and Columbia.
My mind is a mess. I cannot keep myself in the world long enough to be sure of my own existence. The images that pour through my mind, both what I assume to be perceptive and what I can identify as illusory, are beyond my ultimate control. I begin to worry that I am losing my mind. I begin to worry that this internal panic, looking out through my own eyes as if from the precipice into vast chaotic abyss, is caused by the slow onset of schizophrenia. When I close my eyes and try to focus, try to recollect, the panic follows in the flickering of my eyes trying to make sense of the uncontrollable stream of images between me and my eyelids, the ceaseless chatter of silent voices I become.
Is this what everyone feels? Is this what I have always felt? I paw through memories of myself, trying to remember if this is what things have always been, if the clarity I have previously formed was some transient artificial capacity, a comforting invention. Perhaps that is all that my mind took the effort to remember? Has the substance of my nonsense life been discarded for the lies I have told myself?
When I look within, I find only the terror of my own inexplicable being. If nonsense is truth, then purpose is the ultimate self-deception.
Every morning, I wake to find myself, still me, and I it makes me want to die. I loathe this life. I loathe my itchy skin. I loathe the phlegm in my throat. I loathe my bleeding fingers. I loathe women. I loathe men. I loathe teachers and I loathe students. I loathe parading myself in this crawling monkey suit to please them. Every morning I wish I could die, and every night as I withdraw from the world, I regret not having done it.
The only thing that keeps me to walk to class, that keeps my feet from walking drugged into the ocean, is moral obligation. I go on, because I must. I walk all night, tired, raw to the bone, wishing to sleep.
I wanted to know what I was. I wanted to peel away the onion. I chewed away the skin that could not feel around my fingernails. I probed with a knife at my teeth. I chipped away at crown and gum. I dug and probed until I found the root. I dug and pried until I struck a chord. I chewed at raw pain, exposed root, singing bleeding struck its note and held. I lay on my back arched and clenched as the death of a spider. Tight as a tourniquet. Bleeding and sneering. I pushed at the pain until I was nothing. I strained and pressed against my nothing pain like soft fire. I stretched and cut myself to pieces. In that singing pressing darkness. Singing dull nothing.
I relaxed.
I breathed.
Im still in this bed.
Im still me.
Just be aware if you have doubts about going into school, that school is pretty different from practice. Once you get a job, the stuff you do in school (for most people) will occupy maybe 5% of your time. The part will be filled up with drafting, project management, paper pushing, etc. Probably stuff similar to your consulting job. You will probably make less money, and have less free time.
This is a particularly bleak picture, but I think a fairly common one for the average architecture employee.
my ideal, is to build spaces for people.
I applaud your noble efforts, but again, unless you are independently weathly, this ain't happening..
You'll have clients who want to design the building themselves, who aren't interested in your social aims, who only want to make money, etc.
That 5% can be great, but it's not enough for everyone.
edit: I meant to say "the other part of your time will be..."
huckin,
suck it up and be thankful that you have the opportunity to attend these schools. You can attend these programs and still be successful while not working in the architectural field.
lena V, sorry to break your ego, but i've known many people with absoltely deplorbale portfolios who have gotten into mit and columbia, but congrats anyways. and i also agree that the whole attitude of 'living with the pain' of being an architect - the whole starving artist phenomena is a really big factor contributing to the decline of the profession. If we think that way, then clients are surely bound to screw us over.
well getting back to the question, if you want to do architecture, just go ahead and do it. Its difficult and its a big f...ing mess, but you live only once. Its going to be difficult, and if you really want to build stuff, then keep in mind that its going to be at least 6-7 years from now that you might be doing a small remodel.
But there are many avenues that will open themselves up to you during the course of your studies, and your prior experience will surely help.
i don't know what awaits me after i complete school
.. but, i don't anticipate that architecture
will give me some kind of deep satisfaction...
men are like grass, and their glory like flowers of the field, all fade away..but, the word of the Lord stands forever..
i am currenly working in a large office.. its so incredibly boring.. so, i know what its like..
i want to work with few people who enjoy using their talents to create comfort for others.. i know its not a lot of money, so what?!
oe: your mind is like a troubled sea, spilling all kinds of muck from the bottom of your heart.. find rest..
you are not wrong, who deem
that my days have been a dream
yet if hope has flown away
in a night, or in a day
in a vision, or in none
is it therefore the less gone?
all that we see or seem
is but a dream within a dream
--edgar allan poe
why are we doing anything?
because we do!
huckin,
man you must have had to bust a hump to get into those schools. i wunder why the sudden disillusionment?
Architecture school was absolutely fun 100%; working for an office with different ideas about architecture is...well, less so. but it is easy to move on in this business, and the career ain't as straightforward as it used to be. Lots of ways to be creative, do your thang, even make money, long as you're motivated.
If you really ain't up to it, then turn the schools down. no worries. no shame. there are many other ways to make money and have fun. say starting a hedge fund...
or you can always ask to defer your enrollment a year, while you work and try to figure this stuff out... that way you hang on to the opportunity to attend one of those great schools, but aren't pushing yourself to do something you're not into anymore, and can come back to it the next academic year if you rediscover your passion for architecture. you may just be a bit burnt out- I've been going to school for five years, working for three of those, and thought about applying to grad school, but realized that the last thing I need is the continual pressure I've been under for the past three years. Take some time for yourself, and see if you don't come back around to architecture.
My advice is always the same: if you question it now, forget it. It's even more significant choosing from those schools. You can do it, but if you are questioning it now, I can't imagine after staying up a week in a row, just to get killed by your politically inclined jury (you'd see that many juries at bigger name schools are more about the schmoozing than the crits - at least this is how it was at UCLA, and many of the sma profs teach at Columbia).
Columbia has some kind of hybrid arch/realestate development masters, right? I almost thought about that when I got accepted, many years ago. It looked pretty cool and I am sure they taught you what I am struggling to learn on my own now.
I love architecture, but I don't like being poor. Had I questioned things before grad school, not a year into it, I may have done the Columbia thing (although I can't say I'd ever want to live in Manhattan and pay those rents, no outside, etc.).
Good luck. At least smile that you got accepted to those schools. Keep in mind the $$, unless you have it already. Even with the $$ they offered, it was still outrageous.
it's hard to get a job in the field without a degree, but depending on your situation (location, experience, desires) it isn't entirely impossible.
i questioned being an architect the whole way through. i still question what my place is in the field. and that kind of feels okay, i'm young, i'm not supposed to have it figured out yet.
so i wouldn't be completely discouraged by having doubts, unless you live your life based on absolutes.
i don't like the process also...i'm lazy and i don't like drafting, building models...i like the conceptualizing part...i'm doing this because i like the accomplishments...
WTF?
just being honest...i don't like sitting in front of the computer drawing lines with autocad all day
what do you like doing?
writing ideas and making elegant diagrams explaining the ideas..i also like seeing the end project...
oh. okay.
hah...but i draft like a pro...
I read you dammson - I can totally rock and roll in autocad but it's not where my passion lies. What I enjoy is designing and seeing something get built. Also I get a pretty good feeling about working out very difficult details. Guess that's enjoying the accomplishments. I also love telling CAD techs what to do - ha ha!
As for huckin - what type of consulting work do you do now? Without a doubt you will earn far less in a traditional architecture career. Do you want to invest what a UPenn or Columbia education would cost into earning a meager income if you already have cold feet? This isn't a profession for the unsure.
i don't think i have ever heard anyone say "i love drafting!"
Whoa, OE...
High school and adolescence will be over before you know it...
There is a CAD tech in my office who said "drafting" is the only thing he wanted to do. If he wasn't doing that he'd want to be a farmer and "sit on a tractor all day."
i'd enjoy hearing someone say "I looove drafting!"...i would smile
i actually DO love drafting...but only by hand. (i looove drafting!)
cad drafting is a different thing altogether. none of the visceral pleasure of controlling line quality and weight, etc.
yeah, hand drafting is fun!...i especially like seeing the drawing make a transition from lightly drawn construction lines all over the paper to a more legible drawing...
AGREED, SW!
i do think it would be mildly entertaining to hear someone say "i couldn't imagine doing anything other than CAD drafting"
and bloviate : thanks.
Seek out and settle for nothing less than that which makes you the arrow shot from the bow.
before they had CAD im sure people said they hate hand drafting. Well i still hate both CAD and hand drafting.
Gimme sketching, even 3d modeling, im happy
i'm from 'before cad'. though i'm sure you're right, I always loved hand drafting.
read ecclesiates
or maybe eccleseaStes would be better
any way it's in the Bible
ecclesiastes is for a man living under the sun..
steven,
I am also from the 'between hand-drafting and cad' times.
i did all my school work in hand drafting, except my final year thesis which i did on cad.
I have to say though that 'inking' the drawing on vellum used to be a much more exciting moment than sending the .dwg to the plotter
Honestly- i was tricked.
I went to college and picked the first thing on the list
A - Architecture.
Everyone always said I would make a good architect, and I didn't want to get a business degree. At 18, there was no way I wanted to wind up selling insurance for my dad's company....come on, i was young, no way.
Freshman year there were masses of hot young women all in the same freshman classes. I was hooked. Later, I found out that they were interior design majors that I would not only look down on me, but also have a deep hatred towards what I was going to eventually make my career.
The years passed by and before I knew it, I was in graduate school, having studied in Italy and worked as an intern in Chicago.
Well then graduation what the hell know.....on to the big bucks.
Huh.
What future may hold.....not architecture as a practice.
I don't remember who said it, but they nailed it.
Architecture should not be a career or a means for income.....
Architecture should be a Hobby.
There is no other way to give it as much attention and love that it deserves.
good luck to all that don't know this......and to those who don't care.
I love drafting! By hand OR cad!!! I quite enjoy screwing with the line weights in CAD, and wish there were a revival of LINE WEIGHTS IN CAD! Come on---all you really need are four.......
I have to agree with LBG huck, suck it up!
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