"i'm feeling pigeon-holed and i'd like to get more experience in drafting and working on construction documents."

i worked for a small firm straight out of architecture undergrad where i thought i'd be drafting and doing redlines and learning CAD, but instead i wrote proposals and updated the firm's website for a year and a half. it sucked but finally i told them i was feeling like i wasn't getting the "well rounded" experience that i'd hoped for and that they'd promised at the outset. soon enough after i spoke up i got placed as the project staff on a renovation project.

this was a really small (under 10) firm though. i'm not sure how the situation would pan out in a bigger office.

It's not that bad to be the render guy until you find your way at the office

i don't want to be the render guy either!

what i really want to be is that riddler-suit man from late-night TV

Ask Abra

oh man im the render guy at my firm too...
im the only one there who has any technical ability at all... so im stuck...
thats why im gettin out of there...
anyone in chicago need me?
hehehe

The best way to get out of being pigeonholed is to find a new employer. It's the biggest wake-up management can get. Not all firms are accepting of letting people change roles. I know from experience. I had to leave, after over a year of hints/suggestions/begging. Sometimes it's just what you've gotta do.

i dont want to be the render guy...
i dont want to be the CAD guy either...
i dont want to be writing specs too...
and sure i dont want to be picking up redlines...

oh....then what will i do as an architect??? meet with clients and do design sketches for the interns to use???

i dont want to be the render guy...
i dont want to be the CAD guy either...
i dont want to be writing specs too...
and sure i dont want to be picking up redlines...

oh....then what will i do as an architect??? meet with clients and do design sketches for the interns to use???

speak up. people are so hesitant to do this these days when there is a problem. if they don't listen, find another job with a firm that will help you get where you want to be.

this is a tuff topic because first off, one must do what one must do to get to where one wants to be. However, Architectural businesses must put people where people are needed and capable of being. There in lies the disconnect. Capability. Many people stuck red lining and rendering suspect they have more to offer but they really dont know - its the uncertainty of whats it really like. Hell, even project designers have no idea what its like on the construction and financing side.

So to make it short - Press on and do what you must but be wise in your desicions, and learn everything you can at every step, or you may find yourself in a position you asked for but could not handle and you'll be up to your asshole in alligators before you know it.

At the other end of the spectrum is that;
- I'm the render guy
- I'm the rainmaker guy
- I'm the cad guy
- I'm the copier guy. blueprint guy, coffee guy, cheque writing guy, hard ass boss guy, and potential lawsuit guy, sometime stressed out guy!

Some days it's nice to focus on one thing and do it well....... so enjoy the experience while you can. Or run your own firm and see the other side for a while to appreciate what you have, not a complaint just reality in a big office, go work in a small environment to experience the true hand to mouth work experience.

This is such a common problem / complaint. I primarily built models for about a year just out of school. Fun and low key, but very limiting... You may have to switch firms, as A suggested, but FIRST speak up. If you're serious about the work, people soon realize. If you superiors truly aren't willing to advance talented and enthusiastic people, then, yes -- time to move on. I've moved on three times, now.

It's ironic how hierarchically arranged most "studios" are... the very fact that one can get pigeon-holed so easily proves that point. Unfortunately, most offices bear little of the "group effort" afforded by the studio experience in school. "Project Team" can often be a real misnomer. It turns into, "Here's what we've seen you do before, Staff Member #2478 -- couldja bring us some more of the same for this project?"

I'm driving an effort away from this approach at 'my' firm. A couple of guys and myself are trying to do projects sort of at the edge of the office mainstream, and are trying to actually approach these projects collaboratively. What a concept, right?!! We're trying to grab enough freedom so that the three of us together take the project from start to finish. But the going is slow. Even though they trust our normal workaday mode, they are loathe to turn us loose... so, we are starting with small projects, and will see what happens.

The squeaky wheel, don'tcha know...

I'll be the render guy any day over the window detail guy( yeah, I'm a slacker who likes to make purrty pictures)

if you find a job at a smaller firm, you will get a more varied experience. i once worked for a three person firm. every person had to do everything >> design, render, CDs, CA, etc. you also get a better sense of how to run a business because the owner will seek advice and often push office management responsibilities off to you. the larger firms will be more likely to pigeon hole employees.

Alternately, you could just admit that you are the render guy and when you are ready, quit and go freelance as a “visualizer”. You can charge more (often even work for old firm, because now they don’t have to manage you and keep you busy) work for more offices and have a flexible schedule (even if it’s the any-eighty-hours-a-week-you-want schedule). Maybe you can use the extra money and time to get your own design stuff going.

I don’t know if that’s good advice for you but it seems like the other way that people go.

I dont mind strict divisions of tasks and responsibilities but It would be interesting to mix them up. The team approach can be very disruptive during design, yet sometimes works in documentation through CA. Big firms divide and pigion hole because it works, esp. for larger projects. That said, what if you could mix it up on different projects? Everyone has to detail - in fact I love detailing because its my authority of the design, if it works the design works - but let people enjoy and experiance all of it in chunks, like IDP is supposed to do.

Rimjoist I admire your approach. in a large office that's the only way its going to change, and it does happen. I know of a few offices that have evolved. Its a good thing as the firms were both know for their production capabilities and then over several years started to produce some better quality design and the production was still in place, it made for an awesome combination.

The best way is to land a few contracts because of the added design efforts, then your boss will really take notice.

if you are good, ask for more money. That should work. Either you get more money (someone good at rendering is harder to find than someone that can draw up some CDs) or you get a different position or more flexibility.

Mixing stuff up is not the most effecient way to do things in most firms. You simply don't have to the time to be good at everything.

Now, if you are just doing basic renderings that look like everyone else's (i.e. you don't have the skills and/or time and/or hardware/software to make them really good).

Lastly, look at it as a challenge. It may seem like there are tons of good renderers out there, and there are, but they are much more valuable in general than the average architect. Ask for what you need to learn and get better - faster computers, better software, etc.

Make it worth your while.

I think you can be good at everything. People just limit themselves, sleep too much on weekends and need to stop with all the porn.

I feel your pain.

I quit my job when i got pigeon holed, and then found a new job but told them that I was not interested in being the render guy!

Small offices are beter - they don't have enough depth in the roster to pigeon hole people like big offices.

It's a tricky situation, because coming out of school 6 yrs ago, my rendering skills were still fairly novel, and openned a lot of doors. Little did i know, they were doors to very small prison cells.

this aint my post george...

thank you for all the advice - it has been really helpfull

As suggested by Rim, I will try to search for a smaller office to get a better overall experience...

A friend of mine was the render guy at a big office here in Paris. He made a deal with the boss where he would do the renderings for a competition for less money if they let him be the project lead. It worked out, they won the competition and now he does it all the time. The only problem is that it gives him two jobs at the same time, so he has to work a lot on both. I think it's worth trying if you feel confortable with your 3d skills and if you're not afraid of cumulating two jobs.

my situation was similar french.

my boss didn't want me to be the render guy but every time i trained someone to do the 3d shit they left, so i ended up doing regular cds and design shtuff at the same time as the 3d visualisation shtuff. very hard schedule, but kind of good practice for now cuz i can model my designs faster on computer than my partner can draw them or build a physical model. the hated 3d skills are very useful now...;-)

i absolutely recommend the small office route.

trace - for once i'll have to disagree with you. i can usually find plenty of younger (ie right out of school) potential employees with great visualization skills. what i'd kill for, though, is someone who can really put together a good set of cd's. and who knows the process of how a project schedule is put together. those skills you can't just 'learn' as easily (in my experiences at least).

Maybe it's changing, but I haven't seen recent grads with good visualization skills. Good 3D modeling skills, yes, but that's just a small part of it.

It really depends on what you consider 'good' visualization skills. It's rare, and that's why I get paid to do other's 3D work. Almost every firm I do work for has some 3D guys with years of experience, but they can't get the quality in the time I can, simply because you can't be a jack of all trades (that's it, right? too early...no coffee....).

Anyway, everyone stay away from 3D!!! That's my job (and French's, and others on here). j/k

I agree with a previous comment to ask for more $$ since you have now specialized your role in the company. Make your job description worth the sacrifice of other tasks.

However to all of you readng this who are looking for jobs, show some real design work in your portfolios and not rendering eye wash. Plans and sections and models is the still the surest way to show that you are a thinker and designer, since everyone assumes that you can render coming out of school anyway.

asking for more money as the render guy could solidify your position as the render-guy...

might be better to ask for different work and move on if they say no. at the very least somewhere that uses modeling/rendering as part of the design process rather than as a separate product (no offence intended, trace )...

Supply and demand my friend the rules of economics.....how much you think they are willing to pay the guy drawing bathroom plans and elevations? Ask for a bunch of money, or go draw bathroom plans for next to nothing, cause your competition is the guy coming out of some fly by night computer drafting program, who is excited to actually be working in an Architectural firm.

this is one of the eternal conundrums we face in design firms ... how do we bring somebody in with a particulary valuable or useful skill and then not have them feel pigeonholed and frustrated ...

as a young intern (way before the 3-d software era) i was an excellent model builder and, as a result, i got to do a lot of that for a few years ... in my case, i enjoyed it for a while because it kept me involved in the front end of exciting projects, but eventually i wanted more in-depth exposure to the broader world of architecture

fortunately, by the time i started to want (need) a broader role, i had proven my intelligence and capacity to learn and work ethic ... so the conversation with my boss wasn't all that difficult when i raised the question

it also helped A LOT that i had trained another young architect to do my job at least as well as i could do it and i agreed to shepherd her for a while ... that's always the key ... firms don't like to vacate an important role until they know how that particular base will be covered

sounds very hierarchical, quizzical. do you like it that way now?

one of the things i really liked about my first office was that we had little hierarchy, so on one project i could be the lead designer and the guy with years experience would work for me (and keep me straight, of course). next project i would do his drawings for him. everyone built their own models... i was good with computers so did the 3d stuff, but it wasn't my job description. responsibility eveolved but wasn't a step-by-step sort of thing. more like jump in and see if you like getting your feet wet, sorta thing...

i am prejudiced by that experience but really can't think of any other way to run an office. actually nearly all of the places i have worked in since then have been the same; all small, mind...

yes ... bigger firms do tend to have hierarchies ...

is it better, or neccesary?

we were about 20 people and still manageable as a small anarchy.
can't imagine it quite working with a hundred people.. though i understand ito and sejima both run their offices in a similar way, so young interns get the chance to design the big projects; long as they have the chops.

my instinct is that the non-place, non-hierarchy thiang keeps things fresh...

most people who have studied the problem would say that hierarchy becomes more necessary as firms grow ... it becomes a "division of labor" thing, where "just getting by" in various areas of operation takes on dire consequences as the stakes rise ... specific roles take on the need to have a high level of expertise and specialization

this is why some firms choose NOT to grow ... they don't want to have to deal with the inevitable growing pains that attend getting larger ...
i suspect ito and sejima has a hierarchy that consists of a) ito and b) everybody else ... it's still a hierarchy

i know of some research (impossible to find today) that suggests that design firms become incrementally more inclined to adopt formal management processes as they grow ... growing firms that refuse this evolution become either 1) highly inefficient (i.e. unprofitable), or 2) chaotic ... invariably, such firms go out of business or scurry back to a size that the participants find comfortable ...

the break point seems to be in the 40-60 person range (depending on the kind of services being delivered) ... if the firm makes it through that threshold, then they tend to continue to grow and prosper ... if the firm finds itself unable to be comfortable at the 40-60 person level, then they tend to shrink again and find ways to be successful (according to their own definition of that term) at a smaller scale

this phenomenon is why, in many ways, we remain a cottage industry today ... too bad the overall economy wants us to be something other than an aggregation of tiny firms.

Well anyway, after six or seven years doin' it, I'd still rather be the render guy than the cad guy. The architecture discipline like any other, in a technical world such as ours, which such an importance given to precision over meaning, as to divide into several professions. And being the render guy is still being an architect, even if it's not technically labelled as such. And it's not the worst job when you look at the tools the "render guy" use and you compare it to the one program the "cad monkey" has to deal with all day long...

act like you do not know how to render. then no one will make you do it.

my old man once said, never become good at something you hate to do. because you'll be doing it a lot.

i made the mistake of being a good "closer" on CDs at one firm i worked for. i am pretty flexible and can jump into a project quickly and keep my head above water. i'm also remarkably adept at not questioning or debating orders when there is a CD set due in two days. of course, i actually don't like staying up all night and saving other people's asses by finishing their mindless CAD work. but i wanted to impress my bosses and i fell into a trap.

it is very hard to say "no, i'm sorry, mystery! is on tonight and my wife is making pork chops" when you've set the precedent that you WILL call your wife and tell her to tivo foyle's war and put dinner in the fridge for you to eat at 3 AM. it's a little different but also the same.

lesson? speak up first, i guess, and then if nothing happens find another job and emphasize your well-roundedness or desire to become a well-rounded architect.