Architecture is a really tough industry, so yes, you should have a lot of passion.

That said, a couple quotes from Wang Shu, this year's Pritzker Prize winner, as shared by @HawthorneLAT during Shu's lecture at UCLA yesterday, struck a personal chord with me:

"Architecture is not the most important thing in my life."

Wang begins by saying he hopes the [Pritzker] prize won't make him so busy he can't spend time with his son, who is ten.

Basically, you need to love architecture, but you also need to stay balanced and open-minded.... and keep your priorities in check. It will keep you happy and make you a better architect.

In my opinion yes. You will put in a lot of blood sweat and tears in your schooling and after all of tat hard work you will probably not make alot more than you are making now.... So if you do not love it , you will be miserable.

Requirement?  No.

Helluva good idea?  Yes.

citizen nailed it.

Why would you pursue something you did not love?

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” – Confucius

If yoy love architecture, it helps. And the only way to go deeper down to the fundamentals of architecture and create architecture requires something called love. Otherwise you are an engineer-architect like the Germans. No sensuality and erotism and style in their construction. That's why Germans call their architecture Baukunst, not architecture.

Juhani Risku, architect SAFA

http://architecturerock.wordpress.com/

http://kritiikkiblogi.wordpress.com/juhani-risku-architecture-design-concepts-proposals/

@jeandarch: those comments and generalizations don't help your case. they border on xenophobia/irrational nationalism.

you're opening a can of worms by attempting to impose your definition of architecture upon a whole nation, while assuming they all share a common point of view about design/architecture in general.

@Rvalu100:

you have to love it.

when it comes down to it, many of the skills you'll acquire as an architect can be put to use in a lot of other fields. especially if you're a recent graduate, and went deep into parametrics, coding and digital tech. if you don't love architecture, you will not want to continue being an architect.

i've met a few people that claim to hate their jobs, but they are generally far too lazy to seek employment elsewhere or just unable to accurately evaluate their own skills and seek a career that would in fact make them happy. that's the real danger of becoming an architect without loving an architecture.

as to the use of your spare time and my personal experience:

don't spend it on architecture. find a reason to love architecture through something else that interests you.

i'm an architect at a medium-sized firm in NYC (~65 people).
i just walked in from barnes and noble. i didn't even take glance at the architecture section while i was there. i bought a book on the history of new amsterdam and a political candidate's biography. i walked around park slope for an hour just watching people, and making a mental map of the restaurants in the area for future use/where i will be dragging my friends to.
i'm an architect because i love cities. i could care less about how a wall assembly is put together, but i will learn how to draw one, and be the best at detailing it for the sake of having a say in the experience of the city.

@RValu - maybe if you learn more about architecture, or about some new facet of it which you haven't yet been exposed to, you can develop your interest in it further. That's what happened to me ... I always was curious about architecture in the back of my mind but really got into it after taking a summer program and learning about aspects of the field which I had never known about before.

'Love' is such a filthy word. Side effects include blindness and irrational outbursts of joy/misery. Don't know anything about you, but you should find out as much as you can about the architectural profession (good and bad) and develop a rational opinion about it. Then go from there.

After we rid the world of all the religious monkeys, our next target is 'people who fall in love with stuff'. We meet every Wednesday at Dave's basement.

i think there are levels of liking something.  my interests are mostly outside of architecture, but there are things i enjoy about it.  just because someone might love something more than you doesn't mean you can't enjoy it for what it is to you. its like the difference between liking a band and owning their entire discography.

It really depends on your goals in life.  With Med and Law, you might not like it all the time, but you are compensated for that.  With architecture, that ain't so, not at all.

I had/have much more passion than most and it wasn't enough to keep me on a straight/traditional architecture career path.  It is still the thing I enjoy doing most in life, but the rewards for that passion just aren't out there. 

trace:  Well said!

There's a hell of a lot easier ways to make a living than making architecture, so if you are just looking for a stable paycheck, i'd advise you to look elsewhere.  The reason I get up in the morning and do what I do is because I love it.

Just make sure you do not love money.

i love this statement in the OP
"I like the fact that it's relatively interesting and is neither medicine nor law, which are two other relatively prestigious professions that I know I would hate.
So you are considering being an architect because out of 3 prestigious careers it is the one you hate the least?.
my advise is do law, you might as well be paid well doing the job you hate.

although myself and most of my friends that are architects might bitch about aspects of the profession from time to time, none of us could imagine doing something else. we do - i can say love the job.

not only love, but obsessive unconditional love is important, because it won't love you back until you court it for many years.

"Just make sure you do not love money."  This is exaclty the reason why architects don't make money. Everyone else does, but architects are taught to hate money.  I hope the new generation will put an end to this ridiculous way of thinking that has shattered the profession into pieces.

This is one of the few questions, I believe, you can answer a resounding 'yes' to. If you don't love it, in the corner of your mind you do realize you're just pushing the limits in the wrong sense. 

you dont need to love it if you just view it as a job.  It actually would take a lot of pressure off of you in that you dont need to constantly obsess with what you need to accomplish next, and you can avoid the mindset that if you arent working on a "cool" project, you are wasting your time.

To be honest, an architect's daily work is pretty fun compared to a lot of desk jobs that have menial endless paperwork.

That being said though, architecture is less stable in general as a field.

But no, you dont need to love it.  Its a heck of a lot easier than being a lawyer or doctor, though i dont know why those are constantly the go-to comparisons

I think it might actually help that you are not an ego-maniacal design student that thinks every time you're hired to design an EIFS strip mall you should fight your client and try to force them into some sort of greg lynn blobitecture or whatever it is the kids are doing now.  I think maybe the question should be Is a love of being part of a reasonable business structure a requirement for being part of a reasonable business structure. 

I suggest you be prepared to accept that you aren't going to get the income of a lawyer or doctor.  For a good chunk of your career you may make less than a lot of people who didn't go to college at all.  But then, if you're more interested in being part of a responsible business structure instead of glorifying your own arbitrary design sensibilities, maybe you can help fix some the shit our profession has dug itself into.

Whatever path you take, I wish you the best of luck.

i love this statement in the OP
"I like the fact that it's relatively interesting and is neither medicine nor law, which are two other relatively prestigious professions that I know I would hate.
So you are considering being an architect because out of 3 prestigious careers it is the one you hate the least?.
my advise is do law, you might as well be paid well doing the job you hate.

the OP left out "business executive."  we're the ones who design the little boxes made of ticky-tacky.

jaja:  No, the new generation isn't going to change anything.  It's a vicious cycle.  There are enough architects willing to work for next to nothing, so if you aren't willing the next guy is.  Compensation levels are really just the result supply and demand.  It's not a conspiracy.  And it's not something that a generation can decide to "fix".  As the saying went in The Godfather (a great movie about life, BTW):  "It's nothing person, it's just business".

There are thousands of commercial pilots without a job. Yet those who are hired, especialy in Asia, Europe and middle east, earn good money. I'm not sure if supply and demand is part of the misery. At the same token, at my office, we have 6 qualified architects working as interns for $300 a month.

jaja:  Traditionally, the reason airline pilots made big money despite many others vying for their job is because they had a very strong union.  Therefore, while the number of individual pilots is high, the airline is negotiating with one-only union, which is kind of like negotiating with one-only worker.  There is no real marketplace competition.

P.S.  There has been talk for years of an architects' union.  It'll never happen.

we need less regulation. not more unions and professional protection.

did you know you can't have a partner with more than 25% ownership in an architecture firm in NYC if he isn't licensed?

architecture would work a lot better, monetarily speaking, if architects were allowed to do what they do best, and partner with people who compliment their weaknesses.

Sometimes a love (or an appreciation rather) for Architecture is developed.

I know personally it wasn't until my third year of undergraduate studies that I absolutely fell in love with architecture! It was an acquired love, but first I developed an appreciation towards it. Now I do not see myself doing anything else with my life but architecture, no matter the pay! It is meant for for some people and others not so much. You will never know until you try it out!

Now I do not see myself doing anything else with my life but architecture, no matter the pay!" And this love is making the profession instinct within 20 years since we are willing to work for free.

To fluxbound: Yes, I have a theory of architecture where architecture is αρχι- (archi-) + τεκτων (tekton). So it is not average, mediocre, normal, valued by era or location. I reserve Baukunst (and synonyms) for prettification and style and activity of jack of all trades, DIY design and planning.
   Architecture is for me ideation, concepting, design, prototyping and building of primaeval space, primaeval dwelling, primaeval house.
   In English you don't have synonyms for Baukunst, byggekunst, ehituskunst, rakennustaide. In German, Danish, Estonian and Finnish we also have a word with different meaning than those,they are Architektur, arkitektur, arhitektuur, arkkitehtuuri.
It's not insignificant what you call an activity. In Finland (and Finnish) architecture and Baukunst (arkkitehtuuri and rakennustaide) are normally used as synonyms. There are several reasons for this. One is that there is no (NO) civilized discussion, research and articles about architecture. And somebody benefits from this "Soviet style confusion": the mediocre and depressed professions, architects. When acting like a person without any passion drawing houses for coevals they still pretend to be lecorbusiers and gehrys. My estimation is that we support mediocre architect professors and architects by superficial jargons and theoretical discussion like “architecture, architecture, what is architecture?”
I am very strict in my definition of architecture: there is room only for five (+/- 2) architects (ARCHITECTS) at a time. Just like Aalto, Le Corbusier, Kahn, Wright and Mies van der Rohe. Funny thing is that my theory explains why there is no architecture in e.g. Germany and Sweden, later about it.
   Chart: Architects life (in Finnish, later in English), the rise and fall of architects http://kritiikkiblogi.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/11_taiteilijan-evoluutiopolku_arkkitehti_taulukko_kaavio_juhani_risku_kritiikki_taide_kritiikkiblogi.jpg
   Chart: Constructing & Baukunst & Architecture (in Finnish, later in English), typology of architect's activities and fate in construction and sanctification [steps from bottom: Violent construction, Process Building(s), Baukunst, Architecture (level 1), Architecture 2, Architecture]. http://kritiikkiblogi.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/10_arkkitehtuuri-2_taulukko_matriisi_rakennustaide_prosessirakentaminen_juhani_risku_arkkitehti_architect_architecture_definition.jpg

Juhani Risku, http://i.cx/beo

tl dr.

ty come again.

I would describe my relationship with architecture as co-dependent, possibly love-hate. Definitely something akin to a serious addiction, with all that is implied by that analogy. I've tried to quit cold-turkey twice in my career, and will likely attempt to do so again at some point in the future. I seem unable to go for more than about 9 months before I start to get the shakes. Therapy doesn't help. There is no hope for me.