I like taking long weekend trips down to manhattan. and no, the architect in me never turns off.

You should ask if you get flex time.

there's a firm in san fran, the principles take off over a month and head off to foreign countries...

2 weeks is about average for an intern. i've got some flex at my job, so i can take a day off sans pay, and then if i travel to vorarlberg, tyrol and graubuenden all summer as planned, i'll get paid the whole time.

oh, and those are my favorite places to "vacation" though i always end up making it an "architektur exkursion". additionally, when time permits, i run off into the mountains (snow or sans snow, it doesn't matter. i just wish i was a beast rock climber like tom k.)

and yeah, the architect/designer/critic never ever shuts off which is probably why i grind the fuck out of my teeth.

the architektur exkursion - beautiful!!

yeah never shuts down, off, standby...nope

vacation.... I try to make sure wherever i'm staying is walking distance to a place of archi-significance

as long as your not on salary, firms (like mine) let you leave when possible. im going to europe next week. we get 2 weeks paid, but you can just leave and not take pto if hourly

when in office in japan, no holiday for 5 years.

in london rule was pretty open, negotiable, and supportive, but never got chance to take a holiday anyway...

now i work for myself and holidays are pretty much a rarity. i am content to take a day off once every few weeks.

to be honest, and this is a horribly sad thing to admit, i know, but i have been working like this for so long that i find it very hard to deal with free time anyway...i have to FORCE myself to get out of architecture mindset sometimes...which is scary.

I do 3 weeks skiing and 1 week moutain biking every year.
I need cities but I also need to get away from them on a regular basis to recharge my batteries.

the netherlands - 36 days per year
love it!

but as others have mentioned, most holidays are kinds archi-tours.
i also never fully turn off.

Take all the archi-touring type vacations you can NOW because if you decide later to have kids it is much harder. I took my nine-month-old to Italy and now that he's almost four we're headed to Scotland, but it's overwhelmingly harder to travel with a child. Not to mention much more expensive. travel like a student for as long as you possibly can - later there will be time for things like laying on the beach for 8 hours.

Flex time is one of the main reasons that I selected my current firm. Last year, I had 2 week vacation days but was able to take about 5 weeks throughout the year to travel without taking a hit on my salary. It's not as easily said as done. It takes coordination with your team, your projects, your supervisor, etc. But if traveling is a passion of yours, the obstacles are minute.

This coming week, I'll be in LA.

I'm taking 7 days off in June to visit Vancouver.

I'll be taking some time off in September to go to Peru.

I select my destinations on many factors: sites, scenery, history, safety, price, etc.

I should also mention that my firm is super cool about travel plans. They always encourage that we give a lunch-and-learn about our travels once we arrive, although not mandatory.

We put together some photos, history of the area, and significant architecture that we saw on our travels in a snazzy Power Point presentation and present to anyone who is interested. We usually get great response from our coworkers who want to eat lunch together and learn about worldly locations.

n_: I've done the same thing as you with flex time. While I too only have 2 official weeks of vacation, I'm averaging 5 weeks a year. I just spent 3 weeks in Japan in March. The best part getting a paycheck direct deposited into my account while I was there. Can't beat that.

Excuse me for a (hopefully) brief topic derailment:

Fogey, can you shed some light on why NBBJ has to "brand" their travel program with a name, like Oregano? I've never understood the need to give everything a cutesy name. Why not call it "our travel program"? Why can't I call my online banking "online banking" instead of Private Portrait (tm)?

And jeepers...Oregano?!? As in "I-reckon-we're-gonna-go"?

hahahahaaa. oregano? really? sounds like someone is mocking their own corporate culture?

does remind me though, my old office also did archi-tours, paying for the entire office to make trips to see new buildings and exhibits twice a year, usually somewhere in Japan with an onsen nearby. was kind of fun, but to be honest after working 100+ hours a week for 6 months straight (at least), the thought of taking a holiday with the same people (family not welcome) became a horrible nightmare to me.

sometimes a few of us would have a paid trip to tour europe and meet some starchitects and see their buildings (my old boss has some incredible connections in that world)...which was more cool...but then the real world felt so bland on returning....;-)

when Im on vacation, I am usually too drunk to get out of bed...let alone go look at buildings

I feel bad mentioning that I get 28 days holiday a year

anyway - I'd love to get back to work now...cobwebs and moss are growing on me

At the office my bf works for, after you've been there for five years they allot you an extra week of vacation and $2000 travel budget so that you can go anywhere in the world for your vacation. I admire this plan so much, because it encourages travel to interesting destinations. By contrast, I get two weeks vacation, but can't actually afford to go anywhere, so I don't take them. I let my days build up so that I get a big payout when I leave the firm.

Had a friend who used to work in a small 5 person firm where each year the owner would take all employees + spouses/dates on a weeks vacation all expenses paid. Never an archi-tour though. He went to the Virgin Islands and Bermuda with this firm. His boss called it a "recharge" time for the whole office.

I think two weeks is pretty common (in the USA) for a vacation policy. Most firms will add a week, or so, after you have been there from anywhere from three to five years. Is that enough? Well, let me tell you a story (all true).

At one point in my career, I got a chance to work on a huge project to be constructed in France. However, all of the design and construction document work was being done in Los Angeles, California, for the American company that was building the project. The total design team was around 300 people and included a group of French architects and engineers hired, and temporarily relocated, to California to provide the "local" knowledge and code knowledge necessary to get this thing designed and built in France. The French architects and engineers were a hoot. Many of us became good (and life-long) friends. The interesting thing was that the French employees got hired on the basis that they would get all the same benefits and working conditions that they got, by law, in France. This meant that each of the French employees had 4 weeks of paid vacation (most of the Americans had the standard 2 weeks, and even fairly senior executives only had 3). The French also had to have offices or cubicles that allowed them direct view of an exterior window within something like 20 feet, maximum. This created all kinds of bizare scenarios where senior American executives were interior on the floor and the French, even lower level employees were all on the perimeter (we were in a high-rise).

Anyway, bottom line...the French thought we (Americans) were idiots. They could not believe we settled for only two weeks of vacation and cube farms with no windows.

I would be curious to know how much the french do get paid and how difficult it is to find a job there at the moment - anyone? in any case, europeans, across the board, get way better benefits.

From Archinect? It's high time.

"I try to go on vacation, and I can't because I'd rather make designs than sit on the beach"
-Steven Holl

how about make designs [/i]and[i] sit on the beach?

At this point in my career its a major goal to take more quality holidays. I've had a chance to take the family to Hawaii and Disneyland while they are young and appreciate the mindless time but feel a need to take them someplace more challenging. I find some holidays need to be mindless ie Hawaii etc but others should be more adventure, architecture is everywhere so I don't feel a need to travel just to look at buildings although some are worth the extra effort to visit if near by.

I just returned from vacation...12:57 am...and I'm already back at work sending out attached files to e-mails for the project which just couldn't wait while I was on vacation....oh the life of a Family Architecture Business....we do make the world go round.

i use 5 days of my vacation time scattered throughout the year for one day things i have to do...the other 5 i take as a chunk (with the two weekends in front and end)...last i year i used it for a road trip from los angeles to seattle...

this year i'm thinking montreal or slovenia, depending on how much cash i can save to fund that...otherwise it might be a route 66 road trip from los angeles...

i route 66ed it last year, from st. louis to california. do it, do it.

knock
you can expect about 2000 euros a month and a five week vacation. And there's tons of work here right now. Unfortunatelly, I'm my own boss so I don't get much of the vacation part; but I get more money...

Do Architects work on holidays?

No PTO, haven't taken a vacation in 4 years, going to Iceland in June for a week. Don't care for visiting architecture, I just want to disconnect.

Sure we do - we just call them "lay-offs" or "furloughs".

first vacation since the child was born, very excited... has more to do with me and fam than the career... done a lot of staycations and even send the boy to the grandparents though

Wow this is a rather depressing thread.

I value balance so I take full advantage of benefits offered to me. The way I see it, if you're not, you're leaving value on the table. I currently get 15 days PTO per year & they expire, so I use them. I had an extra week roll over this year from last. A one-time COVID exception. I took a spring break in March to recharge from the past year's insanity. Typically I take a full week at some point, and spread the rest of the time into 1-3 day chunks throughout the year. I take Thanksgiving Week off to go Type 2 camping with my wife. My firm is also closed between Christmas & New Years as a paid holiday. 

Best I ever had was 22 days at my last firm. They combined vacation, sick, and personal days into one big bucket of PTO. For me, as someone who rarely gets sick, it was amazing. 

So, yeah, some architects take vacations. Some others are miserable. A strange few are happy without the vacations. Those ones I don't understand.

Of course we do take vacations!

Here from a Dutch starchitect's job opening:

"We believe in work-life balance and advocate an open-minded people culture. Besides a competitive salary, we offer our staff a wide range of benefits: 30 days paid annual leave, study and parental leave provision, and a daily healthy lunch. Once Corona pandemi is over, we are to host frizzling beer Fridays, summer parties, epic Christmas parties, and have several sports teams, such as yoga, football, basketball and outdoor cycling."

i have 4 weeks vacation and 5 personal days. I have no idea where to use them this year tho since were under stay at home order and nothing looks promising for the next 6 months. 

Also, the days between xmas and nye are paid holidays for some in the office. So I don’t use any vacation for that either. 

I'm taking at least two, and probably three 1-week vacations this year. They will be the first time since I started working full time in 1996 that I've had a full week off. It's time. Going forward I am planning four weeks off a year, one each quarter. I have worked most holidays for the last ten years, with a day off around Thanksgiving and Christmas. That's changing too. I work for myself (or my clients, really) but I'm tired of being the guy who outworks everyone else (in between posting on Archinect, of course.) 

Holidays taken 2019 - 6-8 weeks 

Holidays taken 2020 - 3 days ( my wife is not happy about that )

Holidays planned 2021 4 weeks

Best value for me whether we have Covid stay at home orders or not is a 5-6 day weekend. Long enough to forget about the office, travel somewhere far enough away ( 2-3 hr plane ride / 5 hr drive ) to make it feel exotic and not long enough to start worrying about clients / projects.  If I can get 2 or 3 long weekends in like that I am a happy camper... plus at least one longer 2-3 week holiday and preferably two!

Every day at 5pm and every weekend.  Then I also take 3 full weeks a year.