All-nighter? In architecture? In the words of my favorite super-hero:

"You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred."

One thing you'll notice is that, when you're a young pup in architecture school, one or more all-nighters are instantly recovered from. (I spit on sleep!)

Later on, just one all-nighter will make being hit by a car seem like a massage by comparison.

Every other day is an alnighter for me.

Zero complaints from me.

my first all nighter at the office came about 6 months after i had started working... i was trying desperately to complete this animation for a competition entry and was down to the thursday before the friday deadline... i worked all night virtually everyday that week...
got to the office at 7 or 8am on thrusday and stayed around the clock...

so, at about noon the following friday im struggling to just keep my eyes open and i send the thing to render for the last time. Finally, i just cant hold on anymore and i slip off to sleep in my chair for a few min... when i wake up, my friend sitting next to me says...

ahh, dude.... boss man just came by wanting to see your work... he says go stop by his office...

at this point im pretty freaked out... like i said, new to the office; really pushing for time; afraid i might not finish; beyond exhaustion... so i walk up to my bosses studio and he says, basically... "are you done yet?, well when you are go straight home and we'll see you tuesday"
phew... i wrapped up the animation, got it done by about 6pm and slept for 3 days straight...

Disclaimer...I'm in no way bitter about working "long hours", having "no social life" and everything else that comes with working for a "demanding" boss. Just trying to generate some good storytelling.

This will end up being a 48-hour architecture binge and it has already been fairly eventful. Full synopsis to come at the end, if the grammatical skills still exist then...

was the last one left one night around 4am, finishing the last few pieces for a beautiful wood model for a competition...senior model shop guy was to assemble everything in the morning when he got in...

when i set up the pieces roughly to see what it would look like when completed, the major structural pieces (it was a monumental tower) looked a bit tall and out of proportion...so i measured and did a quick calculation from the drawing...seemed too tall...i measured it again and calculated again...still seemingly too tall...so i went to the band saw and cut off a length off all the structural pieces and reassembled the thing...uh oh, cut way too much off...

not only was my sense of proportion off, my calculations were way off...there was nothing wrong with the height...

fortunately, there was enough wood in the shop for me to mill new structural members and sand them down to match the originals by 8am...lesson? never do math or make major decisions when you haven't slept, and remember to throw away the evidence when you're done...

Well this was years ago, but I was working full time and finishing a studio project at school basically going from 8hrs work at work to usually about 10hrs of studio work at home. This went on for about two weeks. On the two nights previous to my final jury I didn’t sleep at all. After about 48hrs straight and the morning of the final jury I was sitting in my chair hunched over my drafting board rendering an elevation when I totally hallucinated. It felt like I was flipping over backwards in my chair and I lunged forward and grabbed the sides of my table and at that point realized that I was never flipping backwards just hallucinating. I made it to the jury and by the time I got back home it had been around 56 straight hours and I actually had a hard time going to sleep. I would never recommend this to anyone.

I think small offices tend to be more all nightering than corporate firms

We used to make chinese stars out of exacto blades (I know you all have done it) and throw at a dartboard drawn on a piece of cardboard. The guy with the lowest score had to but the number of beers of the highest score (50 points = 50 beers). When the beer was gone, the studio night was usually over. The only bad thing is that as we got more proficient at chinese star throwing, we had to buy additional mini-fridges.

the worse thing is you do the consistent all-nighter(s) in the stararchitect's office, and they don't even say thankyou! :(

I question both my own and everybody's else's behavior towards the issue, it's just not cool!

Not for a starchitect, but I was in the habit of pulling all-nighters for a small firm and after a pulling my 5th one in the 2 weeks - and meeting a crazy deadline, the boss says to me, "You should never pull all-nighters for anyone but yourself."

NOW he tells me. Last one I did for them though I worked there 3 more years.

At my office they are generally very appreciative.

Some people act like assholes about it and make it like getting 10 hours of sleep per week is the expectation.

It comes with the game - besides what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. Acquiesce and comfort cause weakness and an early death – Architecture is the Marine Corp. of the design professions.

I work at night, I play at night, I surf at night, I just love all nights. Love to be an acute insomniac!

Two summer's ago I was pulling an all nighter in Gensler's LA office when there was an earthquake at around 330am. At first I thought I was hallucinating. Fortunately it was a small, slow rolling quake. It was sorta like being on a water bed for a minute or so.

Look at me! I'm an architect! I work 160 hours a week! I don't sleep because I'm an architect! I am grateful I have a job that pays below the poverty level, even though I have nearly a decade of post secondary education! My job is incredibly satisfying. There's nothing like seeing your visionary design of a CMU stripmall in the suburbs come to fruition!

i've actually never experienced an all-nighter at the office. the latest i've ever been in the office is around 9pm. i must have had less that 15 in six years of architecture school. maybe i'm just lucky. i always just found it was better to go home at 3am and at least get some sleep than to stick around until morning and be worthless the rest of the day. i really don't get the whole all-nighter thing with architecture. i've never worked for anyone famous, but i feel at least that i've worked for good architects and only ever did 40-50 hours a week. i guess i assume it has something to do with poor management skills a lot of architects seem to have, and just that they like to hear themselves say that they work that much. in any case, it seems a bit overly dramatic considering the end result of what most architects actually do. it isn't a life or death situation or anything. i'd rather have people be relaxed, awake, healthy, and focused on the issues than spastic and frazzled all the time. there's just too much opportunity for mistakes as it is. competitions are something entirely different, but if somebody wanted me to be there all night all the time, i doubt i'd put up with it for very long, unless it was for someone that i really, really admired.

The nicest thing about all-nighters - besides the camaraderie, of course - is seeing dawn. Once I stayed all night at the office getting a set ready to go to the printers. I left the office at 6am and actually caught one of the first morning buses, then when I got off the bus to walk the remaining perpendicular five blocks home it started snowing, right as the sky was getting light. The world was absolutely beautiful to me at that moment; it looked gorgeous, and I felt good about getting the job done.

Well, as the saying goes, one man's trash is another (wo)man's treasure. For me, the dawn is by far the worst part of an all-nighter. At the first sign of sunlight my initial reaction is, "uh-ohhhh...". My second is a feeling of intense anxiety because I never seem to be as far along in my work by the time the sun comes up as I had hoped I would. But agreeing with lb you just can't beat the all-nighter cameraderie.

geeze I thought you were talking...about doing the nasty all night long in the office.....smirk! It is actually dissapointing to learn it had nothing to do with doing in all night long...in the offie...

I do recall one year working Christmas Eve...Liberty might know some of the work cause she went to Uof A. We were doing code compliant upgrades to most of the buildings on campus. Which involved developing second means of egress from several campus buildings. So we did these exterior stairs. The University insisted that the drawings be completed before the first of the year. So all of us low lifes were grunting it out just to be sure we had all the t's crossed and the I's dotted. It was about 11:00pm when one of the senior partners waltzed thru the office to see how we were doing. It was not a good scene. Liberty might recall the Stair outside of the Engineering building, as she probably had to walk by it a thousand times while she was in school. If she doesn't recall it I can say it was a success, cause we wanted it to blend back to the building.

geeze I thought you were talking...about doing the nasty all night long in the office.....smirk! It is actually dissapointing to learn it had nothing to do with doing in all night long...in the offie...

I do recall one year working Christmas Eve...Liberty might know some of the work cause she went to Uof A. We were doing code compliant upgrades to most of the buildings on campus. Which involved developing second means of egress from several campus buildings. So we did these exterior stairs. The University insisted that the drawings be completed before the first of the year. So all of us low lifes were grunting it out just to be sure we had all the t's crossed and the I's dotted. It was about 11:00pm when one of the senior partners waltzed thru the office to see how we were doing. It was not a good scene. Liberty might recall the Stair outside of the Engineering building, as she probably had to walk by it a thousand times while she was in school. If she doesn't recall it I can say it was a success, cause we wanted it to blend back to the building.

My fondest memories from my couple of years of starchitect all-nighters seem to revolve around smoking in the conference room while eating/drinking the free snacks I had 'found' in the VP lounge.

If it's 3:00 am (and I'm only being paid salary) then why should I have to go down the elevator to the street for a smoke and a visit to the convenience store?

I also liked the fact that there was a dive bar right next to my apartment so I could have a quick beer at 7:00 am - before showering and returning to work.

Thankfully I haven't pulled a work related all-nighter since 2001.

Oh yea...there was also the time when I locked myself out of the office at 2:00 am with an unfinished, due at 7:00am, proposal locked inside.

Good times.

I did 31 hours straight at the office once. I got a LOT done in the wee hours of the morning, something about working under the moonlight when the whole city is quiet can be very peaceful. As I was walking home that afternoon, I walked by the fire station, as I often did. The firemen had their door open and teasingly yelled out to me, "You off work already?" I answered back, "ALREADY!?! I've been at work since 8 am YESTERDAY!" That is probably the only time I will be able to impress 6 firemen at the same time. They didn't know what to say. Maybe they didn't believe me.

But, um, don't you all enjoy your free time? I like architecture, it is neat and all, but I don't want to ruin the rest of my life over it.

Doing overtime is a part of most jobs. If you have to do an all nighter once in a great while, hey sometimes these things can't be helped. But if you are doing 60 plus hours every week or pulling an all nighter once a month or two, then someone doesn't know how to do their job(s) and someone is letting those people get away with it.

I'd quit.

I disagree slightly with both the quitting proposal and the notion of ruining one's life by working hard.

Sometimes people take jobs that they know will have near continuous 60+ hour weeks because 1) they are young enough to physically handle the sleep deprivation, 2) they really believe in and love the work and 3) they know that a couple of years at stararchitect xyz's firm will do wonders for both their resume and their experience level.

On the flip side, I do agree that if you're overworked and all your firm does is churn out strip malls or shipping+receiving facilities (no offense to anyone in this type of firm), then yes, there are probably some bad management practices or people in place, and you may be being abused as an employee.

Ultimately each person has to evaluate their own position in relation to overtime. If it works for you, good deal. If not, move on.