I've always been interested in cities, architecture, but after doing a 2 year undergrad in design I'm wondering now if I want to be an architect. One of the main reasons is that I found I am more interested in research and a scientific approach than my peers, instructors. I was wondering if you guys know about any niches within architecture or adjacent fields that focus more on scientific or quantitative approaches to cities and urbanism?
The practice of architecture seems more results-oriented, and architecture academia seems to me more qualitative and similar to the humanities (lots of words, few numbers.) Would planners or urban designers make more use of numbers, social science approaches? Or, going back to practice, would firms who design hospitals for instance focus more on technical, program performance types of metrics?
Sorry if this is pretty general, just thought I'd fish for some info here. Please, not too many troll comments though, I'll probably just ignore them. (Also, I feel like I set myself up to be suggested engineering. I should mention that I'm not that interested in engineering for a couple of reasons.)
anonitect
Jul 11, 15 2:38 pm
Why is engineering not an option?
Jul 11, 15 2:54 pm
thwoomp,
Architecture can be very scientific oriented or very design oriented and areas in between.
Alot of architecture programs are in fact are like glorified art schools because they have aligned themselves so closely with art that they sometimes get too "artsy" and lack quantitative practices and focus too much on qualitative.
However, the profession of architecture can be more quantitative. This would be something that you could use in specializations. For example, minoring in Geography for example. No, geography in college level isn't memorizing states and capitols.
I sense you are getting burned by the over qualitative focus. So perhaps, pepper in some course from geography, urban design, historic preservation research and such. From geography, you got environmental geography, political geography, cultural geography, etc. Some of that can go well with urban design and historic preservation including learning GIS and all this can work into architecture.
You can be an architect and branch into these avenues as means of differentiating yourself from a generic architecture background.
I've always been interested in cities, architecture, but after doing a 2 year undergrad in design I'm wondering now if I want to be an architect. One of the main reasons is that I found I am more interested in research and a scientific approach than my peers, instructors. I was wondering if you guys know about any niches within architecture or adjacent fields that focus more on scientific or quantitative approaches to cities and urbanism?
The practice of architecture seems more results-oriented, and architecture academia seems to me more qualitative and similar to the humanities (lots of words, few numbers.) Would planners or urban designers make more use of numbers, social science approaches? Or, going back to practice, would firms who design hospitals for instance focus more on technical, program performance types of metrics?
Sorry if this is pretty general, just thought I'd fish for some info here. Please, not too many troll comments though, I'll probably just ignore them. (Also, I feel like I set myself up to be suggested engineering. I should mention that I'm not that interested in engineering for a couple of reasons.)
Why is engineering not an option?
thwoomp,
Architecture can be very scientific oriented or very design oriented and areas in between.
Alot of architecture programs are in fact are like glorified art schools because they have aligned themselves so closely with art that they sometimes get too "artsy" and lack quantitative practices and focus too much on qualitative.
However, the profession of architecture can be more quantitative. This would be something that you could use in specializations. For example, minoring in Geography for example. No, geography in college level isn't memorizing states and capitols.
I sense you are getting burned by the over qualitative focus. So perhaps, pepper in some course from geography, urban design, historic preservation research and such. From geography, you got environmental geography, political geography, cultural geography, etc. Some of that can go well with urban design and historic preservation including learning GIS and all this can work into architecture.
You can be an architect and branch into these avenues as means of differentiating yourself from a generic architecture background.
There are options. Just use it.