I graduated almost a year ago with a Master's in Architecture for the past year I've been questioning what I want to do career wise. I have 6 years of cost estimating experience, 1 year project management experience, and 2 years of structural design experience. After graduating I steered away from interning for a firm, because I felt that career wise it was going to be a reset and the on the job experience that I picked up was going to be abandoned and internships didn't really offer the pay which I was looking for at this stage in my career and also life kind of hit with not being able to keep myself a float while paying off the debt I am in from school on an intern's salary. So right after receiving my master degree I went back to residential structural design until I figure out exactly what I wanted to do as a long term career. I'm coming up on a year with the company that I am with and I am at the point where I want to make the move to either taking the cut in salary and interning for a firm or trying to get into an entry level urban planner position, being that I have an interest of looking at areas at the urban scale. I would like the hear the experiences of other people who had the similar dilemma after wrapping up your studies and/or made the cross from Architecture to Urban Planning.
I tried transitioning to urban planning after spending almost two years in construction, real estate and BIM-production, but as a voluntary intern in the city planning department of my city's local government. It was a good experience. It was mostly research, making reports and gathering data. I thought I got to do some urban design + landscape architecture but turns out the urban planning in government was more of policies and zoning. I didn't continue the gig and ventured into organizing events with friends where I met the clients I've worked with eventually. Since then I've been working full time as an architect doing all sorts of projects that come my way---both paid and unpaid. Ugh.
Anyway, don't cut yourself short. With a masters in architecture, you can (1) demand a higher salary because you have a higher educational attainment AND many years of experience especially in cost estimates which I think is a vital and specialized skill in architects; (2) you can pretty much already get into an intermediate or mid-level entry urban planning position (better if you take the urban design route first then eventually transition to urban planning). Consider also taking or applying for research assistant positions with professors (who specialize in the field you want to get into) in university.
I graduated almost a year ago with a Master's in Architecture for the past year I've been questioning what I want to do career wise. I have 6 years of cost estimating experience, 1 year project management experience, and 2 years of structural design experience. After graduating I steered away from interning for a firm, because I felt that career wise it was going to be a reset and the on the job experience that I picked up was going to be abandoned and internships didn't really offer the pay which I was looking for at this stage in my career and also life kind of hit with not being able to keep myself a float while paying off the debt I am in from school on an intern's salary. So right after receiving my master degree I went back to residential structural design until I figure out exactly what I wanted to do as a long term career. I'm coming up on a year with the company that I am with and I am at the point where I want to make the move to either taking the cut in salary and interning for a firm or trying to get into an entry level urban planner position, being that I have an interest of looking at areas at the urban scale. I would like the hear the experiences of other people who had the similar dilemma after wrapping up your studies and/or made the cross from Architecture to Urban Planning.
Post it again, third time's a charm.
Recently graduated and trying to plan my career
I tried transitioning to urban planning after spending almost two years in construction, real estate and BIM-production, but as a voluntary intern in the city planning department of my city's local government. It was a good experience. It was mostly research, making reports and gathering data. I thought I got to do some urban design + landscape architecture but turns out the urban planning in government was more of policies and zoning. I didn't continue the gig and ventured into organizing events with friends where I met the clients I've worked with eventually. Since then I've been working full time as an architect doing all sorts of projects that come my way---both paid and unpaid. Ugh.
Anyway, don't cut yourself short. With a masters in architecture, you can (1) demand a higher salary because you have a higher educational attainment AND many years of experience especially in cost estimates which I think is a vital and specialized skill in architects; (2) you can pretty much already get into an intermediate or mid-level entry urban planning position (better if you take the urban design route first then eventually transition to urban planning). Consider also taking or applying for research assistant positions with professors (who specialize in the field you want to get into) in university.