Comments on: Architects are lower down the pecking order now!

By: Architects Fees

Architects Fees — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 20:16:50 +0000

As a sole practitioner and a relatively young Architect, (30) I can easily remember life as a graduate. I have found that the more relevant to the decision making process the architect is, the greater respect they are shown by the contractor. I spent some time working on PPP/PFI schools after graduating and even the senior Architects got short shift from the builders because we were essentially their employees. Once I began working on JCT contracts the reverse was true, the contractor frequently disagreed with us but was always respectful because, under the contract, our word was final.

By: Yonatan

Yonatan — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 00:06:13 +0000

Us programmers do the same thing. Actually, current methods were made in order to serve our clients better and be ready for change in software at any time.
If you want to draw freely on paper and ignore costs or engineering problems, you’re “just” an artist, and therefore getting paid like one.

By: james

james — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 04:17:15 +0000

I’m not an architect/architecture student. I’m a cad monkey. I architecture but i chose building design because the course was only two years, vs 5-6 and a 5 digit HECS debt.
It wasn’t just that, though.
I called lots of architects and building designers and the continuous complaint I heard from both is “grad architects are useless, they don’t know anything about construction or costing.” Also, there was the fact that building designers (evil, souless creatures that we are) get 85% of the design work out there – and the grad architects I spoke to were only making 35-40K a year. Looking at Job ads, I realised that a building designer with 5 years experience earns around the same as an architect with 5 yrs experience (85-100K)-and the building designer has no HECS debt.
From my contact with the building industry so far (very minimal) it seems that architects have gotten a bad rep for often being impractical with actual building and structural specifics.
Construction is at the heart of building design and architecture. Whichever is better, if you don’t know construction and are dependant on others to provide it you’re wages will reflect this. It’s that sentence, “As per engineers specifications” – everytime you write that, what you’re saying is, “I’m not capable of working this out, I’m referring it to someone who can -” and that engineer will be better paid than you because his skills are more necessary.
A long time ago architects did all this technical planning themselves. The only modern equiviant is Santiago Calatrava. He says, “As per MY specifications.”
The more divorced architects become from the origin of their profession the less necessary they will be to it, and they’ll be paid less.

By: Calvin

Calvin — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 21:37:25 +0000

Etienne, you’ve got a point there. Then again, could it be the modernization of the entire human civilization? Education is important, back then not many people have the luxury of education, whereas today, a degree is nothing, almost every single person from the first world has one.

By: Etienne

Etienne — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 21:29:14 +0000

The question is what really happen that made things change like this. Part of the answer I believe is CAD and 3D modelling: computerization of the way we work made us slaves of the computer instead of slave of the drawing table. If you were to produce a plan, and then changes came and you had to redraw the whole thing, architects where tougher on the work so that their design be respected as drawn. Now that the smallest change can be dealt by a simple re-print, we are stuck in an abuse of perpetual changes. Now with 3D, anyone can look professionnal with a 3D rendering of a project, although it is not always good architecture. Maybe the difference is that 20 years ago, a bad architect would simply not work, now they work against the profession like prostitutes, and get the jobs for the now wll established “lowest bid” competitions.