ArchitectBlog.org

If you need to go to court, you could go to the courthouse, wait in line, fill out papers, gather evidence, take time off work, and argue in the courtroom trying to manage by yourself.  Or you could hire a lawyer – a licensed professional who can help you through the process.   Do you “need” a lawyer? No.  Do you want a lawyer?  Yes.

The same goes for an architect in most cases (single family residential construction).  You could review your local zoning code and state building code, draw up your own plans and specifications, bid your work out to contractors, negotiate a fair contract, and oversee the work (while missing work to do so).  However, hiring a registered architect will not only alleviate many of those hassles from your life, architects bring experience and can help add value to your project.  So when do you “need” an architect? Ask your local building department.  When do you want an architect?  Always!

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If you do a search on any job listing website, you’ll find thousands of jobs for information architect, java script architect, database architect, and so on.  The news media likes to refer to terrorists as “the architect behind last weeks bombings” or to politicians as “the architect of the so-and-so bill.”  However, every state in the US has a Board of Architects which legally restricts the use of the term “Architect” to a licensed professional in that state.  Here’s how you go about earning that title that people throw around so haphazardly.

Step one – Go to college (and graduate).  Sounds simple enough, right?  Think again. Not only is any design-based curriculum a never ending string of all-nighters in an attempt to appeal to the varying subjective tastes of varying critics and reviewers, architecture school adds on top of that courses in structural engineering, contracts, business practices, architectural history, design theory, material and energy conservation, green design, and then there are the electives.  It’s no easy feat.  On top of that, to become licensed in most states, your B.Arch or M.Arch has to be from an accredited school.   Accreditation comes from the NAAB and is renewed every 5 (or so) years.  Most accredited schools don’t allow design course credits to transfer, so those first 2 years at community college aren’t going to get you out of much. (more…)