What do Architects do?

A friend once said to me, when I told him I was an Architect, "what do you do?"

This is a constant problem for our profession, people so often think that we 'draw up plans' (whatever that means!) He could not see that a building is quite a complicated thing and that to get it right requires a lot of thought and consideration, followed by a heck of a lot of drawings.

On a typical new build house, the client imagines that they will have a couple of plans showing all the nice rooms, some lovely pictures showing the outside and that is that. Not so. The list below might give some idea of the amount of information we need to produce in order for a project to be elevated beyond bog-standard.

Location plan, site plan, landscape plan, foundation plan, drainage plan, floor plans, electrical plans, ceiling plans, roof plan, elevations, cross sections, plan details (maybe 10), section details (again 10), internal joinery details, furniture layouts, kitchen layouts, internal elevations, tiling arrangements, finishes schedule, door schedule, window schedule, ironmongery schedule, taps and sanitary ware schedule.... I could go on and on and on.

My point is, that sure, you could get a builder in to do your house but how much control would you have? especially since the guy you are paying to do the work might make decisions which suit him rather than you.

Architects (okay MOST Architects) care deeply about the quality of space they design. We think long and hard about subtle details that you might not even notice, but I'm damn sure you would notice them if we didn't.

It's been a while

It's been a while since I posted, There just aren't enough hours in the day to keep everything up to date.

Time management is talked about as a skill which every Architect needs to learn, I'm not so sure! Architecture is an absorbing pursuit and I can find myself spending hours on items which less caring designers might fire out in minutes, just to get it right!

I used to think that I was good at managing my time, but the truth is I'm not - If I were I would know that I should stop designing when the profit starts running out, regardless of whether the design is good or not.

In a recent fee bid, I submitted what I thought was a reasonable quote based on what I saw as the work required. I later found out that another 'Architect' had undercut everyone by a significant margin and was working for a paltry sum. I thought long and hard about this and came to the conclusion that I could not have done the job for the tiny fee that the developer expected, I would have had to cut corners, produce poor drawings, not test my designs and the product wouldn't have been as good. If I was a time management Nazi, I might have worked out how many hours, minutes and seconds the job would have taken and stuck to it. but this is not how I work! I consider that the job of an Architect is to solve a problem, not to 'maybe' solve a problem within a given number of minutes.

I don't wear a watch, I don't have a clock in my office and I don't fill in a time sheet unless I really have to.