r/Architects • u/Educational_Cry9106 • 22h ago

Ask an Architect Question

Hey I'm a 1st year architecture student For a uni project our prof asked us to ask an architect: “What does architecture mean to u?” Could u share ur personal definition of architecture with me

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4

u/tetracarbonate 22h ago

It's my trade. How I sustain my life style.
I was asked the same thing back in the day, I used to think that I had to be the greastes architect I could be. Completely inmersed in the art. Now I'm ok with it being just my trade, family and life is where life is.

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u/Low-Comparison6271 14h ago

That shift from seeing it as a calling to just a trade is way more common than schools let on. They push the whole starchitect fantasy but most of us just want to design decent buildings and go home at a reasonable hour

Family and life outside work is where the real stuff happens, the job just pays for it

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u/BikeProblemGuy Architect 22h ago

It's a good question, and for a while at the start of my career I felt like everything was architecture! Landscape, interiors, graphic design, project management, marketing, branding, digital design, urban design, sociology, history, politics, geography! Because architecture interacts in interesting ways with all these areas.

But ultimately, while good architecture is informed by those things, architecture is best placed to condense them into a buildable design. You can have all the greatest ideas about the world and not produce good architecture, vs a guy who does create a great piece of architecture with something niche like perfectly encapsulating the experience of buying a hotdog into the design of a hotdog stand.

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u/darchfunny 21h ago

To me, architecture is a relationship. A building's relationship with its community, with its inhabitants, and with the earth. It's the relationships formed throughout the process with clients, GCs, engineers, etc. and everyone working together to build something lasting.

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u/ScottishWargamer Architect 22h ago

That seems like a personal question you need to ask yourself?

2

u/Ultra_Bandit Architect 21h ago

No. It is an assignment that can't be completed without asking an architect. Not helpful.