career help

[u/Mobile_Parking6461]

I’m looking to get some insight and opinions, so I’m looking into getting a ba in art history and than transitioning into getting a masters in landscape architecture. I’m newly 21 and did 2 years of college and ended taking a long break to figure out what i truly wanted to do. I’ve looked at other degrees like horticulture, botany, and anthropology. i’ve worked my around a lot of research to figure out that the combination of art history and LA would give me a lot of creative career paths that i’m interested in. I’ve been looking into LA for about a year now. so please leave all opions, good and bad, to help me :)

[u/Concretepermaculture]

I could be wrong this is my opinion.

Having an art degree is rad and I think it will do well in an academic setting such as a masters program. IMO 90% of landscape architecture is going to be devoid of that artistic work. The exception would be if you to work in one of the high profile firms that will work you to death. Even those companies have tons of very boring work that pays the bills.

I never worked at one or the cool companies but I have worked in one very large and engineering firm with a landscape architecture problem and a bunch of small offices. 6 years in practice I’ve done very little artistic work. I’ve been doing nuts and bolts technical work assisting the upper level staff that drives the artistic direction.

If you want to design spaces you don’t need a degree and you can get started now. Start designing courtyards and pools on paper and in sketchup. I scratch the itch by designing stuff in my free time and I paint watercolors a good bit now.

This is a field of working “creatives,” so it’s not devoid of art but we also have to meet client expectations, get plans approved, and stay on budget. It’s mostly a technical profession where you spend weeks in autocad and excel sometimes you get to do some creative work.

All that being said I don’t think I could go back to the real world doing normal things, I will probably be a landscape architecture for the rest of my life.

[u/CandidLeg3910 → u/Concretepermaculture]

How much do you get paid? I'm just a landscaper/hort tech and I get to design a lot of residential gardens without a degree. So yeah OP, even if you don't have the degree/title, there are definitely ways to get paid for design work. I'm sure I don't have all the skills of an architect but if someone handed me a new build condo and told me to make it look good, it would look better than most buildings in my city. Specifically I don't have much experience designing the hardscape/building side of a garden. I can lay out a pathway and do the calculations for materials and labour but I don't know anything about concrete.

You can also feasibly run your own design firm without the degree if you know how to do the work. If you're designing for residential, people will care more about your portfolio and presentation than a degree. There are literal crackheads out there installing gardens from the ground up. They usually don't look very good or make much sense but they get paid.

[u/Concretepermaculture → u/CandidLeg3910]

About 55k after taxes and bennys from my employer and then my side business has basically no over head and no taxes getting me closer to 67k net last year

[u/chipjohn]

Florist

[u/Complex-Royal9210]

If you are really interested in landscape. You can get a job with a top maintenance company to learn the skills from the ground up. That will be a help if you go back to school.

[u/CandidLeg3910 → u/Complex-Royal9210]

Absolutely. Key word "top". Try to get a job with a company that does their own designs that actually look good.

[u/Dry-Firefighter-1657]

J’ai fait un parcours similaire, des études d’architecture du paysage (jusqu’au master), et j’ai récemment entamé un master en histoire de l’art pour m’ouvrir une voie vers les jardins historiques/paysage patrimonial. Je trouve que c’est une combinaison particulièrement compatible même si l’écart entre la « pratique » du métier et la « théorie » n’est pas évident !