In a country that’s swarmed with hordes of students joining mainly engineering and medical courses, Architecture feels like a breath of fresh air due to its amalgamation of art and science. Studying Architecture is an exciting prospect; it is a field that enables you to have a lasting impact on society.
The mere chance of building a structure from scratch to its realization is a great potential that architects have, and the ability to shape their surroundings tastefully and artistically is a power they wield.
Given this enormous responsibility, Architecture College and its courses are grueling, creative and require a student to learn many skills to carry out their professional roles responsibly. Unlike most courses in India, however, Architecture is a very hands-on course and often can be a jittering experience at the start.
Architects can appreciate art along with technology and they also have the knowledge to engineer their designs to fruition. Such a well-rounded and demanding profession requires a great set of skills and Architecture College is a place to polish and learn these skills.
A few crucial technical skills that you learn at Architecture College are mentioned below.
Creativity
A presumption most of us have when entering Architecture College is that we have to be naturally creative to be good at it. Although it is an advantage, creativity is not the skill everyone has honed in their school life. Architecture college teaches you how to develop and hone your creative side, and thus prepares you to better imbibe creative values and methods.
Multitasking
The biggest shock, per se, when you join architecture is the sheer number of subjects you’re taught! Each subject requires attention and work, so multitasking becomes an important skill that you develop through college.
This skill translates as an efficient method to conduct your professional practice, where an architect is required to carry out most tasks like site visits, drawing preparations, legal contracts, project management, to name a few.
Leadership and Management
Most projects in architecture college require students to work as a group. This is also often not regulated by a faculty member; you have to create your brief as a team and work on design ideas together. It enables you to take charge in a group setting and to manage your team.
As a professional, leadership is an important skill you learn through college. Management of a project also teaches you to manage the expectations of clients.
Collaborative skills
As mentioned above, group projects are a staple in Architecture College, and with it comes the need to be a team player and collaborate with your group members. Knowing how to work together is therefore an important skill you learn throughout your time at Architecture College.
With time it enables you to network with your peers or different industry professionals to collaborate on projects and create something bigger!
Problem-Solving Skills
Designing efficiently means solving a problem, and that requires analytical and problem-solving skills. Through various design problems in college, this skill is honed and developed to help a professional take a pragmatic approach to any design.
Attention to Detail
Every design project is a massive endeavor; it requires careful thought from the macro scale to the micro. Thus, attention to detail becomes a crucial skill that you learn during the course. When a project is executed, workers rely on painstakingly detailed drawings to bring the design to life.
At this point, every detail matters, a window placed wrongly might transform the façade of the building. Similarly, a more detail-oriented design brief is for small projects like furniture or product design, where wrongly placed handles on a chair can result in an uncomfortable piece of furniture.
Visualization
Visualization is a tool that an architect must possess. Since the first day of college, you are required to visualize any space that you design, since not all of it can be conveyed through Two Dimensional Drawings.
Of course, this is made much easier through various software now available to visualize your design, however, the initial process of a design requires you to imagine and create spaces in your mind. This is also a skill honed in the course as various methods of how to visualize a space are taught through different tasks and projects.
Dealing with criticism
One of the phrases most often heard from professors is “Don’t fall in love with your design!” And it is a phrase that is true since loving your design limits you from exploring any more possibilities or even improving the design. Architecture is a subjective course, and all your designs are open to criticism by professors and peers.
Learning how to constructively take their criticism and better your design is a skill that college teaches you. Eventually, it helps you in taking client critique or peer critique in your stride and accept that no design is perfect, and that is only human.
Making a pitch
A big part of being a good designer means knowing how to sell your design! And that means convincing people about the unique and exclusive aspects of the design. Luckily, five years of college and many project pitches later, making a good pitch for your design is a skill you pick up eventually.
Appreciation for Coffee
Lastly, Architecture is a grueling course that requires long hours of work and very little sleep. If you were not a coffee drinker before, the college also teaches you a great appreciation for coffee, since it helps you power through your many submissions.
As we can see, Architecture is not merely a course that can be completed with some imagination and flair, it requires a set of polished skills and hard-working nature. Along with these above-mentioned technical skills, you also need to be confident, have good soft skills, and of course, some style. Most of these skills are honed and even taught in Architecture College, however, some self-motivation and initiative can go a long way.
