Architecture school is an extensive haul and we all know it. This 5-year professional course is a grueling process. However, most would hopefully agree, it’s worth the knowledge you gain throughout these years. Architectural education is about more than learning to create great spaces and whether or not you realize it at the time, architecture school is also a great teacher of other life lessons. These skills are those you are likely to attain incidentally during your tenure in architecture school, but which will be an asset outside of academia as well.
Design Thinking/Problem Solving
Talking of solving problems, one of the overarching threads through a design education is what instructors refer to as “design thinking” and what you can think of like a fancy term for problem-solving. Education in, and knowledge of, design thinking can be applied to any field where people need to solve problems. Architects are taught from the beginning to look at a problem from all angles (often literally), to gather information, study precedents, and then to make thoughtful choices when determining a solution and to analyze the effects of the moves they make. This process and these skills can be applied to any type of problem to make us more efficient and effective at solving it.
Learning, Reading, Researching
Another widely relevant skill set is simply learning how to learn. No one is born with an inherent knowledge of design motifs in Art Deco mosaics, but if you had to write a paper about them for an architectural history class you probably also learned a bit about the process of conducting research. When your professor assigned chapters of reading to be completed overnight, hopefully, you also learned how to absorb what you read so that you didn’t waste your nights staring blankly at the same paragraph for half an hour. Having a skill set that allows you to accumulate new knowledge efficiently will always be beneficial, so ideally, you’ll be able to hang on to some of your old study habits even once you’re out of school.
Time Management
Good time management is incredibly handy while you’re in college to avoid as many late nights in the studio as you can. Due to the often-intense time pressure involved in architecture college, architecture students have a good opportunity to learn to prioritize tasks and manage their time wisely. If you flourish in having good time management while you’re an architecture student, whatever time crunch life throws your way in the future should be a breeze in comparison.
Defending Your Work and Your Opinions
With the above in mind, what one should not do is sell themself short on review day. It’s an intricate balance, but you’ve put a lot of work into this project and are the chief expert on the topic of your design. If a reviewer questions your choices or motives, you can answer the questions and explain your work clearly. One learns to have a strong argument and hold to your opinions, but listen to feedback. This can be done without getting defensive. After spending time in architecture college, you should know how to have a constructive dialogue and debate about your work as well as someone else’s.
Public Speaking/Presentation Skills
Practice makes man perfect and in architecture college, you get a lot of practice presenting your work. Whether you’re explaining your ideas to skeptical group members, trying to convince your professor that you know what you’re talking about, or defending your design in your final review, architecture college is full of presentations of all shapes and sizes. Once you become comfortable speaking or presenting in front of different-sized groups of people, that’s something you can take with you into your post-school life, and the more often that one is forced to do it, the easier it will become.
Working with a Team
By this point, we’ve all been disillusioned by the architect-as-solitary-genius stereotype and the reality is that if you work in an architecture firm, you will be working with a team. Thankfully, architecture allows you to practice this with group projects galore. Though it may be a process full of frustration, you are learning important lessons about how to work with (deal with) other people, and possibly how not to. It may sound like a cliché, but good teamwork skills are truly invaluable to employers. In a pragmatic sense, they likely aren’t interested in hiring you for your unique genius and flawless taste, but because they want someone who can work with the rest of the office to get things done. If you can’t do that, your design concepts are not worth much to them, whereas if you can work well with (and eventually lead) a team, all your other skills are just a prodigious bonus.
Learn about Great Architects of the Past
Delving into the past is always a great idea, no matter what career you are interested in pursuing. Everyone can learn a lot about the past greats in their fields of study. This proves true for a student of architecture as there are so many amazing historical architects.
Reminiscing the past can make you a better architect and can help you rediscover your passion for design. Reminding yourself of what has been, gives you a strong base for the future.” One should look up some of the eminent historical architects and gain inspiration from their work.
Importance to Details
The big picture is a pleasure to look at and dream about, but when it comes to the study and implementation of architecture—it’s all about the details, and sometimes those details can be very tedious.
Angles, accurate lines, and minute measurements are some of the things that go into the big picture, but those small details are what make up the whole (and require a lot of attention).
In the beginning, each of the strands of study might seem quite separate – some will be scientific, some historic, and some more creative. But, as you progress through your study, the areas of learning will come to overlap more and more.
