What do you think?
As in the last unit we saw lots of different definitions for architecture, now it’s the time to define architects. They can be defined, for instance, as:
- The one who makes architecture
- An artista, a creator
- A professional devoted to design
- Quien es capaz de ver que necesita la gente para materializarlo en la vida real
Training
In order to achieve the goa lof being a great architect, there is a need of a training. This training consists of learning to:
- See
· analyzing what surrounds us
· drawing
· traveling
· reading
· taking pictures
· watching films
- Think
· know how to express our thoughts and find the lenguaje to interpret it.
· be critical, suspicious and curious
· share your ideas in order to achieve a cpollective thinking
- create
understand the:
· needs of the users
· architecture’s composition rules
· materials
· construction techniques (traditional & innovative)
Tips
The profesión
Definitions
We can also find special definitions for an architect. By special I mean that these definitions were provided by known and recognized architects like Alfonso Muñoz Cosme and Alfonso Campo Baeza. This is how the architects see themselves:
Alfonso Muñoz Cosme: -to be an architect is to know how to recognize and interpret the reality […], but also to dream and imagine things that doesn’t exist yet.-
Alberto Campo Baeza: -to be an architect is to be able to turn a house into a dream and at the sime time being able to turn a dream into a house. […] what he/she does is […] make dreams come true.-
For people like me, future architects, there are a series of advices that seem to be useful in our journey to become architecs:
1. none of you shpuld take architecture for a living, unless you love it as a principle of action, for itself, willing to be as faithful as you are to your mother, your buddy or yourselves.
2. get in the habit of immediatly thinking about the why of things regarding whichever effect you like or dislike.
3. do not take for grented that something is beautiful or ugly, but crumble every building, studying every detail. Learn to distinguish the curious from beautiful.
4. get used to the analisis. Over the time, the análisis Will allow the synthesis to beome a mental habit.
5. think “simple”. Order from the general to the particular, and never confuse them, if you do not want to confuse you.
6. to enter into practice with maturity is to sell your birthright as an architect in exchange for a crust or to die pretending to be an architect.
7. take time to prepare yourselves. Ten years of preparation for the preliminaries of architectural practice are few for any architect “who wants to rise” above his mediocrity.
8. enter the field where you can see in action the machines and methods that construct modern buildings, or stay in direct and simple construction until you can naturally arrive at building design by the nature of construction.
9. consider it as a desirable to builf a hen-house as a cathedral. The dimensión of the project means Little in art above the monetary question. What really counts is the quality of carácter. Carácter can be big in the small or small in the big.
10. do not enter any architectural competition under any circumstances, except as novices. No competion gave the world anything of value in architecture. The jury itself is a selection of mediocrities. The first things the jury does is to review the designs and discard the best and worst, in order, as mediocrity, to be able to judge mediocrity.
What does “working as an architect” means?
- Self-employed work
- Work for others:
· pivate
· public administration
- Areas:
· buildings
· urban planning
· interior design
· teaching
· valuation