Hi there! The main character in a story I am writing is an architecture student, and so I am doing field research to better understand the industry so I can understand my character better. If you don't mind, would you be willing to answer the following questions:
- What do you take mental note of when you walk into a room or a building? - What do you take mental note of when you see a building for the first time? - There are a collection of textbooks and other resources that doctors and medical students constantly use as reference, such as Gray's Anatomy (The book, not the show). Is there something similar for architects? - How much do architects deal with the interior of a building, or is that left to interior designers? - I am a programmer by trade and an artist by hobby, and so I naturally view the world around me through the lens of how it applies to code and computer programming, and I watch how light interacts with things. How has becoming architect changed how you look at the world around you? (For example, is everything broken down into shapes and materials, do you visualize structural integrity, etc.) - What is something that everyone in the industry knows that outsiders generally don't? What's something someone can say that has you immediately know they are an architect? - What tools and equipment do architects generally use? Drafting table, protractors, resources, etc. - What is the most indispensable tool in your field? - How well can architects identify styles and different architectural elements, or is it a situation where you know what to look up rather than having the information in your brain at all times? - Have you been able to apply ideas about architecture to other subjects (Photo Composition, Comics, Biology, etc.) - What is the primary goal of an architect? - Do architects look up to Frank Lloyd Wright, or is it like psychology where Sigmund Freud is acknowledged for his contributions to the field but is known for being a quack? What other architects do people look up to? - In the programming world, there has been an inane debate raging for decades between the Vim and Emacs text editors, to the point where bringing it up in any sufficiently large room of programmers is sure to start a heated debate. Is there a similar debate where most people have a strong opinion on the matter? - What's something that keeps happening in media that keeps bothering you now that you have an eye for architecture? - If you encountered an architect character in fiction, what would make you say "the person who wrote this really did their homework"?
for the record, I *have* done research already. I just find it more helpful to ask people in the field the same questions I researched and listen to their response, rather than just asking them to confirm my findings (which often yields a simple and uninformative "yes" or "no" answer)
Read Where'd You Go, Bernadette? for one very accurate portrayal of an obsessive architect. As the author said, architects have "an ugliness of character."
Well, you certainly fooled me then. Protip, don’t romanticize architects like they do on sitcoms and whatever. It’s stupid.
Mar 30, 24 8:41 pm ·
·
greysonjennings
was I doing that? I chose the main character to be an architecture student because it was thematically relevant and I happen to have an interest in the subject.
hey there! im a fellow writer who also happens to be an architecture student right now. i also came from the programming world (escaped though) archinect deleted half of my comment so i am going to try and rewrite it.. -
Mar 30, 24 11:45 pm ·
·
lavenderlasagna
- rooms: the character of whom the room is used by. buildings: the character of whom it was made for, who made it.. and if its ugly LOL
- "architectural graphical standards" but nobody likes that book. it's exactly as it says on the tin: a book about the standards of drawing for architects. outside of this, architectural literature is plentiful, but varies for every person. go and check your nearest architectural college's library if you can!
- architects do form: interior designers decorate. we do plenty with the interior's form, such as how high the ceiling may be, or how low, or how much light enters it, or if there's a difference in floors, etc, but we aren't exactly concerned on light fixtures and furniture. that's for the interior designer.
- drafting tables have largely gone out of style since the 2000s. we are now a primarily digital industry with the softwares Revit, AutoCAD, sometimes SketchUp and soooometimes Rhino taking prevalence in the industry. but that is to say that if your character is studying architecture at a time or in a place where they might be more likely to use a drafting table, give them the drafting table!
- sketchbooks are a must. some architects with a more modern personality may favor ipads but so many use black moleskine notebooks as a standard haha
Mar 30, 24 11:53 pm ·
·
lavenderlasagna
- you need to decide your character's architectural goal on your own. our reason for architecture differs for us all and drives us: your character is no different. we cannot tell you why your character wants to be an architect. - any graduated architect will not have such idols because we know all their flaws, but we may start out with some idols. one of my closest studio friends is portuguese so she likes alvaro siza and often references his work. - i hate when architect characters are nothing but architecture, because architect humans are more than just architecture. dont get me wrong, ive seen people devote their lives to architecture, but it does them no good. it makes a shell of a human, and only rarely with the skills to make up for it. the best architects live outside of architecture and bring that life back into architecture through interests and knowledge.
Architecture today is a broad field. Within any given architecture class there will be as many preoccupations, aspirations, and motivations as there are students. One may be attracted to the romantic notion of shaping space as experienced by all the senses; their sacred text may be "Eyes of the Skin," their idol Peter Zumthor or Steven Holl. another may be a Zaha Hadid devotee obsessed with the idea of designer as cyborg, working with parametric scripting and robotics to create fantastic, otherwordly forms. Yet another may love nothing more than construction details, finding great inspiration in the elegant problem-solving of Renzo Piano or Glenn Murcutt.
There are generalists and specialists, businesspeople and artists, tinkerers and expressionists, and each will notice something different when they enter a space. Some will gravitate toward larger gestures--a dramatic swooping entry canopy, an atrium with views ricocheting from floor to floor--and others will inspect the intricacies of how a curtain wall joins with the structural framing.
Popular culture likes to imagine that creatives look at the world through a rarified lens of genius. Despite our interests and schooling, none of us possesses the superhuman ability to instantly comprehend all the intricacies of a built space. It would be exhausting to read about an architect walking into a space and their brain igniting Sherlock Holmes-style as they instantly analyze form, material, procession, views, historical references, etc. Like anyone else, we react to spaces first on a reactionary, gut level, and then may hone in on one or two aspects that interest us. We are just as prone to distraction and tunnel vision as anyone else; we simply have better tools to analyze and speculate on what we're seeing.
Not to mention that so much of architecture is hidden from the observer. It sounds strange, but many architects are not very observant or appreciative of buildings as they are experienced firsthand. Some would prefer to look at drawings, where all the information you need to comprehend the design is layered all at once.
The biggest mistake you can make is to portray architects as a homogenous group of turtleneck-wearing, Frank Lloyd Wright-worshipping artists; popular culture has had enough of this trope, and the reality of architecture today is much more diverse and complex. As noted above, we are all people first. What will make your characters believable as architects is not whether they're reading the right book or have the right opinion on a given issue, but how rich and complex they are as people.
That said, it may help you to do more research on what we learn in school and how we work in practice. Today, we primarily work on computers. Some schools may encourage more hand-drawing and physical model-building; others encourage a hybrid of physical and digital media. Typically design schools encourage students to think not in terms of predefined, familiar components (kitchen + bedroom + curtain wall + balcony) but in terms of conceptual operations (mirroring, subdividing, hollowing out, aggregating) and the sensory considerations of the activities taking place within. In practice, every architect has a different preferred method and medium for ideating--some may sketch by hand on trace paper, others may make quick study models with paper or cardboard, others may iterate in Rhino/Grasshopper and 3d print small massing models.
The architecture world is full of debates and opinions, and it is always evolving. One controversial issue today is how to incorporate AI into the design process--at what point is the humanity of the architect or their work lost? How important is the human hand when software can do what we do, in almost every case faster and more efficiently? I would be interested in reading about an architect who feels conflicted about how they interface with digital technology; this issue obviously has implications far beyond architecture.
Finally, because architecture today is so broad, you have the benefit of being able to explore almost any human drama or global issue through the architect's lens. I would encourage you to think of architects not as a group of fascinating, self-referential geniuses, but as curious, flawed, active participants in the world around them who happen to have chosen architecture as their axe.
Apr 5, 24 1:39 pm ·
·
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Questions from a writer
Hi there! The main character in a story I am writing is an architecture student, and so I am doing field research to better understand the industry so I can understand my character better. If you don't mind, would you be willing to answer the following questions:
- What do you take mental note of when you walk into a room or a building?
- What do you take mental note of when you see a building for the first time?
- There are a collection of textbooks and other resources that doctors and medical students constantly use as reference, such as Gray's Anatomy (The book, not the show). Is there something similar for architects?
- How much do architects deal with the interior of a building, or is that left to interior designers?
- I am a programmer by trade and an artist by hobby, and so I naturally view the world around me through the lens of how it applies to code and computer programming, and I watch how light interacts with things. How has becoming architect changed how you look at the world around you? (For example, is everything broken down into shapes and materials, do you visualize structural integrity, etc.)
- What is something that everyone in the industry knows that outsiders generally don't? What's something someone can say that has you immediately know they are an architect?
- What tools and equipment do architects generally use? Drafting table, protractors, resources, etc.
- What is the most indispensable tool in your field?
- How well can architects identify styles and different architectural elements, or is it a situation where you know what to look up rather than having the information in your brain at all times?
- Have you been able to apply ideas about architecture to other subjects (Photo Composition, Comics, Biology, etc.)
- What is the primary goal of an architect?
- Do architects look up to Frank Lloyd Wright, or is it like psychology where Sigmund Freud is acknowledged for his contributions to the field but is known for being a quack? What other architects do people look up to?
- In the programming world, there has been an inane debate raging for decades between the Vim and Emacs text editors, to the point where bringing it up in any sufficiently large room of programmers is sure to start a heated debate. Is there a similar debate where most people have a strong opinion on the matter?
- What's something that keeps happening in media that keeps bothering you now that you have an eye for architecture?
- If you encountered an architect character in fiction, what would make you say "the person who wrote this really did their homework"?
Thank you for your time.
for the record, I *have* done research already. I just find it more helpful to ask people in the field the same questions I researched and listen to their response, rather than just asking them to confirm my findings (which often yields a simple and uninformative "yes" or "no" answer)
Read Where'd You Go, Bernadette? for one very accurate portrayal of an obsessive architect. As the author said, architects have "an ugliness of character."
when is your homework due?
i'm not in school right now.
Well, you certainly fooled me then. Protip, don’t romanticize architects like they do on sitcoms and whatever. It’s stupid.
was I doing that? I chose the main character to be an architecture student because it was thematically relevant and I happen to have an interest in the subject.
hey there! im a fellow writer who also happens to be an architecture student right now. i also came from the programming world (escaped though) archinect deleted half of my comment so i am going to try and rewrite it..
-
- rooms: the character of whom the room is used by. buildings: the character of whom it was made for, who made it.. and if its ugly LOL - "architectural graphical standards" but nobody likes that book. it's exactly as it says on the tin: a book about the standards of drawing for architects. outside of this, architectural literature is plentiful, but varies for every person. go and check your nearest architectural college's library if you can! - architects do form: interior designers decorate. we do plenty with the interior's form, such as how high the ceiling may be, or how low, or how much light enters it, or if there's a difference in floors, etc, but we aren't exactly concerned on light fixtures and furniture. that's for the interior designer. - drafting tables have largely gone out of style since the 2000s. we are now a primarily digital industry with the softwares Revit, AutoCAD, sometimes SketchUp and soooometimes Rhino taking prevalence in the industry. but that is to say that if your character is studying architecture at a time or in a place where they might be more likely to use a drafting table, give them the drafting table! - sketchbooks are a must. some architects with a more modern personality may favor ipads but so many use black moleskine notebooks as a standard haha
- you need to decide your character's architectural goal on your own. our reason for architecture differs for us all and drives us: your character is no different. we cannot tell you why your character wants to be an architect. - any graduated architect will not have such idols because we know all their flaws, but we may start out with some idols. one of my closest studio friends is portuguese so she likes alvaro siza and often references his work. - i hate when architect characters are nothing but architecture, because architect humans are more than just architecture. dont get me wrong, ive seen people devote their lives to architecture, but it does them no good. it makes a shell of a human, and only rarely with the skills to make up for it. the best architects live outside of architecture and bring that life back into architecture through interests and knowledge.
Long answer because work is slow today...
Architecture today is a broad field. Within any given architecture class there will be as many preoccupations, aspirations, and motivations as there are students. One may be attracted to the romantic notion of shaping space as experienced by all the senses; their sacred text may be "Eyes of the Skin," their idol Peter Zumthor or Steven Holl. another may be a Zaha Hadid devotee obsessed with the idea of designer as cyborg, working with parametric scripting and robotics to create fantastic, otherwordly forms. Yet another may love nothing more than construction details, finding great inspiration in the elegant problem-solving of Renzo Piano or Glenn Murcutt.
There are generalists and specialists, businesspeople and artists, tinkerers and expressionists, and each will notice something different when they enter a space. Some will gravitate toward larger gestures--a dramatic swooping entry canopy, an atrium with views ricocheting from floor to floor--and others will inspect the intricacies of how a curtain wall joins with the structural framing.
Popular culture likes to imagine that creatives look at the world through a rarified lens of genius. Despite our interests and schooling, none of us possesses the superhuman ability to instantly comprehend all the intricacies of a built space. It would be exhausting to read about an architect walking into a space and their brain igniting Sherlock Holmes-style as they instantly analyze form, material, procession, views, historical references, etc. Like anyone else, we react to spaces first on a reactionary, gut level, and then may hone in on one or two aspects that interest us. We are just as prone to distraction and tunnel vision as anyone else; we simply have better tools to analyze and speculate on what we're seeing.
Not to mention that so much of architecture is hidden from the observer. It sounds strange, but many architects are not very observant or appreciative of buildings as they are experienced firsthand. Some would prefer to look at drawings, where all the information you need to comprehend the design is layered all at once.
The biggest mistake you can make is to portray architects as a homogenous group of turtleneck-wearing, Frank Lloyd Wright-worshipping artists; popular culture has had enough of this trope, and the reality of architecture today is much more diverse and complex. As noted above, we are all people first. What will make your characters believable as architects is not whether they're reading the right book or have the right opinion on a given issue, but how rich and complex they are as people.
That said, it may help you to do more research on what we learn in school and how we work in practice. Today, we primarily work on computers. Some schools may encourage more hand-drawing and physical model-building; others encourage a hybrid of physical and digital media. Typically design schools encourage students to think not in terms of predefined, familiar components (kitchen + bedroom + curtain wall + balcony) but in terms of conceptual operations (mirroring, subdividing, hollowing out, aggregating) and the sensory considerations of the activities taking place within. In practice, every architect has a different preferred method and medium for ideating--some may sketch by hand on trace paper, others may make quick study models with paper or cardboard, others may iterate in Rhino/Grasshopper and 3d print small massing models.
The architecture world is full of debates and opinions, and it is always evolving. One controversial issue today is how to incorporate AI into the design process--at what point is the humanity of the architect or their work lost? How important is the human hand when software can do what we do, in almost every case faster and more efficiently? I would be interested in reading about an architect who feels conflicted about how they interface with digital technology; this issue obviously has implications far beyond architecture.
Finally, because architecture today is so broad, you have the benefit of being able to explore almost any human drama or global issue through the architect's lens. I would encourage you to think of architects not as a group of fascinating, self-referential geniuses, but as curious, flawed, active participants in the world around them who happen to have chosen architecture as their axe.
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