How Do you Define an Architect?

How to define an architect is an interesting challenge. You could always just go to the dictionary, but that doesn’t have a ton of detail. An interesting fact about architects is that we are a highly respected profession that almost no one wants to pay for or understands what we do or why we’re worth it.

The value proposition is something I’ve tackled elsewhere and will surely talk about again. Today, I want to talk about what we are, what we do, why we’re licensed, and how we prove we deserve to have that license.

The Definition of Respect

When I talk about myself, I’ll often tell the story about how when I was in fifth grade, I surprised my parents by announcing that I wanted to be an architect. I had a very hazy idea of what an architect was, what they did, or how it worked, but I knew it was what I wanted. My dad used to define the profession as “Engineers with Lace” under the misapprehension that we did the same basic job as engineers, but made it look fancy. I didn’t start to piece together what my chosen career path would be until senior year of high school when on college tours I found out I had been taking all of the wrong classes. Luckily, I still made it into the field and have not been unsuccessful in it and love what I do. But I attribute that more to luck than to good planning.

I hear all of the time that, “I wanted to be an architect, but…” George Costanza often pretended to be an architect. Mike Brady supported a wife, six kids, and a maid with the profession. Clarissa who explained it all to Gen X had a father who was an architect. Ted Mosby failed at architecture before he met the mother of his children. Everyone knows the name Frank Lloyd Wright (although for many, that is literally the only real one they can name, I include my parents in that if we disqualify myself from the list.) It seems glamorous, but what are we and how do you get to be one?

Legal Matters of Definition

First and foremost, the title architect is protected in every state and territory in the United States. Much like you can’t call yourself a medical doctor or a lawyer without the proper credentialling, it is actually illegal to use the term architect or architectural without being (or at least associated with) a licensed individual. As we get into some of this, know that every state has their own set of rules and regulations and they can vary greatly so always verify (and if you’re not in the US, just close this window and look elsewhere, we have no experience with other country’s processes and rules.)

So, always be wary of anyone using the term architect without the license. They are playing fast and loose with the term. If you are licensed, you are tasked with protecting the health, safety, and welfare of the public in the built environment. In our experience, designers or draftspersons can be competent, but as they are unregulated, there is a wide variety of skills they bring to the table. Some of them will step up to projects they don’t have the experience or expertise to handle. We have personally seen some disastrous outcomes from designers who meant well, but just weren’t trained, experienced, taught, or just plain ready for projects they took on.

There is also a growing issue of fraud, people stealing professional seals and selling services illegally. They bypass that critical safety insurance that a professional provides. In our experience, we have seen this with freelance websites, usually by overseas freelancers which makes it hard to prosecute. Usually, this comes to light when the building officials require a modification or edit to the drawings and the client reaches out to the architect who “sealed” the drawings to find out that they have no idea what they’re talking about. Not only does this look bad for the building owner, it causes them delays and they have to hire a real licensed professional to redo the work from scratch. And it can get worse, we know of a case in another state where hundreds of plans were submitted for review up to 2 years past the death of the licensed professional where someone didn’t value that public safety component and just wanted to check a box on the submittal forms.

What do Architects Do?

We protect the Health, Safety, and Welfare of the public in public spaces. How do we do that? We have to show competency in the relatively new “Competency Standard”. These are the sixteen categories that every architect has to be able to do to a reasonable level. More experienced architects may be able to do more. Architects who specialize in a niche may be especially competent in some aspects of the project. However, we all are supposed to have a baseline ability at each of these competency (which are broken down further.) You can follow the link for more details, but the basic concept is that every architect should be able to meet or exceed these standards. This is not true of unlicensed designers. That is not to say that they cannot be competent, but they also do not have to be and your project could suffer as a result.

How Do You Define Competence?

This is an area with a lot of changes still happening. The traditional path was a NAAB acredited degree (B.Arch. or M.Arch., not B.S. or B.A.) an internship and a test. It was called the three legged stool. The current framework is being rethought from the ground up to best demonstrate competency. It is also being reconsidered to provide multiple pathways into the practice. There are a lot of individuals who start down the path towards licensure who never finish. Sometimes that’s because they don’t have what it takes to provide services competently to the public. Oftentimes, it’s the high bar to get to a license. The public isn’t protected by limiting the field only to people who can afford the traditional path, or have family support or happen to have better access to education. The public is best protected by finding out who can do the job and making sure they have a way to prove it, no matter their circumstances.

Obtaining a license can be difficult. Architectural jobs are highly dependent on the economy. Most recessions decimate the field. The reason being is that design jobs often dry up in bad economies, but the skills architects have are in high demand. It’s nice being a respected architect, but it’s sometimes nicer having a steady paycheck working for a bank managing construction loans or as a facilities manager or even completely unrelated fields. Many of these people never come back to the field despite potentially being competent at it.

In addition, as an intern (the term for an architect candidate who is between school and licensure) you often don’t have a lot of leverage to negotiate better pay and flexibility in your hours or providing work/life balance. This can lead to burn out or an inability to obtain the skills you need to advance. School itself can be a non-started with five years of school leading to massive loan debt (and again, you might have the leverage to make decent money for up to a decade after graduation or might not be able to hold onto steady employment if the economy is consistently bad.) The field is also not level, there’s a reason why the profession has struggled with diversity.

Because of this, NCARB (the national umbrella for the US’s licensing boards) has launched the Pathways to Practice Initiative. What this means is more ways to demonstrate competency are being designed to allow greater flexibility in obtaining a license to practice. This is still in active development and is probably at least a couple of years away from any sort of implementation, but it means you might want to come back in a few years if this career is for you and see how to get there.

So, that is what an architect does, and how to become one. Most of this has focused on the public’s interest in you having an architect. There is an additional reason to keep an experienced professional on your team. We also act as your advocate with the builder or the building code. People often think building code is cut and dried, but there is a lot of wiggle room and interpretation and commentary that can be confusing and allow different jurisdictions to have very different opinions about how a building needs to be. We have gone to bat with code officials, fire marshals, and planning officers over their interpretations and have won a few times. And I don’t think I’ve worked on a job yet that wouldn’t have some sort of benefit from having an experienced professional arguing for the client and their interests. It can be a delicate balance, the public’s interest in safety and the client’s interests, but a skilled professional knows how to walk that line effectively.