The Profession of Architecture – Roles, Responsibilities and Challenges of the future
Challenging Times for the Architect
Introduction
Recent years have been challenging for the whole country and particularly for the construction sector and the architectural profession. Challenging times do however, afford the opportunity for reflection and debate about what is provided and delivered by the architectural profession.
I will briefly discuss how factors such as climate change, technological developments and the economy have impacted the role of the Architect.
Discussion
The generally accepted role and work of an architect is to strive to satisfy the aspirations of a client for building projects employing design and aesthetic principles to meet all functional, financial and technical requirements; that
the client's brief and project goals and the site context are the starting point and inspiration towards architecture. The skill of an architect’s is to ensure that those ideas and objectives are maintained, or developed, as the project progresses through each stage.
The regulatory and legislative frameworks extend the challenge for the architect and for the profession.
Architects increasingly have a role to play in order to combat the changing climate caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Rapid and significant reductions in global carbon emissions are necessary to reduce climate change, a minimum of an 80% cut in CO2 emissions by 2050. This is laid out in RIBA's Climate Change Policy that adopts the philosophy of Contraction and Convergence. This means reducing (contracting) emissions from industrialised nations and converging (joining) emissions from all nations to ...
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“The architect’s role and their intellectual responsibility is to fight to maintain their vision and little bits get chopped off all the time, but if they’re only little bits, it’s not too bad.’’
James F. O'Gorman, Dennis E. McGrath. ABC of Architecture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998. Document. October 2013.
In the past century, with the help of the industrial revolution, architecture has reached new levels of ingenuity and innovation. New materials and machines have been created to make buildings bigger and better but something we are beginning to realize is that with this sudden acceleration of technology we have lost any regard to the ground we are building on. Because we have discovered our own ways of creating things, our environment is being left behind in a haze of smog. Perhaps we have built our skyscrapers so high that we believe we are closer to space than the earth. We disconnect ourselves from the planet and pretend that the problems the w...
The success of architects is defined not so much by the problems they face as the act of their creative and practical responses.
Architecture is such a wide thing when we talk about buildings and projects. Architecture is defined as the art or practice of designing and constructing buildings. One of the Renaissance man who not only define...
As denoted by Roland Barthes, architecture is all about dream and function, expression of utopia and instruments of a convenience. Architectural designs are a symbol of expression of brilliant ideas that people would wish to pass across. Some may be viewed as fiction while others base their thoughts on achievable dreams given time. A diagrammatic presentation of perception or thoughts is what architecture entails. Though simple a diagram may look, the sophistication that comes behind it is what concerns many architectures.
In order to create innovative public architecture, considered to be the most civic, costly, time intensive and physical of the arts, the project holds a degree of risk, strife, and negotiation . Overcoming these tasks and creating worthy public architecture is a challenge designers try to accomplish, but are rarely successful. The people involved in a potential public building, can be larger than the building itself. Public architecture tries to please all, even the doubters and critics, but because of the all these factors, a building is closer to failing than succeeding.
The contractor can either be appointed to carry out all of the design work, or if the client needs to possess bigger influence over the design, a concept design and description (or performance) specification will be ready by a consultants used by the client, so the contractor is appointed to complete the look and carry out the construction.
As a result of the global ecological crisis, people have to start to address new responsibilities for architecture
Simon Unwin, the author of the book ‘Analysing Architecture’ says that the ‘the purpose of architecture is to design buildings’ is an unsatisfactory definition because the definition limits architecture to just the design of buildings. He feels that architecture involves more than just designing buildings. He also believes that the definition fails to explain the real purpose of architecture and transfers the problem of comprehending the word ‘architecture’ to the word ‘building’. This definition doesn’t go in-depth to analyze and understand the essence of architecture in our everyday lives. It fails to relate human life and needs to the buildings built.
Buildings reflect the values and ideas of society within periods. The role of architecture in shaping society and vice versa largely depends on the period in question and who or what affects first. The Enlightenment, and the subsequent period the Post-Enlightenment, reflect the biggest change for current ideas regarding architecture and society and current theories. At the same time, individual identities and understanding of society, progress and truth all follow a similar evolving path. It is during this dramatic shift in thinking that the role of architecture to society and the idea of progress and truth becomes a more complex relationship. How this relationship works and its implications is based on the theory that there is a direct link between the two. One cannot develop without the other. Who leads whom and to what extent they influence each other is evident in architectural trends and pioneering works by architects such as Robert Venturi, Frank Gehry amongst others.
Architectural engineers help plan how a building is constructed so that it will look and function the way it was designed. Their work includes preparing building design and construction documents, cost estimating and construction-related projects. Architectural engineers should be creative, inquisitive, analytical, and detail-oriented. They should be able to work as part of a team and be able to communicate well, both orally and in writing.
Times have changed since days of Vitruvius, the inevitable advancement in technology, rapid global population increase and an ever developing awareness of the sustainability of our environment have forced the architect into different positions in the project team Thus it can be said that the external forces that shape the environment that an architect works in does so by manipulating the relationship between the skills required to practice; the scope of expertise and the depth of knowledge. Fig. 3 indicates a diagrammatic timeline representing the changing roles of the architect over the various time periods with respect to the scope and depth of
“Architects plan, design, and observe construction of facilities used for human occupancy and of other structures” (The Top 100: The Fastest-Growing Careers for the 21st Century, Fifth Edition 27). In 2010, 2 percent of U.S employment, about 2.3 million people, possessed jobs in architecture and engineering. The majority of architects tend to be civil architects, with about 249,120 workers, followed by mechanical and industrial engineers (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2). Architects have to design buildings that satisfy their clients and protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public. Architects need to take aspects into consideration such as climate, soil, state building regulations, zoning laws, fire r...
Over the last four years of studying architecture, I have seen the power that it has to shape communities, shape lives, and to create new ways that people interact with each other. The way architecture can help enhance living and allow for creation of new interactions of people is one of the reasons I find the subject so interesting. The way architecture can shape a whole culture and the way that the culture then in turn shapes the architecture is fascinating to me. Architecture is also not a static subject, it is constantly evolving and adapting with time to take on new forms, create new spaces, and to provide commentary on the history of our time on Earth. The depth that architecture has, and the evolution of the subject is something I have fallen in love with through my study of it. However, when I first started out studying architecture, I had no idea of the depth that the subject had, and it was an incredibly daunting realization; however, it was as equally exciting. I have always had a love for learning and architecture has just fueled that fire. Even after completing my bachelors degree, the learning has not stopped. I get to learn something new about architecture daily, and getting to say that is an opportunity I am thankful to have. It is not just about the learning however, its