Architects, designers and engineers – some advice for my son please

Eldest_oab has to do that options thing at school. He is looking at architecture but possibly product design or engineering design career ideas.

Unfortunately we are hearing conflicting views of what options he needs/should take. As ever with options, there are only certain combinations that ‘work’ from a timetable point of view.

Bear in mind this is Scotland, our school has 8 options (two are Maths and English) for Nat5 (GCSE), reducing down to maximum 5 at Higher or Advance Higher (A-level).

Does he *need* Art? He can take (and is more interested in) Engineering Design for Nat5 upwards and can take a Graphic Communications Nat5 and Higher. The Graph.Comm. and Eng.Design are possible if he does not do Art…

Does he *need* chemistry for engineering/engineering design?
Maths and Physics upto Advance Higher a given.

Look at Uni courses and see what their requirements are?

We have been – and there is ‘mixed’ message – most seem to accept Graph.Comm and Eng.Design as a portfolio for Architecture instead of Art.

Yet school and art teacher are adamant that no matter what the uni sites say, the only realistic way to get in is via art…

(I think the teachers are wrong!)

He doesn’t need to study art (or maths or physics!) even at A-level equiv in order to get on to an architecture course, let alone GCSE equiv. Graphics plus engineering would be a really attractive background and should mean he has a good portfolio for university interviews. He should try and keep up some sketching and drawing in his own time if he finds he’s not doing much at school. (I’m an architect and I teach at a university so I have some relevant experience here.)

Basically if he doesn’t do art it will keep his options open wider! I don’t know about chemistry for engineering but I would have thought it depends on the type of engineering he’s interested in. I’d be surprised if it’s a requirement for mechanical/structural/civil engineering but I’m sure some engineers will be along to advise.

The teachers are wrong.

Got two architects and an architectural technician in our circle of mates, none have art in any way shape or form. (All three gainfully employed doing stuff like schools, hospitals, blocks of houses etc.) Maths, physics, graphical design, engineering design, things like that.

If you were going to go into arty farty pretty architecture, which is almost completely unusable and causes your technicians and builders to have nervous breakdowns. Art might be useful.

Don’t need chemistry for engineering either. Unless you want to be a chemical engineer.

(I think the teachers are wrong!)

I think you’re right. I’d always go with what the Uni’s say rather than hoping to be accepted with something that’s not quite right.

What Art might open up though are courses that spend time at the likes of Glasgow School of Art if that’s of interest

Basically if he doesn’t do art it will keep his options open wider

^ this and his enjoyment and interest is why he should do the graphcomm and engdesign, not art.

Cheers all – time to fill in a form tonight…

All the above is right – you don’t need art. But it helps build a portfolio for interview. You will also find that being fluent in sketching, other media, model making etc will make it much easier to start with as you will have the tools to communicate ideas.

If I was choosing again I would pick:

Art
Maths/Physics or similar
History or similar essay subject

Edit – this is from an architecture pov

Then anything else you fancy.

If he wants to be an Architect, get him to drop maths.
As a quantity surveyor it’s been my experience that counting is an alien concept to most architects… 😀

A key consideration is to make sure he chooses a Uni course with a suitable female:male ratio. I forgot this aspect and ended up in the baron world of Engineering 😥

Zaha Hadid studied mathematics and you could argue her designs are very sculptural, so it is surprising she doesnt have at least some art background. I studied Fine Art and would have argued for it as a discipline. But you can go to life classes outside of lesson time, obviously at an older age, and study form. I would say excluding art would not be a problem. Computing is also becoming increasingly important within the design world and not just using software.

I forgot this aspect and ended up in the baron world of Engineering

…as opposed to the barren world of English Literature 😉

Ah, engineering in the late 80’s, 400 students of which 375 are bearded freaks in heavy metal t-shirts, with about one can of deodorant and one bottle of all in one shower gel between them. 20 social inept nerds (one of them being me). And 5 females. All of who left at the end of the first year. (along with about 100 of the bearded freaks, they all went off to sociology degrees or to start their own bands…….)

😉

As someone who works in Architecture, I say avoid it at all costs, unless he has a real passion for it. If he really wants to do it then make sure he focuses on technical design before art design: Too many Architects are designers first and many wouldn’t know how two bricks go together, let alone how a whole building works.

Just spoken to a colleague who’s an architecture tutor. Her opinion is that any of the more design led courses will require art A-level (or equivalent). Without it they would require a foundation course or one hell of a portfolio. If it was me again I’d be doing what Yak says so as not to limit my options.

What I actually did was what interested me at the time, Art, History of Art and Design and Technology. Still managed to fall into architecture somehow, mostly through luck after university.

If he’s serious about architecture, take art if he’s good at it and enjoys it. Not studying art won’t stop him becoming an architect but it will restrict the offers he gets from universities.

I was advised by my school’s careers officer to to take graphics rather than art at GCSE. I still class this as one of the worst pieces of “professional ” advice I’ve ever received. 25 years ago when I was applying to schools of architecture art was a requirement of almost all of them.

If I were doing it all again, I might consider keeping Aerospace degree, but doing a second masters in design. Either way, keep the hard STEM subjects and do the design afterwards.

Product designer here, and similar to mikey74’s advice, I would suggest that he doesn’t study product design unless he’s really passionate about it.

If he does want to do product design, I would still suggest skipping art and just building a portfolio of sketches in his own time to show that he is creative and can draw.

I’m surprised at the conflicting advice here especially from the architectural educators among us. I would advise to definiteley take art, it will be incredibly useful in an architectural career, will help establish a good portfolio and is probably the only subject at that level that will be relevant. An essay based subject is a good idea to go along side it. Maths not so much.

Hi Matt, I do some of the admissions work here in Sheffield for the Architecture courses. Some schools are more specific about the subjects they require; however there are Unis, like Sheffield that are much more relaxed as, ultimately, Architecture is a very rounded degree with elements of humanities, science and arts. We’re actually finding that A-level (or similar) art is preparing students less and less well for Architecture and is becoming far more formulaic and shows much less of the student that produced the work. We are much more impressed by students with a great portfolio that haven’t done art, or at least those who have done creative stuff outside their art course to show more personality and investigation.

Daniel Libeskind was a mathematician before converting to architecture.
I’d personally suggest doing slightly more science/ maths subjects because the rigour that they require, but making sure that he also has art study in spare time including sketching etc. The offer to study Architecture where I did my degree and dipArch included a requirement for Grade 8 violin, which I had already, so that was nice.

I did Art, Maths, Physics and geography and that was a good balance to prepare me for architecture but we really don’t have any specified subjects now. An ability in art (drawing, modelling, sketching, painting, 3d investigation) must be demonstrable, though.

At school, I did O’Grades in Maths, Arithmetic, English, French, History, Geography, Physics, Chemistry & Biology. For my Highers I did Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Geography and Biology. I did not do any ‘technical subjects’ at school!!

I ignored the careers officer since he was trying to tell me that girls didn’t do Engineering. I did listen to my Physics teacher though since she told me there was nothing to stop me doing Engineering!

I have 3 engineering degrees (2 Bachelors & 1 Masters, 2 in Civil Engineering & 1 in Process Engineering) from Scottish Uni’s. I am also dislexic, which gives me great 3-dimensional awareness, but I wasn’t diagnosed until long after I left Uni.

We have a couple of Architecture students working in our practice and they don’t know the first thing about how buildings go together. They can draw pretty pictures, but that is pretty useless for the majority of the bread and butter work that small to medium-sized practices get involved in.

It constantly amazes me how little Universities teach their architecture students about building construction. Personally, I think the first year should be a completely given over to Building Construction, not art thinly veiled as architecture.

This might help from a civil engineering side of things:
https://www.ice.org.uk/Careers-and-professional-development/under-16s/what-subjects-should-i-study

I am sure that the other professional engineering institutions will have similar guidance on the ways into industry.

course requirements aside for a moment, for an actual career in architecture I can’t think of a course that would have been more useful than art… i’m an architect and didn’t study art btw..

Mikey74, we spend 3 years in practise as well as 5 years in study. By the time we’re allowed to call ourselves architects we have a pretty good idea of how buildings go together.

son did graph comm and engineering at school with those sorts of loose aims.

Have to say he steered away ultimately from product design, now in year 1 doing are engineering – he took to graph comm and so on like a duck to water, very good visual / spatial skills, and is getting on swimmingly.

lots of maths and physics too.

for architecture you really want to be looking at an art focus – building design maybe less so. May need English or would help (though son dumped English as soon as he could).

hope that helps matt..

Civil Engineer here, who did maths, physics and geography at A-level, a year of mechanical engineering at uni before changing to geology, before finally doing an MSc in geotechnics. When I met the head of the geology department to see about changing courses, his response was ‘well, you’ve done maths and physics A-level so you can obviously think pretty well, anything you don’t know I’m sure you’ll pick up.’ Whilst this won;t apply to everyone, I do think maths/physics are useful purely from how others will interpret your abilities and are also good from a thought structuring process when looking at design works, etc.

Most important thing is for him to speak to some firms (architects, engineers, etc.) and try and do a week’s placement or pop in for a few days. Should give him a good taster, will help him decide his path a bit better and will always look good on the CV. I’m at a multi-disciplinary consultancy in Edinburgh – let me know if I can help at all.

Mikey74, we spend 3 years in practise as well as 5 years in study. By the time we’re allowed to call ourselves architects we have a pretty good idea of how buildings go together.

Meanwhile, they are taking a salary in a discipline they pretty much know nothing about. Private companies should not be forced to take on the burden of training in something that is so fundamental to the business.

I appreciate that everyone learns so much more when working in the real world, but they should at least set students up so they have a chance of hitting the ground running.

if your architectural students are so hopeless why does your company hire them?

I was an architectural technician and now I’m a design engineer. I was terrible at art. I can’t free hand sketch pretty pictures and I can’t paint. I can technical draw and produce freehand technical sketches though. My forte is understanding how things are made and go together/ come apart which translates to me being very good at making things or working out how things can be made

by the way none of this is about making pretty pictures. It’s about communicating and expressing ideas visually. This often means using a pen or a pencil and having a bit of training in art will help.

They can draw pretty pictures, but that is pretty useless for the majority of the bread and butter work that small to medium-sized practices get involved in.

Exactly this…….the amount of conversations i’ve had trying to explain to architects why they can’t have what it shows on their pretty pictures without enormous additional cost….

“… but it shows it on the drawing!” they say.

It’s at this point in the conversation where I rip a page out of my notebook and dash off a quick, but well practised sketch of a full grown elephant being carried in the arms of a man, present it with a flourish and point out that just because it’s “on the drawing” doesn’t make it a practicality in the real world.

I’ll take technical competence over artistic flair every time.

if your architectural students are so hopeless why does your company hire them?

Hell knows. Charity?

some of the nicest sketches I’v seen have been technical sketches from engineers.. they need to be able to express themselves visually too.

Does he *need* Art?

sort of not. School art (despite best intentions) is pretty much alien to the thinking and doing artists and designers actually do, and its often the job of further and higher arts education to try and undo it. Its not as bad as it used to be but school art tends towards the art and outlook of sunday painters and hobbyists. He doesn’t need to take the art option (unless his teachers are shit-hot visionaries that you’d be mad not to take advantage of) if the other options he needs clash.

However… in that case you’d want to look at how you keep that visual/creative aspect moving forward outside of school.

I dropped art at school for the same reason of options clash even though I knew I intended to go on to study art and design of some sort later. The ways the options clashed in my case I had to drop it 4th year but was able up again of the exam

One reason I was happy doing it was my dad happened to be former art teacher / art teacher-trainer and by then LEA advisor in art and design so there was no shortage exposure to arty stuff in my home life (he also wasn’t too resistant to me dropping it because he worried he was an undue influence in my choices and didn’t actively encourage me towards art stuff) The other reason is there were good art options for me out of school, my local art college did evening classes so a lot of my art portfolio building was done there instead, so I was doing night classes in photography (and got an ‘O’ Level there to add to my school qualifications) and printmaking, life drawing etc for a couple of years before I applied to foundation.

So I’d have a look around and see if those kinds of out of school opportunities exist for you – a college might do it, local art galleries and museums might do it or there might be stuff offered by the council’s Arts Development team. If not in term time most of the art schools do summer-schools. The various Open Access arts facilities around scotland (off the top of my head The Printmaking studios in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Inverness, Glasgow and Edinburgh Sculpture Studios, MakLab) will all offer classes and courses too.

I am an architect and am soon to give it up to follow a career in teaching. My advice to him would be to think about what he loves doing each day and try and find the job that will allow him to do that most. If it’s being creative and designing then architecture might not be the best option. Like others have said it is a very very small minority of architects who spend their days designing. Most will mix their days with producing production information, contract administration, dealing with disputes etc. Design may be around 5-10% of my job and I work in what would be considered a design led practice.

When I went to uni in Dundee there was a relatively good balance of education that involved the technical and practical sides of design as well as theory. Back then they were keen to see an art degree and I believe that would be the same now perhaps more so as the courses have become far more conceptual. I really enjoyed the course at Dundee but can honestly say that it in no way prepared me for the job (I’m sure this is the same with other courses). Coming out of uni I could design well and had good analytical and problem solving skills but had absolutely no knowledge of things relevant to producing a building.

After 10 years in the job I decided I couldn’t see myself in the job for another 40 years so have decided to make a change. Please don’t let his teachers convince him that architects are well paid either because there is huge expectation (especially for new graduates) to work long hours “for the love of the job”.

This probably comes across as a bit bitter and cynical but it’s really not meant that way. I have friends who are architects who have little interest in design and are thriving in their jobs enjoying all of the various elements that I don’t. Equally I know people who don’t mind the long hours and low pay because they are passionate about architecture and see a clear career path for them in the business. I’ve also a friend who has set up on his own recently and enjoys the business side of being a sole trader while also enjoying being solely in control of the design side of things.

One thing I would say is that architecture is a very long course and can be expensive in terms of model making equipment etc. so a big commitment in time and money. I’d say if he’s passionate about buildings, towns and cities then architecture is the way to go but if general design and problem solving are his thing then there are more rewarding career paths both in terms of personal fulfillment and financial benefits.

If you’re around Dundee area then I’d be more than happy to have a chat with your son and show him the kind of projects that I work on or for him to come into the office for a day to see what it’s all about.

good idea ^^

there should be more shadowing of folk and works tours.

I think you’re around Stirling, matt, my good mate from school works in Stirling (lives in Glasgow) – for a big PFI / construction / house builder private company, I expect he’d be glad to show someone around. Architect by training, moved to big design projects and has kept with that side. Good lad.

Oh – catch up when you’re next in Elgin ?

I am an architect and am soon to give it up to follow a career in teaching. My advice to him would be to think about what he loves doing each day and try and find the job that will allow him to do that most

I’d add variance to that slightly – I’d seek out encounters with people who do those things. I think when you’re a kid so much of the drive of education is about learning to do things, but for the kid there really a question of what your ambitions as a grown up are – so its effectively seeking out role models – people who live their life doing the things that you are good at doing.

I’m a (mech) building services engineer (think HVAC) so I have to deal with architects on a daily basis.

There are two flavours: Architect and Architectural Technician. A architect is bit flightly, head in the clouds not very practical. Technician is the one who has produce details that might work… Neither understand that you don’t get pipeless pipes or ductless ducts yet. And then complain they have to lower ceilings, lose storage space, etc., because they haven’t left enough room for them. Neither seem to be particularly well paid either.

Civil engineers, oh don’t get me started. However they seem to be the bottom of the pay scale ladder. Only take this up if you love it! \I suppose you do get to annoy architects by sticking massive steelwork everywhere and messing up their ‘aesthetics’. And then there’s the blocking in of services, etc., I think they must be in concert with architects on this one.

Engineering: Maths and Physics. Did a Mechanical Degree and its all maths and physics. Just as well I failed both highers as a nipper then eh?