The Architecture Student's Handbook of Professional Practice (eBook)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017 | 15. Auflage
John Wiley & Sons (Verlag)
978-1-118-73900-6 (ISBN)

Infos

The essential guide to beginning your career in architecture

The Architecture Student's Handbook of Professional Practice opens the door to the vast body of knowledge required to effectively manage architectural projects and practice. A professional architect is responsible for much more than design; this book is specifically designed to help prepare you for the business and administrative challenges of working in the real-world-whether you are a student or are just starting out in practice. It provides clear insight into the legal, financial, marketing, management, and administrative tasks and issues that are integral to keeping a firm running. This new edition has been restructured to be a companion textbook for students undertaking architectural practice classes, while also fulfilling the specific knowledge needs of interns and emerging professionals. It supplements information from the professional handbook with new content aimed at those setting out in the architectural profession and starting to navigate their careers. New topics covered in this new edition include: path to licensure, firm identity, professional development, strategic planning, and integrated project delivery.

Whether you want to work at a top firm, strike out on your own, or start the next up-and-coming team, the business of architecture is a critical factor in your success. This book brings the fundamentals together to give you a one-stop resource for learning the reality of architectural practice.

• Learn the architect's legal and ethical responsibilities
• Understand the processes of starting and running your own firm
• Develop, manage, and deliver projects on time and on budget
• Become familiar with standard industry agreements and contracts

Few architects were drawn to the profession by dreams of writing agreements and negotiating contracts, but those who excel at these everyday essential tasks impact their practice in innumerable ways. The Architecture Student's Handbook of Professional Practice provides access to the 'nuts and bolts' that keep a firm alive, stable, and financially sound.

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has been the leading professional membership association for licensed architects, emerging professionals, and allied partners since 1857. The AIA serves as the voice of the architecture profession and the resource for its members in service to society.

Textauszug

CHAPTER 1
Professional Life

1.1 Architecture as a Profession

Dana Cuff, Ph.D.

Dana Cuff is a professor in the Architecture and Urban Design department of the School of the Arts and Architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Architecture is in the family of vocations called professions, all of which share certain qualities and collectively occupy a special position in society. Architects’ status as professionals provides them with an underlying structure for their everyday activities.

To be a professional means many things today. One can be a professional athlete, student, or electrician. Each of these occupations uses the term in ways distinct from what we mean by the professional who is a doctor, lawyer, or architect.

Typically, we distinguish professionals who do certain work for a living from amateurs who work without compensation. The term amateur connotes a dabbler, or someone having less training and expertise than a professional.

We also differentiate between professions and other occupations. Expertise, training, and skill help define those vocations that “profess” to have a specialized territory of knowledge for practice. While many occupations require expertise, training, and skill, professions are based specifically on fields of higher learning. Such learning takes place primarily in institutions of higher education rather than in vocational schools or on the job. Universities introduce prospective professionals to the body of theory or knowledge in their field. Later, this introduction is augmented by some form of internship in which practical skills and techniques are mastered.

A high level of education is expected of professionals because their judgments benefit—or, if incompetently exercised, endanger—the public good. Thus people who are attracted to the professions usually have altruistic concerns for their society.

The status of professions, their internal characteristics, and their relationship to society are constantly, if not always perceptibly, changing. The professions have grown dramatically in recent years, in keeping with the rise of the postindustrial, service economy. Growth in professional employment has accompanied expansion of the service sector of the economy, estimated today to be 78 percent of the labor force. In a service economy, information and knowledge industries become dominant, creating the context in which professions can rise among occupations.

Characteristics of a Profession

Professions are dynamic entities that reflect our society, our economy, and, generally, our times. There is no widely accepted definition or list of features that covers all professions. Nevertheless, they have some characteristics in common, which have appeared throughout history.

Lengthy and Arduous Education

Perhaps the most frequently cited characteristic of a profession is a lengthy and sometimes arduous education. A professional must learn a body of technical knowledge and also develop an ability to exercise judgment in the use of that knowledge. Thus, all established professions incorporate long periods of high-level education.

Professional education is also a form of socialization. Like a rite of passage for initiates, architecture, medical, and law schools are places where future practitioners are introduced to the knowledge, values, and skills of their profession. Students undergo tests of their commitment and ability. In architecture schools, a good example is the charrette (often involving all-nighters), during which students concentrate all their efforts to finish a project. These experiences instill tacit beliefs about the significance of architecture, the work effort required to do a good job, and the commitment needed to become an architect. Through selective admissions, carefully designed curricula, and rigorous graduation standards, schools guide the formation of their professional progeny. Professional schools play a key role in developing the shared worldview that characterizes a professional community.

Expertise and Judgment

Professions traffic in ideas and services rather than in goods or products. Rather than marketing a better widget, professionals sell their expertise. They have knowledge outside the ken of the layperson. Professions are based upon a balance of technical knowledge, reasoned judgment in applying such knowledge, and inexplicable, even mysterious talents that some call artistry. Thus, while doctors need a high degree of scientifically based knowledge, they also need diagnostic ability and a good bedside manner.

Expertise begins with theoretical knowledge taught in universities, but being a competent professional also means knowing how to apply this knowledge. Among practitioners, both expertise and experience contribute to quality performance. While initial skills are taught in school, a large share of professional training comes from the practicum or internship; it then continues in lifelong learning through the gathering of experience and the application of new concepts and technologies.

Registration

Because professional judgments affect the public good, professionals generally are required to be licensed in order to practice. This serves as a means of protecting the public health, safety, and welfare. Professions require sophisticated relationships with people and information. To become licensed, professionals are usually required to meet education and experience standards and to pass a compulsory comprehensive examination.

Relative Autonomy

Because professionals exercise considerable judgment and discretion, professional work is intended to be more autonomous and self-determined than work controlled by owner-managers as in the production of goods.

Other Traits

In addition to these primary characteristics, a number of other traits are typical of professions:

• Because they are well trained to perform complex services, professionals generally command relatively high incomes and high prestige in their communities.
• As a group, professionals attach a large part of their identity to their careers, rarely changing vocations.
• Within each profession, members usually hold a set of common values; they often speak what amounts to a dialect that is not easily understood by outsiders.
• Professionals understand the importance and value of lifetime learning.
• Professions are relatively well organized, and a significant proportion of their members belong to a national professional organization such as the American Medical Association, the American Bar Association, or the American Institute of Architects.

These characteristics are in constant evolution. For example, the prestige of a given profession may suffer under consumer dissatisfaction or be enhanced by significant developments in the field that have positive social repercussions. The professional degree that was once optional becomes a necessity. Professional organizations are periodically strengthened by programs that capture practitioners’ attention. Such evolution depends in part upon the participation of professionals themselves—in their schools, professional associations, and communities.

Architecture Among the Professions

Many of the trends influencing architectural practice have parallels in other professions. For example, the tensions created by complexity and specialization, consumer influences, and divergence of goals among practices can also be seen in the professions of law and medicine.

These common influences notwithstanding, each profession introduces its own variations and idiosyncrasies. Looking at architecture among the professions, we observe the following features.

Relationships with the Arts

The qualities that most clearly set architecture apart from other established professions are its close ties to the arts and its similarities to artistic endeavors. Creativity is crucial to all professions, but for the architect it is of the highest priority. Moreover, architects produce objects that are fixed in space, highly public, and generally long-lasting.

Importance of Design

Although all professions are based on a balance of technical and indeterminate knowledge, some stress one over the other. Architecture emphasizes an artistic, relatively inexplicable domain of expertise—design—as the core of the practitioner’s identity. Design requires rational knowledge of how buildings are put together, how they will function, historical models for building types, materials, mechanical systems, structures, and so on. But being a good architect also presumes that the professional possesses something extra—aesthetic sensibility, talent, or creative ability, whatever we choose to call it.

Place in the Social Structure

According to one study that compared a number of professions on a variety of dimensions, architecture ranked high in terms of prestige but in the middle range in average years of education, average income, and proportion of members belonging to professional organizations. This suggests that architecture’s respected place in the social structure has been granted by society rather than defined through numbers, dollars, or professional control.

The profession’s position in the social structure has been changing. Historically, the church, the state, and powerful individuals were the primary patrons for architectural services. Now,...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 12.1.2017
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Technik ► Architektur
• Schlagworte: 15th Edition Website • AIA contracts • AIA practice textbook • AIA professional practice • AIA sample documents • American Institute of Architects • architect financial issues • architect's practice guide • architect's practice manual • architectural management • architectural practice handbook • Architecture • architecture legal issues • Architektenpraxis • Architektur • Bauentwurf • beginning architect • Berufspraxis i. d. Architektur • Building Design • business of architecture • contemporary architecture practice • Ethics In Architecture • new architect's guide • Professional Practice • starting an architectural firm • The Architecture Student's Handbook of Professional Practice • young architect resource
• ISBN-10: 1-118-73900-0 / 1118739000
• ISBN-13: 978-1-118-73900-6 / 9781118739006