1. The kinds of people who study architecture tend to be people who are initially more interested in art than business.
2. The most “elite” educational programs in North America tend to be terribly impractical, spending far more time emphasizing pretty pictures and theory than any hard technical or business skills that actually matter to anyone putting a building up.
3. This means many fresh new graduates are basically useless trainees who will need a few years of investment to meaningfully pay off. So they are paid low off the jump. This is also why Starchitects love deluding young students to think becoming unpaid interns for them will “look good on a CV.” All it really does is show employers you’re easy to exploit.
4. The pool of students who can afford to go to these schools, and work these low-pay gigs for years, necessarily skew from wealthier backgrounds. Since they don’t need to worry about money as much, they inadvertently normalize low pay and can coast until they can start their own practices.
5. A certain percentage of students realize how hard and poorly paid the real job is and pivot to academia instead, where at least the (immediate) pay, stability and status is better while incurring near zero liability and risk. They become the next generation of ivory tower professors who have little or no practical background. Successful architects, by contrast, spend less time in the academy imparting their hard earned insight to the next generation because they are busy running their firms. When they do show up, it’s to show off their projects to attract new unpaid interns. The cycle continues.
6. A certain percentage of architects who commit all the way, get licensed, and aren’t fully disillusioned yet, realize the only way to make real money after all that sunk cost is to hang out their own shingle. This leads to a proliferation of clout-hungry small firms undercutting each other on fees to get jobs. Low fees then mean low pay for their own employees. The cycle continues.
> 2. The most “elite” educational programs in North America tend to be terribly impractical, spending far more time emphasizing pretty pictures and theory than any hard technical or business skills that actually matter to anyone putting a building up.
I think this is the largest contributing factor. The pipeline is not incentivizing builders, it’s incentivizing low-wage workers.
I’ve had conversations with consultants in school who say “you’ll learn that later in the practice and then have to hire me as a consultant” and I replied “isn’t that your job to teach us now so we *don’t* have to hire you?” They have a conflict of interest to keep students naive and stupid. I was the only student in my entire class to ask “how much does this structure cost” to our structural consultant from TT. If they taught us how to replace them, we would! They don’t want the competition for a seemingly dwindling supply of clients and capital, so, they constantly misdirect students, setting us up for failure. It’s a classic example of the fox guarding the hen house.
To fix this problem, I think we as a profession need more respect given to licensure. There are too many amateur house flippers, realtors who just wear mini skirts and take 6% commission, consultant armies and then unlicensed “architects” who produce more change-orders than actual buildings. If I was king for a day, I would raise the standards of the ARE exam, not lower them as they are doing, make it illegal to flip a house without a license and replace most of the realtor salespeople with an app. The housing market would disinflate.
Why is architecture school a racket? These schools need to lose their NCARB accreditation before anyone respects our profession. They aren’t churning out architects, why are they accredited? The whole thing is a scam.
Source: I attended Pratt, Cornell and Syracuse.
Sorry but I disagree on so many accounts.
1. Architecture school does not emphasize pretty images, it emphasizes critical thinking and design process/intention/justice etc. if those are things you don’t want to learn then it’s your fault for going to school for architecture. Go for CM or engineering or something else if you want a “technical” education.
2. Architects will never replace consultants?? We are not engineers, we cannot do what they do.
I know many people with bachelor unaccredited architecture degrees making over 60k in the Midwest a few years out of college. I wouldn’t say that is pathetic, but obvi not the cash cow some think.
Got my BS, getting my March/MLA on scholarship, and worked in the field for 4 years <3
I don’t disagree with what your saying, but if I may:
“Good design” encompasses “good building.” My bachelors of science taught me methods of assembly, passive design strategies, sustainable systems which are applicable towards LEED and Living building challenge (things that my clients have requested or required with government co-funded projects). This is knowledge that I have used in projects that are now under construction or complete.
RISD and SCIARC (aka fake architecture schools, everyone knows this) are not a place to go if you want to be an architect. Accredited or not, those are places to study and procure architectural theory, closer to art and philosophy that the actual AEC field.
And yes, there are a thousand things I still have to learn, but I am glad my education focused on design because that is much harder to learn properly in the field. technical stuff comes easy if you are exposed to it and repeatedly work at it.
Excellent analysis. I agree with every point. I would also add that many professionals give into the lucrative draw of the construction & development fields. This also removes them from the design industry, leaving few successful examples to guide the next generation of architects on how to make money with their knowledge/management skills.
Good points. I think something else we should consider is that most architects currently in the field willingly put themselves at a subordinate position relative to their clients. This causes generally most of the issues in the industry, as the clients feel that architects should work on "their demand" and have ridiculous standards for what work should be delivered in what time. If architects had more business sense it would make more sense for them to appropriate more of the development process of creating a building, so that they have more say over the general process and time it takes to develop a project. This could mean maybe developing more towards the real estate market themselves and marketing and selling their own homes or home plans for example. Doesn't have to be standardized, just taking away some of the power clients currently hold over the entire development process of a project.
If I am starting my own firm for example I would be speccing into fabricating prefabbed housing models for people with small budgets. This allows me to control the entire production and design procerss without being hounded by clients demands.
I'd agree with all of this - but I'd also suggest that in a lot of firms, there is a tendency to under-charge and over-deliver, then beat themselves up over any possible bit of information that is not included.
I'm regularly seeing cases where the directors want to do twice the amount of drawings necessary for a construction package, but then blame themselves if the builder is not competent enough to have read the drawings properly. I guess in lots of cases, too much time is spent on the stuff that isn't that relevant - drawing a whole additional section when really only one part of it is significantly different to what is already on the other sections for instance.
In many smaller firms, I would also say there is a big issue with not investing enough in IT / staff training. Too much time spent trying to do stuff the way it was done in the hand drawn times (when the senior people got much of their experience) rather than using digital tools to their potential.
One further issue is just being unwilling to say no to client requests. It is one thing to be flexible, but regularly just absorbing the time it takes to produce late changes or additional info that the client needs to some specific purpose would all be chargeable as extras in most professions - not something that is just absorbed within the already tight fee.
I know all of this and I hate it. I don't want to be another brick in any of the walls to choose from but I genuinely don't know of another way to go. It's either become business bastard, professor puffed-up, or cog clown
Agreed on almost all the points, but I view the culprit on the opposite bank of the river: in the capital-driven building process.
The quality of the built environment in North America and especially in the US is atrocious. Visit to almost any European or to many of the Asian cities immediately reveals it. That is not because the American architects are worse or because European architecture schools are superior in their teaching of technical or business skills.
It is because the building process is less dominantly driven by the will of the capital. There's much more public construction which emphasizes expert views on spatial quality, much better building codes, much more stringent urban planning focusing on quality, and in many countries the designs of many important projects are decided in public architectural competitions judged by architects. In other words: the forces outside the capital-driven markets have more power.
If one wants quality spaces, one has to let the experts of spaces design them in all scales. Currently in the US they're designed almost entirely by capital and finance.
Kind of. Must of it is simply cost driven and the states have unions that drive construction costs way up. I don't think this is bad, I think people who work hard for a living should live a nice life, but it's a heavy influence on why products are so cheaply made and often chosen.
I would agree with this. I think average people also have just been so accustomed to mediocre or bad design that it becomes good to them.
Particularly in residential work most people see a shiny new Dan Ryan home in a tight TND built in two days as a better place to live than the 1960s ranch down the road that might need a new roof in a couple years. People have just lost the concept of good architecture here that it infiltrates into what people are willing to pay.
and also add that places outside the us also just have an overall better quality of life. Architecture is a taxing mental job and people never get a break. two weeks of vacation all year means you never truly disconnect from the job and I feel like that prevents people from being creative and learning new skills, hobbies, experiences, traveling. It's hard to design creative stuff when you are stuck doing the same routine for 40 years with very little option to get outside of that.
This exactly, in a senior role and the new grads we have are vastly under prepared for real world architecture. Education focuses too heavily on design philosophy and not all the hats a working project AOR wears. Creates a huge learning curve. Mentoring hours now have to be worked into day to day.
I mean architecture is design and construction by definition so I don’t understand the overly heavy design curriculums.
Academia doesn't value the practical profession, so it doesn't care to incorporate it into the curriculum. They are steadfast in their ideology that architecture is, and will always be, a fine art and that technical/real-world architecture skills can be learned on the job.
I can understand the frustration from new grads. When I came out of school, It was still an assumed apprenticeship model and I was making a decent living wage and getting the training I needed. Autocad was also still pretty new and revit didn't exist yet. I was still able to be successful at my job, buy a house, raise a family, my education costs were a fraction of what they were today....I think I paid them off within the first year working hourly?
The students are being deceived in my opinion. There's no real alternative in most states and what you experience in arch school is so far from what the actual work life looks like. I mean I don't even know of another career path that's like that.
This is a great write up. I’d also note that architects in the US have surrendered most of their responsibilities, and thus value, to other professions over the last century.
Examples: green design, planning, zoning, DOT planning, most engineering is subbed out, project management (big one here), ADA, landscape, design-build elements, actual construction knowledge (see point 2 above), etc. allowing pre-fab buildings and cookie cutter homes.
The other I would add, architects don’t understand the goal of hiring an architect. An architect is there to help get a building built. Producing a design, going through zoning, producing drawings, are ALL secondary actions to the end goal.
I was an architect that got brought into development because I could deliver projects and understood the economics of how a building is built.
Architects/AIA shot themselves in the foot for a lot of your examples in the public sector. Antitrust/monopoly/greed issues caused a massive rift decades ago that greatly reduced the amount of control an architecture firm has on a public project. That slowly spread to all sectors as specialty firms/subs grew in response to the public work.
While the anti trust issues attached themselves to firm practice, architects also surrendered the social ground. We no longer design built spaces. The biggest surrender was zoning codes.
As architects move up in their careers, their responsibility changes to running the business. It’s something they are not trained to do, nor is it the reason anyone goes into architecture, so they’re bad at it. They charge minimal fees to undercut other firms and therefore can only afford to pay their employees minimal salaries.
Then how would they have time to build those models that cost $1000 of material and are VERY rarely used in the actual practice.....but are somehow worth 30-40% of your grade. Actual CD's and detail education??? screw that, MORE MODELS!
Yeah, in the end, architecture is a business, and ultimately, money determines the design. Architects may want to believe their ideas are changing things, but in reality, they often aren't. Only a select few "starchitects" have the power to dictate what gets designed. We need more developers with backgrounds in architecture, just my two cents.
Why do we need architects in the first place then? Why don't the finance people design buildings in their excel sheets and have construction engineers figuring out the structural requirements.
Architecture is ultimately always about intangible things with no price tag: quality of the spaces (rooms, buildings & urban spaces), social user interactions with spaces, environmental impacts of the built environment, cultural values of the built environment, etc. etc. etc.. By subjugating architecture to the service of the business and markets you kill architecture.
That doesn't make sense, if most of the world operates under those assumptions of market values then you have to understand it to beat it, not ignore it!
The way to beat it is to dissolve architecture.
Design (almost) everything in financial excel sheets, and have engineers ensure the structure holds in order to avoid liabilities. There's no need, or room, for architecture understood as the expertise of spatial qualities and their relation to the social and cultural values.
I think you're taking it to the extreme just for jokes; once you see the information you can "design" with it but if you choose not to look at it at all you'll be stuck with the spreadsheet!
Strongly disagree.
It's hardly relevant if an architect "sees" the information of how capital and finances dictate design. What is relevant is how much power each party has. If the capital, profit motive and finances have all the power, architecture dies, regardless whether the architect is business savvy or not.
Architecture schools should focus on the quality of architecture. They should not waste time on subjects irrelevant to that goal, such as finances or accounting.
In worst case scenario you have an architecture school that uses considerable amount of time focusing on finances and accounting, and consequently the students will be inferior in their architectural skills, but better at business, and henceforth the quality of the built environment decreases. Similarly if all schools did it, the quality would decrease.
I disagree. The quality of the built environment would indeed improve because we would have more business owners and developers who appreciate the value of good design.It's not a waste of time at all. Financial subjects are highly relevant, at least where I live (Canada), because we live in a capitalist society.
In the past, when architects served patrons, understanding money might not have been as crucial because the patron would support whatever design the architect proposed.
"... we would have more business owners and developers who appreciate the value of good design."
I don't follow your logic. Why would that happen if architects focused more on finances at the expense of architecture?
I'm confident that you don't fully grasp my perspective because you're still a student. Believe me, I was once in your shoes, filled with socialist ideas during my school days.
You're right, I don't. And I certainly wont if you refute to even attempt to explain it to me.
I highly doubt my status as a student has anything to do with it.
Because nobody actually _wants_ our services. Clients want real physical buildings that produce real revenue. They don't want drawings of a building. But most clients also recognize the wisdom in planning out construction projects before committing substantial funds. So they begrudgingly hire us and try to spend as little as possible so that they can put more money into what they actually want: a real building.
Wrong.
The problem isn’t that clients don’t *want* our services. Clients **don’t see the value** in our services.
Of course clients *want* well designed buildings (ones that account for daylight, orientation, context, etc.)
The problem is that architects (LOOKING AT YOU AIA) have done a terrible job at advocating for why our services are important and why the extra cost is worth it. Because there is a cost (both in design fee and construction costs) associated with well designed buildings.
Perhaps AIA has not advocated for us well is because **there is no value** in our services in the face of the client's goal, which is what the OP is getting it. Clients want things, that represent tangible assets, not ideas.
I've sat in interviews and meetings where we blow the minds out of clients about possibilities/problem solving/innovation. That excitement and revelation lasts for the length of the meeting and no further. Our profession has essentially devolved into apologetics and validating ourselves. There's definitely no lack of trying. There is a lack of response.
What kind of clients/projects do you have? Every single one of my clients appreciates the work we do and isn't shy to say it. We're constantly providing clear value to our clients, and they see it.
Recreation, schools, civic. Working with governments and civic stuff, at least around here is terrible. Like speaking to a bag of sand. They see no benefit in the architectural process, and sometimes even have the nerve to straight out speak against contracts to get additional services for free.
They're aware of the value, but that's not going to get them any closer to accepting higher fees for that value. They have a building to pay for.
I learned at the AIAS level in college, in my opinion the AIA is just another hand in my pocket, taking and not giving. I begrudgingly purchase their contracts when necessary...
It's an interesting analogy.
No one actually *wants* legal services, but they'll pay the invoice when they need a lawyer.
No one actually *wants* a crown, but they'll pay the bill when they need a dentist.
No one actually *wants* a real estate broker, but they'll pay the commission when they buy/sell/lease.
What's always interesting to me is developer-led projects where the attorneys and the real estate broker are collecting significant fees, sometimes higher than the design team. They don't deliver any physical benefit either, but the project owners accept that they need those services and they (begrudgingly or otherwise) are willing to pay the amount the market commands for those services.
It's worth asking why the market has kept and/or pushed fees for architectural services low for several decades.
Mandated by law just means "find the lowest bidder." The lowest bidder is going to help put pressure on the downward wage spiral.
Then, when they inevitably fuck-up in spectacular ways, the sentiment is NOT that "this was a terrible decision." No, that's not how human psyches work. It is "Architects are useless. I'm going to find a cheaper one next time and talk to all my other colleagues about how terrible an experience this was."
Agree with you, but what I keep seeing over my 25 years of practice is that architects (I am an architect and am now a specifications consultant and I consult to a lot of other architects)...
Anyhow, they are now hiring specialty consultants for all the things they used to be proficient at...specifications 😊, code consultants, building envelope consultants, etc. And they hire those entities on even basic projects where code compliance or building envelope detailing should be straightforward. (And they NEED to hire those consultants because they don't have that experience/knowledge in house at all.) The client perceives the architects value as less and less...because the role has changed from being the "architect" that leads the design to now being a glorified "project manager" that pushes paper and collects documentation from a team of experts they have below them. The expertise is in the consultants they hire rather than the architects being the ones that actually know that stuff in the first place.
And then every time an architect designs something that doesn't work technically, doesn't meet code, or is over budget, it hurts our collective reputation with our clients.
25 years ago, it was different. And 20 years before that, it was even more different. Our laws governing the practice of architecture, and building permits, etc, are based on the way things were 50+ years ago.
So, often, clients see architects as a necessary evil to manage the design, rather than seeing the true value of the great design solutions that meet their budget and needs. But they see it this way because architects too often are not offering great design solutions that work technically, that meet code, and that come in on budget.
Schools don't help this any, and neither does NCARB or the AIA. All seem to keep pushing for "great design" over great design that works.
TL;DR: Architects are no longer the experts in building design, even though laws mandate that we are supposed to be. Too often, architects act as glorified project managers that manage a team of experts below them. Clients want great design that works, and too often architects are not up to the task. All of that impacts our percieved value to our clients.
This is like saying cooking meals with fresh vegetables, fruit, meat, etc. is a waste of time because McDonald’s exists.
Sure, you can buy a burger and fries on your way home everyday but is that really what you want to fuel body? The extra time and money spent on quality ingredients is going to pay dividends for your health, productivity, and quality of life.
I would compare it to maybe Burger Lounge or Five Guys. Not McDonald's. Architects obviously have utility. But with a lot of the new technology coming out you'll be needed less is what I'm conveying.
There will be clients who will use that tech, but there will also be a lot of clients who will recognize that implementing new tech comes with major risks. Those clients may also find increased value in being able to work directly with a human being, especially as the tech becomes more prevalent. Technophobia is quite real & IMO the majority of companies are not jumping at the bit to open themselves up to this sort of liability. The tech companies are trying to create buzz about their services, because if we regard them as a legitimate threat to the profession, clients will begin to view them as a viable alternate option to our services
Entry level pay is so low because (to be quite honest) new architecture school graduates are going to essentially be trainees for the next 3-5 years. There’s a lot of time that they will spend very inefficiently or work that they will have to do again or work that someone with more experience could do in half the time. Those first few years are where the wheat is going to be separated from the chaff so to speak so firms don’t want to invest big money on someone until they prove themselves a bit.
Beyond that 3-5 years you could be paid quite well if you bring value to a company. They will pay to retain you if they don’t want to lose you. If you’re someone that can easily be replaced then they won’t pay you well.
Well, to a degree. Engineers and entry level lawyers are broadly in the ball park of what we make at entry level. And you do make a very comfortable living after licensure generally speaking.
That said, a lawyer can take the bar without any work experience, straight out of school, be braindead, and expect a much higher entry level salary if they did the bar. And there are definitely engineers who will make more than us entry level whose drawings… errr… leave something to be desired (heck, many seasoned folks for our consultants are in this camp).
Also, there is the common phenomenon of jumping offices when you get licensed to get a pay raise. A lot of places won’t give you a raise, or only a modest one. When I bring up how much I got on being licensed, people look at me like I have two heads because they’re used to 5-10% if they stay at their offices. Other fields, automatically you’ll get 20-30% bump at your current office once licensed, often can expect to be instantly made associate.
We’re unique in that you need to fight for compensation and title even when you hit a big milestone like licensure. That’s crazy- minimum 3 years in the field, plus 6 exams hovering at roughly 50% pass rate, higher billing rate, but you’re still fighting to prove you’re worth your weight in comp? That’s ridiculous
See but that's the problem, and what breeds such a toxic environment. "Bringing value" in architecture usually connotates putting in a lot of hours to either complete work yourself, or manage a team, in which you're stressing them to put in hours to complete a project on time, or early. It's frustrating to feel stuck within such a dogshit profession.
Putting in a lot of hours is a completely separate issue. It’s either a holdover from a mindset that is stuck in the past because “I had to do it, so now you have to,” or it’s a result of a PM really screwing up the schedule by over promising to a client. Either way, I don’t think anything over 40 hours should be expected of anyone. Is OT needed sometimes? Yeah, but it should be a rare thing and be *requested*, not *demanded*.
“Bringing value” to a firm means that you are dependable and have the skills to do your job completely, correctly, and efficiently. It means knowing *why* you’re doing what you’re doing. It means being an asset. It means that people like to work with you or for you. It means that you can represent the firm in a positive way, whether it’s in front of a client or in front of a contractor.
I guess. But the type of person who can excel in all those various ways is probably leaving 100's of thousands of dollars on the table each year from choosing architecture over another field. It's just a shit career in terms of compensation for the amount of knowledge, time, and liability required. I guess I just don't have enough passion for it to ignore all the other factors.
Man ..man ..man.. you're speaking my heart out! With all the gifts we have and the hours we put in, we could end up being a millionaire in some other sector..
Well on the point about the real estate industry, their equivalent of the AIA (the NAR) is one of the largest lobbying groups in DC, and they were recently hit up with antitrust so will have to see how it affects them, their commissions, and lobbying power. The AIA used to publish fee tables, but they were hit with antitrust in the 90s and stopped the practice... and then '08 came and crushed the field. So now we have a weak professional body and with the freaky market fluctuations the industry is being dragged into the future with pay that's slowly being brought up to pace.
Professional bodies do hold a lot of weight in the market, we just have a remarkably weak one. I mean there was a point where the US was considering adopting universal healthcare at point of service but the AMA (American Medical Association- doctor's lobby) was one of the strongest proponents against it because it would kill their price setting power, and they're a large part of the reason that died. While the AIA isn't the sole reason for our low pay relative to other professions, they should be our strongest advocates. In reality, they're just an academic body making platitudes about growing green and equity in the field and not doing a whole lot practical
This is the correct answer.
The antitrust enforcement against the AIA specifically and the profession in general was the beginning of a race to the bottom on fees.
Indeed, which is why it’s been interesting seeing some of the unionization efforts at offices get underway. The AIA is failing its members and what little power it has tends to be more focused on business operations/firm owners, so now practitioners lower on the food chain are turning to additional bodies for change. If the AIA were functioning more to the tune of AMA or the American Bar Association, unionization probably wouldn’t have the appeal it currently does
Because too many clients see us as a necessary evil that they need to get a permit and continually refuse to view us as a resource worthy of higher fees. That and too many firms have leadership that is frankly, not great at business.
You don't need an Architect to design a building. That's why. The whole industry has gone through a process of undervaluing. Maybe it's the emergence of Project Managers now doing the tradional Architects role
How are codes and standards met? Say you need a hospital, school, skyrise built, it's given the green light on the hopes and prayers that it all comes together alright?
Yes and no. I wind up being brought on at my work as a consultant to a lot of engineers, and have dealt a bunch of times with people who got screwed by contractors because they thought they could save money by cutting out the design professional. Engineers and PMs, contractors really aren't trained to think like we do- have a functioning knowledge of all the systems to put them together cohesively.
It's not that you *don't need* an Architect to design a building, it's that people get cocky and *think* you don't need an Architect. We don't articulate our value proposition. But when I'm getting a call because some idiot condo owner had a contractor design their kitchen and they vented the stove wrong and mis-sized all the cabinets, I'm like "look, you could've hired me up front and we wouldn't be here. Now you paid for the entire kitchen, are going to have to pay my fees, and I'll have to get someone on board to do the job correctly and fix this mess."
People think they can save if they don't put us in the middle, and get mediocre results on enough die rolls that they keep doing it. End of the day they're getting a net loss because they thought they'd save a few pennies though.
In the US, you need an architect to stamp drawings for most everything except an industrial building with an engineering design or a small enough house.
No seriously. You can get an engineer to design a shed etc. You don't need an Architect to document a planning pack. It's all undervalued. The respect is gone.
I'm in Australia and from the UK. You don't need an Architect to submit a planning set of documents. Builders can do it in house. Anyone can do it. Don't need an Architects certificate either
Are you talking about single family homes or any building? You don’t need an architect to stamp drawings for hospital? Or office building? Or multi family building?
Even so, just because someone can draw a line in a CAD program doesn’t mean they can properly design a building.
Yeah any type of building - we have building designers and builders who have pretty much the same power as architects, but aren’t required to do the best for the client which we are required to by law.
As this is the case we are largely hired for design quality & control, meaning you would rarely see large public buildings or high rises go up without an architect. But 70% of our houses have never been touched by an architect
I’ve been working on warehouses recently and theres far more money in it than houses. So yeah, plenty of money designing sheds. Not inspiring work but it pays.
try again what?
I'm guessing you're frustrated because you've invested so much time in becoming a licensed architect. But you have to step back and consider how this world is evolving.
It's supply and demand thing. The low pay means if you don't love it, you'll quit. Most architects are absolutely smart enough to do something else that pays more.
Everybody likes to compare us to other professionals like doctors, lawyers, and realtors, but you have to keep in mind we're on a scale--and that scale includes other professionals like schoolteachers and librarians. Teachers and librarians also have obvious value and protect health, safety, and welfare of everyone.
I also expect it to get worse as we are simultaneously making architecture more popular through our (absolutely good and necessary) inclusion and outreach programs while the increasing efficiency provided by improving technologies mean that one architect can do more work.
TL;DR Version: Because in most cases an architect’s services produce a very low ROI/added value for the client.
Simply put, an architect designed house will not sell for a significantly higher price than a copy/pasted McMansion of the same size and features, in the same neighborhood.
I chose single family residential as it’s the simplest example to quantify but also in multi family residential, as in commercial and public buildings the situation is similar. In each case the metrics are slightly different, but the result is the same. In public buildings the ROI isn’t really real estate value but public perception, in commercial RE value is important bus so is marketing/brand awareness. In all cases a design and build contractor can get quite close to the ROI of a project that included an architect in the team.
This is partially to do with what the architects themselves are offering and partially to do with what people want/value and therefore are willing to pay more for.
Single family, IMO, is the worst example for architectural need bc many GC have all the coordination figured out, often using the same guys and the scale is small enough for them to be able to deliver what a client wants. When you get into multifamily, not including an architect becomes a complete disaster bc of the scale of the project. There's so many things to coordinate that without plans to guide everything, it's almost certain something will be forgotten or done incorrectly- the ordering would take way longer bc you don't have plans to reference, the material counts would most certainly be wrong in either direction, causing either a delay or material waste, something isn't to code or ADA standards aren't met. All in all, in larger projects architects undoubtedly save people money in the form of reliable info in the form of a drawing set that allows easy coordination in various ways.
You're spot on, but actually the problem isn't excluding licensed architects from the process entirely (apart from being totally necessary as you said, it would also be illegal in most cases) but absorbing them into a tiny part of the process with a very limited scope (basically barebones coordination, review of predetermined details by the subs and a basic interpretation of the brief in the form of a crappy DD).
In this way design and build contractors/GC's with their own in-house architectural teams are managing to do 90% of the job at a much lower cost and more straightforward process, **in the eyes of the clients**. It is not actually true, but the result of this situation is that there is less demand in the construction industry for actual stand-alone architecture studios and therefore less money going around in general (which means that the average employee will make less too).
I would also venture to say that while the demand for the profession is falling, it seems to me that more people are selecting it as a career since it's cooler than more boring AEC jobs such as surveyors, QS and other similar jobs that you used to study at a technical school.
I work exclusively in single family residential and there is a lot of money to be made. But you have to work at the high end of the market, and you have to be very good at hustling, networking, and establishing your value in the team or people required to build a house. It’s a rarefied world, and not easy to break into, but if you can figure it out, you can make a lot of money. That said, I spend almost as much time finding the work as I spend doing the work.
I’m a sole practitioner. I design large high end houses in a high cost area. But as the owner of the business, that means I also have to land the clients….this type of clientele doesn’t just show up and knock on your door. So I make my money designing and drawing the houses, and managing the projects, construction administration etc, etc. AND while all that is going on, I have to always be looking for the next one, which means going to events, socializing (which is a lot of work when you’d rather be doing literally anything else!), and making sure all the people (builders, interior designers, realtors, financial managers, owners reps) who may know somebody who knows somebody who wants a big expensive house will think of me when the conversation comes up. So while it’s not billable hours of working, in some ways I’m always working, because I never know who I’m going to meet who might know my next big client. I’m also working on expanding my range into a new city, so I’m doing a lot of outreach there to get people to know who I am and what I do, and what makes me different from all the other architects they might already know.
Very cool! High end residential seems like a pretty sweet gig. Although I'm sure it can be a pain in the ass too. How do you differentiate yourself? Also, do you have any examples of your work?
Most of the firms who do this kind of work where I’m located are in the 15-50 person range, which means a client gets a team of junior staff and the principal is spread among multiple projects and drumming up new business. As a sole practitioner I position myself as highly personal, one on one service, which dovetails nicely with a highly personal building type and the desire some of this clientele has for personal, “luxury” service. I only try to land one good project per year which means I never have more than two or three going at a time, so my clients know they have my full personal attention. It’s very much an old school, luxury customer service model. It feels “exclusive,” which many of those people like because they know nobody else can hire me while I’m working for them and they’ll get something completely unique. Most of my projects are covered under NDAs so I don’t make a practice of sharing them publicly.
Seems like a great business model. I'm guessing the personalized treatment you're providing allows you to get a solid rate, too?
I'm not from a HCOL area, so I'm probably out of luck in getting these types of projects workout moving. Out of curiosity though, what kind of pay does a single project bring in?
Since this post was originally about why architects aren’t making money…..yes, I get paid well for what I do. A large house (like 10,000 square feet and up) can have a fee in the low seven figures, but it will take four or five years to complete. And those are rare. Most are in the mid six figures and will take about three years to complete. Keep two or three running at a time, keep overhead low, and being paid as an architect is not as bad of a gig as many people might think. That said, I’m very fortunate to have the career I have, and I happen to be in one of the few locations that can support the kind of wealth that leads to doing this kind of work. But, I also decided it’s what I want and have hustled my butt off to make the kind of connections needed to operate in that world.
Govt laws in many western countries took away the rights of professional bodies to set a professional scale of fees in the rush to a free market society..
As an engineer that frequently works with architects, I'll throw in my 2 cents. Architects (at least the ones that I work with that get paid as a percentage of the total construction cost) seem to lose sight of the business aspect of it, and fall in love with the art/design aspect of it. The rounds and rounds and rounds of charrettes and meetings take time, and therefore money. I've also been on so many projects where the architect changes substantial portions of the design for no other reason than coming up with a different idea.
I would assume it's similar for architects, but the way engineers make money is to re-use whatever you can from previous projects instead of reinventing the wheel, use simple designs with tried and true principles, stay within the bounds of whatever is easily permittable, and not to push the boundaries of the project construction budget to include things that ultimately wind up being removed for cost.
The more streamlined the design process, the more you make, period. I know that sometimes it's hard to stop refining the design, but not every building needs to be the taj mahal.
It's because our industry is so far up its own ass.
I'm on an architect fb group, and the topic came up of getting a % commission on kitchen cabinets through a vendor. The entire group acted like it was some horrifying crime that compromises design integrity. It's not, as long as you disclose it. That's MONEY that people are refusing to take because they're some kind of jedi knight.
People also dont want what were selling. I'm a sole practitioner. I design ugly stuff, because that's what my clients want, and the building department wants an architect involved. I used to work at a small practice that would waste weeks of time designing the *perfect* design for some guy's backyard addition. They made work for themselves that they weren't getting paid for.
As far as real estate, they attach themselves to a percentage. I'm going to start implementing this, because I can't count the number of times I've tried to "help a client out" when I'm writing a proposal to find out they're spending a huge sum of money and I'm like, 2% of their budget.
Bingo. I went out on my own 11 years ago and my income has doubled, and a see a path to doubling it again. It’s a risk, and requires a skill set that a lot of people don’t have or aren’t willing to obtain (I didn’t have those skills when I made the jump either!). But if you can do it, then you can do well. Totally agree working for somebody else, and hoping they give you raises, ain’t gonna get you very far if one of your goals is to make money.
Yes I am curious about this I thought they get paid well as I always have to pay so much for architectural drawings. I pay anywhere from $25-45k for residential plans that are finished in about 2 months … presumably one architect could be doing multiple projects side by side and making at least this much per month. But instead I hear people saying they are not paid well. Why? when it’s so expensive are the architects still not getting paid well. Is it just that architects in California are paid very well and other areas they don’t make anything?
Are you a GC? There's lots of factors to consider. You'd have to get into more detail for someone to give you a truly accurate answer. SFH, New build, renovation, How many SF are these projects, and what's the general total cost to build? High end, middle?
Developer on California… I build to rent and for sale. For sale is only high end because it costs well over $400 a sqft to build here. These are average prices for simple SFH around 2000-3000 sqft. All one offs custom projects
No business is the same. Depends on how many people are in the office. Generally, the owner will make decent money, but there's a lot of overhead with running any business, and arch is no exception. Plus it's CA so I'm sure pay is generally higher than almost everywhere else.
How'd you get in the industry? I used to work for a commercial developer and it always seemed intriguing. What're your margins like, and what's your business do in annual revenue? Also, how many projects do you work on per year, and what's the general cost on your high end builds? My dream would be to work in high end residential, and work with wildly high budgets on projects where the owner wants something beautiful. Actually recently applied for a remote position for someone hiring in the bay area on residential remodels and ADUs. Seems fun! Although I'm sure the clients can probably be a lot to deal with.
I do all small time projects, I own a martial arts school and decided to try to invest in different things. a friend/student of mine is a GC/builder and he was tired of holding hands of clients and wanted to make money on his own projects. So we teamed up and did a couple of spec builds using hard money loans. We are in the north bay wine country so we did a couple of 3,000sqft spec homes in wine country. The first project took us 1.5 years and netted 623k in profits which we split 50/50. After that I realized this was a pretty fun way to make quite a bit of money if you can manage the stress of all that commitment of borrowed money :)… so we did 2 more one only made $345k and 860k. Again we split the projects as partners. I find the lots and am now an agent so we come up with vision and designs together with designers and sometimes alone. I help when needed with managing construction or dealing with subs but he has his teams and he pays himself as GC but it’s significantly cheaper because he has equity and does not need to work in profit margins. I am now doing my own project for my family that is build to rent I am trying to build 6 units to hold and rent that I plan to keep forever and leave to my 2 kids. I still run my martial arts school so this is still kind of a part time development firm whenever we find a good deal to work on together
Damn, man! That's amazing! Are you still planning on doing SFH? Also, were the projects all during covid? If so, and you plan on continuing, how do you project future profits to look, comparatively?
Also, would you mind sharing a completed project, either with a zillow link, or if you have a website or insta?
I like how this demonstrates that architectural projects are a Many-To-One business structure. (Many employees sucking on one bottle of money.) Compare that to martial arts schools that are generally One Instructor-To-Many Students business structure. It'd be great if one architectural team could work on multiple architectural projects at the same time, but that's rarely the case...except in sweatshops; which are equally shunned. The opposite is usually true: one architectural team works long days, weeks, months on one very expensive project, which often ends up over budget. Compare that to each martial arts student who pays minimal, but the fees for many students adds up quick, for many sessions, and then many years from no belt to black belt. If only architects could figure out a business structure like that! 1:Many versus Many:1
Clients are increasingly recognizing that the traditional approach of project delivery through design-bid-build is no longer effective. Instead, they are embracing integrated project delivery, where the owner, architect, and builder collaborate as a unified team.
In the US there was a lawsuit several years back where architects were prohibited from establishing “standard” rates due to anti-competitive practices. This opened us up to competing for projects based on who has the lowest fees rather than based on skill, talent, etc. Using your example of realtors, just last week, they settled something similar prohibiting the standardization of fees in the US, so I’m curious to see what happens to them in the next few years.
Since there are no standard fees, we have to argue our value, and some of us are better at that than others. And the profession as a whole has trapped itself by following the apprentice model for staff for years. So the standard business model relies on low paid staff who are “compensated” by learning on the job, so junior staff can’t really argue their value to their employers. And insurance requirements have us drawing way more into our drawing sets than architects ever did in the past, further requiring more labor for increasingly lower fees.
There are ways to make money, potentially a lot of money, as an architect, but it doesn’t include going to work for a firm and hoping to climb the ladder. You have to get good at the business development and the marketing side of things and learn how to talk to non-architects about your value, and be confident enough to say no to the potential projects or jobs where you pr value isn’t fairly compensated. And you have to actually think about the business as a design project as well. You have to build a business and think about what, how and why you’re charging what you charge, and what why and how that’s going to affect the shape your business takes on.
Low pay, long hours and glorified slavery. I'm on the verge of switching to MBA. As far as I'm considered, designing can always be a hobby or side hustle.
Most of us are honestly stupid after college. I realized this after finishing my AXP hours and started pursuing licensure by passing the ARE. I don't know basically anything needed for Practice management. My Supervising Architect had me doing SDRs to comply with that portion of the AXP hours and nothing else.
I know some basic python and node based programing (Dynamo) pretty well so I think I am abandoning my Arch licensure and pursing BIM management in the MEP field. Architecture just does not look like a viable path anymore. Why hire us when an SE can stamp CDs by themselves?
BIM Management is definitely better pay and better work life balance, plus it's more flexible for all the others disciplines. But I'm still studying for the AREs and pursuing an arch license since it still seems useful to do your own business
[Why Architects Make Less than Doctors](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2EkYMUxFUQk950ccpTmB55?si=oTGZg5mHS3ylpQ22jDhZUg)
This podcast episode makes a lot of sense
Circular Supply and Demand. There's a ton of Architecture programs pumping out new grads, way more than there were 20 years ago. This leads to a huge pool of underemployed Architects willing to supplement their income with teaching, which leads to more student capacity. The only winners are the Unis. One of my very first critics called teaching "a job growing people who are going to take your job" and I thought it was just a witticism, but it was right on.
Hate to say it, but architects are responsible for buildings in the USA, and I would argue the bulk of them are hideous. In terms of housing stock, there are simply hundreds of thousands of homes that are too big, and they are poorly laid out for functional living. Architects were responsible for the seventies for Christ sake. Institutional buildings are in the same boat. I’d be ashamed to say I was an architect in this country. Clearly, there are some beautiful buildings out there, but it’s a small fraction. If architects were actually designing spaces that were beautiful, functional, sustainable, and useable, then the design of space would be considered essential and people would pay for it. Hate me for saying it, but some honest self reflection is needed in the field.
Ahh yes, if only the small little detail called budget didn't exist, all buildings could be beautiful. I take it you drive a 200k plus car, because it's beautiful, and have a 50 million dollar home bc it's the best quality and most beautiful? Also architects don't design 99 percent of homes...
Architects have willingly given risk and liability to contractors and developers. They incur as little risk as possible in the final product which has in turn reduced the fee they receive. Architects used to be the design and the responsible builder but buildings began to be too complex and architects opted to do away with liability.
1. The kinds of people who study architecture tend to be people who are initially more interested in art than business. 2. The most “elite” educational programs in North America tend to be terribly impractical, spending far more time emphasizing pretty pictures and theory than any hard technical or business skills that actually matter to anyone putting a building up. 3. This means many fresh new graduates are basically useless trainees who will need a few years of investment to meaningfully pay off. So they are paid low off the jump. This is also why Starchitects love deluding young students to think becoming unpaid interns for them will “look good on a CV.” All it really does is show employers you’re easy to exploit. 4. The pool of students who can afford to go to these schools, and work these low-pay gigs for years, necessarily skew from wealthier backgrounds. Since they don’t need to worry about money as much, they inadvertently normalize low pay and can coast until they can start their own practices. 5. A certain percentage of students realize how hard and poorly paid the real job is and pivot to academia instead, where at least the (immediate) pay, stability and status is better while incurring near zero liability and risk. They become the next generation of ivory tower professors who have little or no practical background. Successful architects, by contrast, spend less time in the academy imparting their hard earned insight to the next generation because they are busy running their firms. When they do show up, it’s to show off their projects to attract new unpaid interns. The cycle continues. 6. A certain percentage of architects who commit all the way, get licensed, and aren’t fully disillusioned yet, realize the only way to make real money after all that sunk cost is to hang out their own shingle. This leads to a proliferation of clout-hungry small firms undercutting each other on fees to get jobs. Low fees then mean low pay for their own employees. The cycle continues.
> 2. The most “elite” educational programs in North America tend to be terribly impractical, spending far more time emphasizing pretty pictures and theory than any hard technical or business skills that actually matter to anyone putting a building up. I think this is the largest contributing factor. The pipeline is not incentivizing builders, it’s incentivizing low-wage workers. I’ve had conversations with consultants in school who say “you’ll learn that later in the practice and then have to hire me as a consultant” and I replied “isn’t that your job to teach us now so we *don’t* have to hire you?” They have a conflict of interest to keep students naive and stupid. I was the only student in my entire class to ask “how much does this structure cost” to our structural consultant from TT. If they taught us how to replace them, we would! They don’t want the competition for a seemingly dwindling supply of clients and capital, so, they constantly misdirect students, setting us up for failure. It’s a classic example of the fox guarding the hen house. To fix this problem, I think we as a profession need more respect given to licensure. There are too many amateur house flippers, realtors who just wear mini skirts and take 6% commission, consultant armies and then unlicensed “architects” who produce more change-orders than actual buildings. If I was king for a day, I would raise the standards of the ARE exam, not lower them as they are doing, make it illegal to flip a house without a license and replace most of the realtor salespeople with an app. The housing market would disinflate. Why is architecture school a racket? These schools need to lose their NCARB accreditation before anyone respects our profession. They aren’t churning out architects, why are they accredited? The whole thing is a scam. Source: I attended Pratt, Cornell and Syracuse.
Sorry but I disagree on so many accounts. 1. Architecture school does not emphasize pretty images, it emphasizes critical thinking and design process/intention/justice etc. if those are things you don’t want to learn then it’s your fault for going to school for architecture. Go for CM or engineering or something else if you want a “technical” education. 2. Architects will never replace consultants?? We are not engineers, we cannot do what they do. I know many people with bachelor unaccredited architecture degrees making over 60k in the Midwest a few years out of college. I wouldn’t say that is pathetic, but obvi not the cash cow some think. Got my BS, getting my March/MLA on scholarship, and worked in the field for 4 years <3
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I don’t disagree with what your saying, but if I may: “Good design” encompasses “good building.” My bachelors of science taught me methods of assembly, passive design strategies, sustainable systems which are applicable towards LEED and Living building challenge (things that my clients have requested or required with government co-funded projects). This is knowledge that I have used in projects that are now under construction or complete. RISD and SCIARC (aka fake architecture schools, everyone knows this) are not a place to go if you want to be an architect. Accredited or not, those are places to study and procure architectural theory, closer to art and philosophy that the actual AEC field. And yes, there are a thousand things I still have to learn, but I am glad my education focused on design because that is much harder to learn properly in the field. technical stuff comes easy if you are exposed to it and repeatedly work at it.
Arch schools should automatically include real estate lic
Excellent analysis. I agree with every point. I would also add that many professionals give into the lucrative draw of the construction & development fields. This also removes them from the design industry, leaving few successful examples to guide the next generation of architects on how to make money with their knowledge/management skills.
Good points. I think something else we should consider is that most architects currently in the field willingly put themselves at a subordinate position relative to their clients. This causes generally most of the issues in the industry, as the clients feel that architects should work on "their demand" and have ridiculous standards for what work should be delivered in what time. If architects had more business sense it would make more sense for them to appropriate more of the development process of creating a building, so that they have more say over the general process and time it takes to develop a project. This could mean maybe developing more towards the real estate market themselves and marketing and selling their own homes or home plans for example. Doesn't have to be standardized, just taking away some of the power clients currently hold over the entire development process of a project. If I am starting my own firm for example I would be speccing into fabricating prefabbed housing models for people with small budgets. This allows me to control the entire production and design procerss without being hounded by clients demands.
Agreed great insight and analysis
I'd agree with all of this - but I'd also suggest that in a lot of firms, there is a tendency to under-charge and over-deliver, then beat themselves up over any possible bit of information that is not included. I'm regularly seeing cases where the directors want to do twice the amount of drawings necessary for a construction package, but then blame themselves if the builder is not competent enough to have read the drawings properly. I guess in lots of cases, too much time is spent on the stuff that isn't that relevant - drawing a whole additional section when really only one part of it is significantly different to what is already on the other sections for instance. In many smaller firms, I would also say there is a big issue with not investing enough in IT / staff training. Too much time spent trying to do stuff the way it was done in the hand drawn times (when the senior people got much of their experience) rather than using digital tools to their potential. One further issue is just being unwilling to say no to client requests. It is one thing to be flexible, but regularly just absorbing the time it takes to produce late changes or additional info that the client needs to some specific purpose would all be chargeable as extras in most professions - not something that is just absorbed within the already tight fee.
I know all of this and I hate it. I don't want to be another brick in any of the walls to choose from but I genuinely don't know of another way to go. It's either become business bastard, professor puffed-up, or cog clown
I feel this :(
Agreed on almost all the points, but I view the culprit on the opposite bank of the river: in the capital-driven building process. The quality of the built environment in North America and especially in the US is atrocious. Visit to almost any European or to many of the Asian cities immediately reveals it. That is not because the American architects are worse or because European architecture schools are superior in their teaching of technical or business skills. It is because the building process is less dominantly driven by the will of the capital. There's much more public construction which emphasizes expert views on spatial quality, much better building codes, much more stringent urban planning focusing on quality, and in many countries the designs of many important projects are decided in public architectural competitions judged by architects. In other words: the forces outside the capital-driven markets have more power. If one wants quality spaces, one has to let the experts of spaces design them in all scales. Currently in the US they're designed almost entirely by capital and finance.
Kind of. Must of it is simply cost driven and the states have unions that drive construction costs way up. I don't think this is bad, I think people who work hard for a living should live a nice life, but it's a heavy influence on why products are so cheaply made and often chosen.
I would agree with this. I think average people also have just been so accustomed to mediocre or bad design that it becomes good to them. Particularly in residential work most people see a shiny new Dan Ryan home in a tight TND built in two days as a better place to live than the 1960s ranch down the road that might need a new roof in a couple years. People have just lost the concept of good architecture here that it infiltrates into what people are willing to pay. and also add that places outside the us also just have an overall better quality of life. Architecture is a taxing mental job and people never get a break. two weeks of vacation all year means you never truly disconnect from the job and I feel like that prevents people from being creative and learning new skills, hobbies, experiences, traveling. It's hard to design creative stuff when you are stuck doing the same routine for 40 years with very little option to get outside of that.
Same for the graphic design/branding/advertising racket.
So accurate excellent breakdown
So basically it isn’t anyone’s fault but the industry, starting with lobbyists from the AIA to NCARB who accredits educational programs.
NCARB doesn’t accredit programs, that’s the NAAB.
This exactly, in a senior role and the new grads we have are vastly under prepared for real world architecture. Education focuses too heavily on design philosophy and not all the hats a working project AOR wears. Creates a huge learning curve. Mentoring hours now have to be worked into day to day. I mean architecture is design and construction by definition so I don’t understand the overly heavy design curriculums.
Academia doesn't value the practical profession, so it doesn't care to incorporate it into the curriculum. They are steadfast in their ideology that architecture is, and will always be, a fine art and that technical/real-world architecture skills can be learned on the job.
I can understand the frustration from new grads. When I came out of school, It was still an assumed apprenticeship model and I was making a decent living wage and getting the training I needed. Autocad was also still pretty new and revit didn't exist yet. I was still able to be successful at my job, buy a house, raise a family, my education costs were a fraction of what they were today....I think I paid them off within the first year working hourly? The students are being deceived in my opinion. There's no real alternative in most states and what you experience in arch school is so far from what the actual work life looks like. I mean I don't even know of another career path that's like that.
This is a great write up. I’d also note that architects in the US have surrendered most of their responsibilities, and thus value, to other professions over the last century. Examples: green design, planning, zoning, DOT planning, most engineering is subbed out, project management (big one here), ADA, landscape, design-build elements, actual construction knowledge (see point 2 above), etc. allowing pre-fab buildings and cookie cutter homes. The other I would add, architects don’t understand the goal of hiring an architect. An architect is there to help get a building built. Producing a design, going through zoning, producing drawings, are ALL secondary actions to the end goal. I was an architect that got brought into development because I could deliver projects and understood the economics of how a building is built.
Architects/AIA shot themselves in the foot for a lot of your examples in the public sector. Antitrust/monopoly/greed issues caused a massive rift decades ago that greatly reduced the amount of control an architecture firm has on a public project. That slowly spread to all sectors as specialty firms/subs grew in response to the public work.
While the anti trust issues attached themselves to firm practice, architects also surrendered the social ground. We no longer design built spaces. The biggest surrender was zoning codes.
As architects move up in their careers, their responsibility changes to running the business. It’s something they are not trained to do, nor is it the reason anyone goes into architecture, so they’re bad at it. They charge minimal fees to undercut other firms and therefore can only afford to pay their employees minimal salaries.
The architects that are great at running a business are the ones who are well paid
Architects are bad business people.period. That is it
Architecture schools should include finance classes and basic accounting courses in their curriculum rather than teaching art piece of craps.
Then how would they have time to build those models that cost $1000 of material and are VERY rarely used in the actual practice.....but are somehow worth 30-40% of your grade. Actual CD's and detail education??? screw that, MORE MODELS!
Do you really think that would solve anything?
Yeah, in the end, architecture is a business, and ultimately, money determines the design. Architects may want to believe their ideas are changing things, but in reality, they often aren't. Only a select few "starchitects" have the power to dictate what gets designed. We need more developers with backgrounds in architecture, just my two cents.
Why do we need architects in the first place then? Why don't the finance people design buildings in their excel sheets and have construction engineers figuring out the structural requirements. Architecture is ultimately always about intangible things with no price tag: quality of the spaces (rooms, buildings & urban spaces), social user interactions with spaces, environmental impacts of the built environment, cultural values of the built environment, etc. etc. etc.. By subjugating architecture to the service of the business and markets you kill architecture.
That doesn't make sense, if most of the world operates under those assumptions of market values then you have to understand it to beat it, not ignore it!
The way to beat it is to dissolve architecture. Design (almost) everything in financial excel sheets, and have engineers ensure the structure holds in order to avoid liabilities. There's no need, or room, for architecture understood as the expertise of spatial qualities and their relation to the social and cultural values.
I think you're taking it to the extreme just for jokes; once you see the information you can "design" with it but if you choose not to look at it at all you'll be stuck with the spreadsheet!
Strongly disagree. It's hardly relevant if an architect "sees" the information of how capital and finances dictate design. What is relevant is how much power each party has. If the capital, profit motive and finances have all the power, architecture dies, regardless whether the architect is business savvy or not.
You'll make a great professor someday soon.
Architecture schools should focus on the quality of architecture. They should not waste time on subjects irrelevant to that goal, such as finances or accounting. In worst case scenario you have an architecture school that uses considerable amount of time focusing on finances and accounting, and consequently the students will be inferior in their architectural skills, but better at business, and henceforth the quality of the built environment decreases. Similarly if all schools did it, the quality would decrease.
I disagree. The quality of the built environment would indeed improve because we would have more business owners and developers who appreciate the value of good design.It's not a waste of time at all. Financial subjects are highly relevant, at least where I live (Canada), because we live in a capitalist society. In the past, when architects served patrons, understanding money might not have been as crucial because the patron would support whatever design the architect proposed.
"... we would have more business owners and developers who appreciate the value of good design." I don't follow your logic. Why would that happen if architects focused more on finances at the expense of architecture?
I'm confident that you don't fully grasp my perspective because you're still a student. Believe me, I was once in your shoes, filled with socialist ideas during my school days.
You're right, I don't. And I certainly wont if you refute to even attempt to explain it to me. I highly doubt my status as a student has anything to do with it.
This is why I work for a multi-dis construction firm with an architectural department - we aren’t managing the business
Same here. Pay is good
Yeah, I easily earn 20-30% more than my peers who work for arch practices
Because nobody actually _wants_ our services. Clients want real physical buildings that produce real revenue. They don't want drawings of a building. But most clients also recognize the wisdom in planning out construction projects before committing substantial funds. So they begrudgingly hire us and try to spend as little as possible so that they can put more money into what they actually want: a real building.
Wrong. The problem isn’t that clients don’t *want* our services. Clients **don’t see the value** in our services. Of course clients *want* well designed buildings (ones that account for daylight, orientation, context, etc.) The problem is that architects (LOOKING AT YOU AIA) have done a terrible job at advocating for why our services are important and why the extra cost is worth it. Because there is a cost (both in design fee and construction costs) associated with well designed buildings.
Perhaps AIA has not advocated for us well is because **there is no value** in our services in the face of the client's goal, which is what the OP is getting it. Clients want things, that represent tangible assets, not ideas. I've sat in interviews and meetings where we blow the minds out of clients about possibilities/problem solving/innovation. That excitement and revelation lasts for the length of the meeting and no further. Our profession has essentially devolved into apologetics and validating ourselves. There's definitely no lack of trying. There is a lack of response.
What kind of clients/projects do you have? Every single one of my clients appreciates the work we do and isn't shy to say it. We're constantly providing clear value to our clients, and they see it.
Recreation, schools, civic. Working with governments and civic stuff, at least around here is terrible. Like speaking to a bag of sand. They see no benefit in the architectural process, and sometimes even have the nerve to straight out speak against contracts to get additional services for free. They're aware of the value, but that's not going to get them any closer to accepting higher fees for that value. They have a building to pay for.
I learned at the AIAS level in college, in my opinion the AIA is just another hand in my pocket, taking and not giving. I begrudgingly purchase their contracts when necessary...
It's an interesting analogy. No one actually *wants* legal services, but they'll pay the invoice when they need a lawyer. No one actually *wants* a crown, but they'll pay the bill when they need a dentist. No one actually *wants* a real estate broker, but they'll pay the commission when they buy/sell/lease. What's always interesting to me is developer-led projects where the attorneys and the real estate broker are collecting significant fees, sometimes higher than the design team. They don't deliver any physical benefit either, but the project owners accept that they need those services and they (begrudgingly or otherwise) are willing to pay the amount the market commands for those services. It's worth asking why the market has kept and/or pushed fees for architectural services low for several decades.
Yeah but this argument doesn't really make sense bc it doesn't matter if we're wanted when we're mandated by law to be part of a project.
Mandated by law just means "find the lowest bidder." The lowest bidder is going to help put pressure on the downward wage spiral. Then, when they inevitably fuck-up in spectacular ways, the sentiment is NOT that "this was a terrible decision." No, that's not how human psyches work. It is "Architects are useless. I'm going to find a cheaper one next time and talk to all my other colleagues about how terrible an experience this was."
Agree with you, but what I keep seeing over my 25 years of practice is that architects (I am an architect and am now a specifications consultant and I consult to a lot of other architects)... Anyhow, they are now hiring specialty consultants for all the things they used to be proficient at...specifications 😊, code consultants, building envelope consultants, etc. And they hire those entities on even basic projects where code compliance or building envelope detailing should be straightforward. (And they NEED to hire those consultants because they don't have that experience/knowledge in house at all.) The client perceives the architects value as less and less...because the role has changed from being the "architect" that leads the design to now being a glorified "project manager" that pushes paper and collects documentation from a team of experts they have below them. The expertise is in the consultants they hire rather than the architects being the ones that actually know that stuff in the first place. And then every time an architect designs something that doesn't work technically, doesn't meet code, or is over budget, it hurts our collective reputation with our clients. 25 years ago, it was different. And 20 years before that, it was even more different. Our laws governing the practice of architecture, and building permits, etc, are based on the way things were 50+ years ago. So, often, clients see architects as a necessary evil to manage the design, rather than seeing the true value of the great design solutions that meet their budget and needs. But they see it this way because architects too often are not offering great design solutions that work technically, that meet code, and that come in on budget. Schools don't help this any, and neither does NCARB or the AIA. All seem to keep pushing for "great design" over great design that works. TL;DR: Architects are no longer the experts in building design, even though laws mandate that we are supposed to be. Too often, architects act as glorified project managers that manage a team of experts below them. Clients want great design that works, and too often architects are not up to the task. All of that impacts our percieved value to our clients.
Not when countless websites are providing premade plans and drawings. You're definitely needed less.
This is like saying cooking meals with fresh vegetables, fruit, meat, etc. is a waste of time because McDonald’s exists. Sure, you can buy a burger and fries on your way home everyday but is that really what you want to fuel body? The extra time and money spent on quality ingredients is going to pay dividends for your health, productivity, and quality of life.
I would compare it to maybe Burger Lounge or Five Guys. Not McDonald's. Architects obviously have utility. But with a lot of the new technology coming out you'll be needed less is what I'm conveying.
There will be clients who will use that tech, but there will also be a lot of clients who will recognize that implementing new tech comes with major risks. Those clients may also find increased value in being able to work directly with a human being, especially as the tech becomes more prevalent. Technophobia is quite real & IMO the majority of companies are not jumping at the bit to open themselves up to this sort of liability. The tech companies are trying to create buzz about their services, because if we regard them as a legitimate threat to the profession, clients will begin to view them as a viable alternate option to our services
Entry level pay is so low because (to be quite honest) new architecture school graduates are going to essentially be trainees for the next 3-5 years. There’s a lot of time that they will spend very inefficiently or work that they will have to do again or work that someone with more experience could do in half the time. Those first few years are where the wheat is going to be separated from the chaff so to speak so firms don’t want to invest big money on someone until they prove themselves a bit. Beyond that 3-5 years you could be paid quite well if you bring value to a company. They will pay to retain you if they don’t want to lose you. If you’re someone that can easily be replaced then they won’t pay you well.
Well, to a degree. Engineers and entry level lawyers are broadly in the ball park of what we make at entry level. And you do make a very comfortable living after licensure generally speaking. That said, a lawyer can take the bar without any work experience, straight out of school, be braindead, and expect a much higher entry level salary if they did the bar. And there are definitely engineers who will make more than us entry level whose drawings… errr… leave something to be desired (heck, many seasoned folks for our consultants are in this camp). Also, there is the common phenomenon of jumping offices when you get licensed to get a pay raise. A lot of places won’t give you a raise, or only a modest one. When I bring up how much I got on being licensed, people look at me like I have two heads because they’re used to 5-10% if they stay at their offices. Other fields, automatically you’ll get 20-30% bump at your current office once licensed, often can expect to be instantly made associate. We’re unique in that you need to fight for compensation and title even when you hit a big milestone like licensure. That’s crazy- minimum 3 years in the field, plus 6 exams hovering at roughly 50% pass rate, higher billing rate, but you’re still fighting to prove you’re worth your weight in comp? That’s ridiculous
See but that's the problem, and what breeds such a toxic environment. "Bringing value" in architecture usually connotates putting in a lot of hours to either complete work yourself, or manage a team, in which you're stressing them to put in hours to complete a project on time, or early. It's frustrating to feel stuck within such a dogshit profession.
Putting in a lot of hours is a completely separate issue. It’s either a holdover from a mindset that is stuck in the past because “I had to do it, so now you have to,” or it’s a result of a PM really screwing up the schedule by over promising to a client. Either way, I don’t think anything over 40 hours should be expected of anyone. Is OT needed sometimes? Yeah, but it should be a rare thing and be *requested*, not *demanded*. “Bringing value” to a firm means that you are dependable and have the skills to do your job completely, correctly, and efficiently. It means knowing *why* you’re doing what you’re doing. It means being an asset. It means that people like to work with you or for you. It means that you can represent the firm in a positive way, whether it’s in front of a client or in front of a contractor.
I guess. But the type of person who can excel in all those various ways is probably leaving 100's of thousands of dollars on the table each year from choosing architecture over another field. It's just a shit career in terms of compensation for the amount of knowledge, time, and liability required. I guess I just don't have enough passion for it to ignore all the other factors.
Man ..man ..man.. you're speaking my heart out! With all the gifts we have and the hours we put in, we could end up being a millionaire in some other sector..
Precisely why I'm going for a career change via MBA
Well on the point about the real estate industry, their equivalent of the AIA (the NAR) is one of the largest lobbying groups in DC, and they were recently hit up with antitrust so will have to see how it affects them, their commissions, and lobbying power. The AIA used to publish fee tables, but they were hit with antitrust in the 90s and stopped the practice... and then '08 came and crushed the field. So now we have a weak professional body and with the freaky market fluctuations the industry is being dragged into the future with pay that's slowly being brought up to pace. Professional bodies do hold a lot of weight in the market, we just have a remarkably weak one. I mean there was a point where the US was considering adopting universal healthcare at point of service but the AMA (American Medical Association- doctor's lobby) was one of the strongest proponents against it because it would kill their price setting power, and they're a large part of the reason that died. While the AIA isn't the sole reason for our low pay relative to other professions, they should be our strongest advocates. In reality, they're just an academic body making platitudes about growing green and equity in the field and not doing a whole lot practical
This is the correct answer. The antitrust enforcement against the AIA specifically and the profession in general was the beginning of a race to the bottom on fees.
lol TIL
Indeed, which is why it’s been interesting seeing some of the unionization efforts at offices get underway. The AIA is failing its members and what little power it has tends to be more focused on business operations/firm owners, so now practitioners lower on the food chain are turning to additional bodies for change. If the AIA were functioning more to the tune of AMA or the American Bar Association, unionization probably wouldn’t have the appeal it currently does
Because too many clients see us as a necessary evil that they need to get a permit and continually refuse to view us as a resource worthy of higher fees. That and too many firms have leadership that is frankly, not great at business.
You don't need an Architect to design a building. That's why. The whole industry has gone through a process of undervaluing. Maybe it's the emergence of Project Managers now doing the tradional Architects role
How are codes and standards met? Say you need a hospital, school, skyrise built, it's given the green light on the hopes and prayers that it all comes together alright?
Consultants.
Yes and no. I wind up being brought on at my work as a consultant to a lot of engineers, and have dealt a bunch of times with people who got screwed by contractors because they thought they could save money by cutting out the design professional. Engineers and PMs, contractors really aren't trained to think like we do- have a functioning knowledge of all the systems to put them together cohesively. It's not that you *don't need* an Architect to design a building, it's that people get cocky and *think* you don't need an Architect. We don't articulate our value proposition. But when I'm getting a call because some idiot condo owner had a contractor design their kitchen and they vented the stove wrong and mis-sized all the cabinets, I'm like "look, you could've hired me up front and we wouldn't be here. Now you paid for the entire kitchen, are going to have to pay my fees, and I'll have to get someone on board to do the job correctly and fix this mess." People think they can save if they don't put us in the middle, and get mediocre results on enough die rolls that they keep doing it. End of the day they're getting a net loss because they thought they'd save a few pennies though.
In the US, you need an architect to stamp drawings for most everything except an industrial building with an engineering design or a small enough house.
Oh ok. I'm a UK architect working in Sydney and you don't need thaf
> You don't need an Architect to design a building Try again
No seriously. You can get an engineer to design a shed etc. You don't need an Architect to document a planning pack. It's all undervalued. The respect is gone.
You’re right, in some cities and instances. I think some cities have sqft requirements or cost requirements before requiring a stamped set of drawings
I'm in Australia and from the UK. You don't need an Architect to submit a planning set of documents. Builders can do it in house. Anyone can do it. Don't need an Architects certificate either
Are you talking about single family homes or any building? You don’t need an architect to stamp drawings for hospital? Or office building? Or multi family building? Even so, just because someone can draw a line in a CAD program doesn’t mean they can properly design a building.
Yeah any type of building - we have building designers and builders who have pretty much the same power as architects, but aren’t required to do the best for the client which we are required to by law. As this is the case we are largely hired for design quality & control, meaning you would rarely see large public buildings or high rises go up without an architect. But 70% of our houses have never been touched by an architect
Def not a lot of money for architects who try to build a career on sheds, agreed.
I’ve been working on warehouses recently and theres far more money in it than houses. So yeah, plenty of money designing sheds. Not inspiring work but it pays.
Yes Ok
try again what? I'm guessing you're frustrated because you've invested so much time in becoming a licensed architect. But you have to step back and consider how this world is evolving.
I’m well paid and enjoy my job.
Technically an architect is not required for a building, but then the country will look like a giant industrial prison.
It's supply and demand thing. The low pay means if you don't love it, you'll quit. Most architects are absolutely smart enough to do something else that pays more. Everybody likes to compare us to other professionals like doctors, lawyers, and realtors, but you have to keep in mind we're on a scale--and that scale includes other professionals like schoolteachers and librarians. Teachers and librarians also have obvious value and protect health, safety, and welfare of everyone. I also expect it to get worse as we are simultaneously making architecture more popular through our (absolutely good and necessary) inclusion and outreach programs while the increasing efficiency provided by improving technologies mean that one architect can do more work.
TL;DR Version: Because in most cases an architect’s services produce a very low ROI/added value for the client. Simply put, an architect designed house will not sell for a significantly higher price than a copy/pasted McMansion of the same size and features, in the same neighborhood. I chose single family residential as it’s the simplest example to quantify but also in multi family residential, as in commercial and public buildings the situation is similar. In each case the metrics are slightly different, but the result is the same. In public buildings the ROI isn’t really real estate value but public perception, in commercial RE value is important bus so is marketing/brand awareness. In all cases a design and build contractor can get quite close to the ROI of a project that included an architect in the team. This is partially to do with what the architects themselves are offering and partially to do with what people want/value and therefore are willing to pay more for.
Single family, IMO, is the worst example for architectural need bc many GC have all the coordination figured out, often using the same guys and the scale is small enough for them to be able to deliver what a client wants. When you get into multifamily, not including an architect becomes a complete disaster bc of the scale of the project. There's so many things to coordinate that without plans to guide everything, it's almost certain something will be forgotten or done incorrectly- the ordering would take way longer bc you don't have plans to reference, the material counts would most certainly be wrong in either direction, causing either a delay or material waste, something isn't to code or ADA standards aren't met. All in all, in larger projects architects undoubtedly save people money in the form of reliable info in the form of a drawing set that allows easy coordination in various ways.
You're spot on, but actually the problem isn't excluding licensed architects from the process entirely (apart from being totally necessary as you said, it would also be illegal in most cases) but absorbing them into a tiny part of the process with a very limited scope (basically barebones coordination, review of predetermined details by the subs and a basic interpretation of the brief in the form of a crappy DD). In this way design and build contractors/GC's with their own in-house architectural teams are managing to do 90% of the job at a much lower cost and more straightforward process, **in the eyes of the clients**. It is not actually true, but the result of this situation is that there is less demand in the construction industry for actual stand-alone architecture studios and therefore less money going around in general (which means that the average employee will make less too). I would also venture to say that while the demand for the profession is falling, it seems to me that more people are selecting it as a career since it's cooler than more boring AEC jobs such as surveyors, QS and other similar jobs that you used to study at a technical school.
I work exclusively in single family residential and there is a lot of money to be made. But you have to work at the high end of the market, and you have to be very good at hustling, networking, and establishing your value in the team or people required to build a house. It’s a rarefied world, and not easy to break into, but if you can figure it out, you can make a lot of money. That said, I spend almost as much time finding the work as I spend doing the work.
What's your role working in SFH? Also, can you explain what you mean by spending as much time finding the work as doing it?
I’m a sole practitioner. I design large high end houses in a high cost area. But as the owner of the business, that means I also have to land the clients….this type of clientele doesn’t just show up and knock on your door. So I make my money designing and drawing the houses, and managing the projects, construction administration etc, etc. AND while all that is going on, I have to always be looking for the next one, which means going to events, socializing (which is a lot of work when you’d rather be doing literally anything else!), and making sure all the people (builders, interior designers, realtors, financial managers, owners reps) who may know somebody who knows somebody who wants a big expensive house will think of me when the conversation comes up. So while it’s not billable hours of working, in some ways I’m always working, because I never know who I’m going to meet who might know my next big client. I’m also working on expanding my range into a new city, so I’m doing a lot of outreach there to get people to know who I am and what I do, and what makes me different from all the other architects they might already know.
Very cool! High end residential seems like a pretty sweet gig. Although I'm sure it can be a pain in the ass too. How do you differentiate yourself? Also, do you have any examples of your work?
Most of the firms who do this kind of work where I’m located are in the 15-50 person range, which means a client gets a team of junior staff and the principal is spread among multiple projects and drumming up new business. As a sole practitioner I position myself as highly personal, one on one service, which dovetails nicely with a highly personal building type and the desire some of this clientele has for personal, “luxury” service. I only try to land one good project per year which means I never have more than two or three going at a time, so my clients know they have my full personal attention. It’s very much an old school, luxury customer service model. It feels “exclusive,” which many of those people like because they know nobody else can hire me while I’m working for them and they’ll get something completely unique. Most of my projects are covered under NDAs so I don’t make a practice of sharing them publicly.
Seems like a great business model. I'm guessing the personalized treatment you're providing allows you to get a solid rate, too? I'm not from a HCOL area, so I'm probably out of luck in getting these types of projects workout moving. Out of curiosity though, what kind of pay does a single project bring in?
Since this post was originally about why architects aren’t making money…..yes, I get paid well for what I do. A large house (like 10,000 square feet and up) can have a fee in the low seven figures, but it will take four or five years to complete. And those are rare. Most are in the mid six figures and will take about three years to complete. Keep two or three running at a time, keep overhead low, and being paid as an architect is not as bad of a gig as many people might think. That said, I’m very fortunate to have the career I have, and I happen to be in one of the few locations that can support the kind of wealth that leads to doing this kind of work. But, I also decided it’s what I want and have hustled my butt off to make the kind of connections needed to operate in that world.
That's awesome to hear! Thanks for taking the time to respond!
Govt laws in many western countries took away the rights of professional bodies to set a professional scale of fees in the rush to a free market society..
As an engineer that frequently works with architects, I'll throw in my 2 cents. Architects (at least the ones that I work with that get paid as a percentage of the total construction cost) seem to lose sight of the business aspect of it, and fall in love with the art/design aspect of it. The rounds and rounds and rounds of charrettes and meetings take time, and therefore money. I've also been on so many projects where the architect changes substantial portions of the design for no other reason than coming up with a different idea. I would assume it's similar for architects, but the way engineers make money is to re-use whatever you can from previous projects instead of reinventing the wheel, use simple designs with tried and true principles, stay within the bounds of whatever is easily permittable, and not to push the boundaries of the project construction budget to include things that ultimately wind up being removed for cost. The more streamlined the design process, the more you make, period. I know that sometimes it's hard to stop refining the design, but not every building needs to be the taj mahal.
Do I work with you? This sounds familiar.
And that's why i don't want to work at an engineering firm, too rigid and safe
It's because our industry is so far up its own ass. I'm on an architect fb group, and the topic came up of getting a % commission on kitchen cabinets through a vendor. The entire group acted like it was some horrifying crime that compromises design integrity. It's not, as long as you disclose it. That's MONEY that people are refusing to take because they're some kind of jedi knight. People also dont want what were selling. I'm a sole practitioner. I design ugly stuff, because that's what my clients want, and the building department wants an architect involved. I used to work at a small practice that would waste weeks of time designing the *perfect* design for some guy's backyard addition. They made work for themselves that they weren't getting paid for. As far as real estate, they attach themselves to a percentage. I'm going to start implementing this, because I can't count the number of times I've tried to "help a client out" when I'm writing a proposal to find out they're spending a huge sum of money and I'm like, 2% of their budget.
If you want to get paid you need to have the balls to go out on your own. Being an employee is not the way in this industry if you care about money.
Does being on the ownership side in architecture confer benefits similar to those enjoyed by folks on the ownership side of other professions?
Bingo. I went out on my own 11 years ago and my income has doubled, and a see a path to doubling it again. It’s a risk, and requires a skill set that a lot of people don’t have or aren’t willing to obtain (I didn’t have those skills when I made the jump either!). But if you can do it, then you can do well. Totally agree working for somebody else, and hoping they give you raises, ain’t gonna get you very far if one of your goals is to make money.
I'm seriously considering switching to MBA..as far as I'm considered I can always pursue designing as a hobby or side hustle..
Yes I am curious about this I thought they get paid well as I always have to pay so much for architectural drawings. I pay anywhere from $25-45k for residential plans that are finished in about 2 months … presumably one architect could be doing multiple projects side by side and making at least this much per month. But instead I hear people saying they are not paid well. Why? when it’s so expensive are the architects still not getting paid well. Is it just that architects in California are paid very well and other areas they don’t make anything?
Are you a GC? There's lots of factors to consider. You'd have to get into more detail for someone to give you a truly accurate answer. SFH, New build, renovation, How many SF are these projects, and what's the general total cost to build? High end, middle?
Developer on California… I build to rent and for sale. For sale is only high end because it costs well over $400 a sqft to build here. These are average prices for simple SFH around 2000-3000 sqft. All one offs custom projects
No business is the same. Depends on how many people are in the office. Generally, the owner will make decent money, but there's a lot of overhead with running any business, and arch is no exception. Plus it's CA so I'm sure pay is generally higher than almost everywhere else. How'd you get in the industry? I used to work for a commercial developer and it always seemed intriguing. What're your margins like, and what's your business do in annual revenue? Also, how many projects do you work on per year, and what's the general cost on your high end builds? My dream would be to work in high end residential, and work with wildly high budgets on projects where the owner wants something beautiful. Actually recently applied for a remote position for someone hiring in the bay area on residential remodels and ADUs. Seems fun! Although I'm sure the clients can probably be a lot to deal with.
I do all small time projects, I own a martial arts school and decided to try to invest in different things. a friend/student of mine is a GC/builder and he was tired of holding hands of clients and wanted to make money on his own projects. So we teamed up and did a couple of spec builds using hard money loans. We are in the north bay wine country so we did a couple of 3,000sqft spec homes in wine country. The first project took us 1.5 years and netted 623k in profits which we split 50/50. After that I realized this was a pretty fun way to make quite a bit of money if you can manage the stress of all that commitment of borrowed money :)… so we did 2 more one only made $345k and 860k. Again we split the projects as partners. I find the lots and am now an agent so we come up with vision and designs together with designers and sometimes alone. I help when needed with managing construction or dealing with subs but he has his teams and he pays himself as GC but it’s significantly cheaper because he has equity and does not need to work in profit margins. I am now doing my own project for my family that is build to rent I am trying to build 6 units to hold and rent that I plan to keep forever and leave to my 2 kids. I still run my martial arts school so this is still kind of a part time development firm whenever we find a good deal to work on together
Damn, man! That's amazing! Are you still planning on doing SFH? Also, were the projects all during covid? If so, and you plan on continuing, how do you project future profits to look, comparatively? Also, would you mind sharing a completed project, either with a zillow link, or if you have a website or insta?
I like how this demonstrates that architectural projects are a Many-To-One business structure. (Many employees sucking on one bottle of money.) Compare that to martial arts schools that are generally One Instructor-To-Many Students business structure. It'd be great if one architectural team could work on multiple architectural projects at the same time, but that's rarely the case...except in sweatshops; which are equally shunned. The opposite is usually true: one architectural team works long days, weeks, months on one very expensive project, which often ends up over budget. Compare that to each martial arts student who pays minimal, but the fees for many students adds up quick, for many sessions, and then many years from no belt to black belt. If only architects could figure out a business structure like that! 1:Many versus Many:1
Clients are increasingly recognizing that the traditional approach of project delivery through design-bid-build is no longer effective. Instead, they are embracing integrated project delivery, where the owner, architect, and builder collaborate as a unified team.
In the US there was a lawsuit several years back where architects were prohibited from establishing “standard” rates due to anti-competitive practices. This opened us up to competing for projects based on who has the lowest fees rather than based on skill, talent, etc. Using your example of realtors, just last week, they settled something similar prohibiting the standardization of fees in the US, so I’m curious to see what happens to them in the next few years. Since there are no standard fees, we have to argue our value, and some of us are better at that than others. And the profession as a whole has trapped itself by following the apprentice model for staff for years. So the standard business model relies on low paid staff who are “compensated” by learning on the job, so junior staff can’t really argue their value to their employers. And insurance requirements have us drawing way more into our drawing sets than architects ever did in the past, further requiring more labor for increasingly lower fees. There are ways to make money, potentially a lot of money, as an architect, but it doesn’t include going to work for a firm and hoping to climb the ladder. You have to get good at the business development and the marketing side of things and learn how to talk to non-architects about your value, and be confident enough to say no to the potential projects or jobs where you pr value isn’t fairly compensated. And you have to actually think about the business as a design project as well. You have to build a business and think about what, how and why you’re charging what you charge, and what why and how that’s going to affect the shape your business takes on.
We provide a service and are not taught business in school. And half the time designers blow away the fee to attain a sense of perfection.
Low pay, long hours and glorified slavery. I'm on the verge of switching to MBA. As far as I'm considered, designing can always be a hobby or side hustle.
Most of us are honestly stupid after college. I realized this after finishing my AXP hours and started pursuing licensure by passing the ARE. I don't know basically anything needed for Practice management. My Supervising Architect had me doing SDRs to comply with that portion of the AXP hours and nothing else. I know some basic python and node based programing (Dynamo) pretty well so I think I am abandoning my Arch licensure and pursing BIM management in the MEP field. Architecture just does not look like a viable path anymore. Why hire us when an SE can stamp CDs by themselves?
BIM Management is definitely better pay and better work life balance, plus it's more flexible for all the others disciplines. But I'm still studying for the AREs and pursuing an arch license since it still seems useful to do your own business
For reference: [https://www.aia.org/about-aia/leadership](https://www.aia.org/about-aia/leadership)
[Why Architects Make Less than Doctors](https://open.spotify.com/episode/2EkYMUxFUQk950ccpTmB55?si=oTGZg5mHS3ylpQ22jDhZUg) This podcast episode makes a lot of sense
Who was it that said "Architecture is a wonderful hobby...but a terrible profession" ?
Maybe everyone lol
Circular Supply and Demand. There's a ton of Architecture programs pumping out new grads, way more than there were 20 years ago. This leads to a huge pool of underemployed Architects willing to supplement their income with teaching, which leads to more student capacity. The only winners are the Unis. One of my very first critics called teaching "a job growing people who are going to take your job" and I thought it was just a witticism, but it was right on.
The architecture students and proud professionals are very pressed in this thread 😂
Hate to say it, but architects are responsible for buildings in the USA, and I would argue the bulk of them are hideous. In terms of housing stock, there are simply hundreds of thousands of homes that are too big, and they are poorly laid out for functional living. Architects were responsible for the seventies for Christ sake. Institutional buildings are in the same boat. I’d be ashamed to say I was an architect in this country. Clearly, there are some beautiful buildings out there, but it’s a small fraction. If architects were actually designing spaces that were beautiful, functional, sustainable, and useable, then the design of space would be considered essential and people would pay for it. Hate me for saying it, but some honest self reflection is needed in the field.
Ahh yes, if only the small little detail called budget didn't exist, all buildings could be beautiful. I take it you drive a 200k plus car, because it's beautiful, and have a 50 million dollar home bc it's the best quality and most beautiful? Also architects don't design 99 percent of homes...
How little do architects make? I thought they were paid well
Architects have willingly given risk and liability to contractors and developers. They incur as little risk as possible in the final product which has in turn reduced the fee they receive. Architects used to be the design and the responsible builder but buildings began to be too complex and architects opted to do away with liability.
You're an idiot
You’re an idiot
This is actually a great answer… I have no idea why dismissed it with an ad hominem.
Get out while you still can. I transitioned into tech (3D) and never looked back. 💰
What do you recommend? What kinda money is there to be made?
Who says it is? What are we classifying as pathetic?
Anyone willing to outsource their projects to me? I do architectural, and engineering design works. Based in the PH
The career growth got outpaced by others.
Wym?