An architect is a professional artist devoted to designing, projecting then constructing new spaces. The architect profession is a collaborative job that involves calculating structures, setups and budgets, as well as studying society needs to create a space that will suit them. Therefore, an architect is a combination of a communicator, a sociologist, an artist and an engineer. For doing so, they have to be empathic but most importantly, thay have to learn to see the world and all its possibilities. For instance, they have to get used to analyze what surrounds them. Drawing, travelling and reading are beneficial activities to train ourselves and keep in touch with the present because they allow us to acquire new points of view, to increase our sense of art and our immagination. Photography and films are also important to educate and form our space vision, sense of perspective and manage of light.
During the class, we have visualized a documentary video talking about what makes an architect be one. Architects have to respond a problem, have to perform, immaginate struggling with the same inquietudes as the futur users of a space. They are responsible of the transformation of our cities. Therefore, they have to discuss the world. They expend a big amount of time on the working process, talking and learning from their surroundings. That’s why they are known for being vocational, why would you put so much effort in something if you didn’t love it. Architects center their life on their ideas.
Whenever we have to make an architecture critique it is common to only say the positive points. However, this will only be frustrated criticism, it is necessary for a critique to inspire a thought, an own opinion, to influence them futhermore in their project.
As a student, you are asked to follow and listen attentively to your proffesor’s demand, but it is important to also be focused on how others students see the projects and how their ideas come out. Sometimes it is nessesary to not only center our attention on our process of developping our own ideas but on how other’s ideas come out from them.
The architect doesn’t have only one role, he has to absorbe ideas and concepts to project them in an harmonous way, so the proffession is centered in many different perspectives at the same time. They have to be pragmatic and poetic, having the ability skill of invision imagine, see a blank space an have the skill to invision a biulding.
We have to also considered that architecture schools academics does not prepare fully the young architect to the real architecture, they don’t know the reality of the proffession until they start working in a real team of architects. Til then, they are not prepared to be sufficiently independent thinkers.
It is the role of the next generation to reshape the world like we never seen before, enter the world to do someting productive , how to see the environnent, buildings make a difference in people lives, architetcure is what you experience in quotidien life, how you feel interact view your surroundings, streets.
“To be an architect is to know to recognize and interpret the reality that surrounds us, but also to be able to dream and imagine things that doesn’t exist yet”