Your future career starts here

How to become a…. 
Architect 
With Professor Anthony Burke 
 
Duration 6min 33sec 
 
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:20:00 
Anthony Burke 
 
Hello, I'm Anthony Burke, a professor of architecture, a television presenter and academic at UTS. Have you ever wondered what it takes to be an architect? Today I'll be answering your questions. Let's get started. What do I need to study to become an architect? Well, the main thing is that you enroll in an architecture degree, and that's quite a long degree. 
 
00:00:20:00 - 00:00:37:23 
Anthony Burke 
 
It takes about five years. A three year bachelor's and a two year master's before you can then leave and go and work in industry and then finally become registered as an architect. It takes a long time because it's a lot of studio work, which is the best part of it. So it's not a typical kind of degree where you're sitting in lecture theaters all the time or doing written exams. 
 
00:00:37:23 - 00:00:57:02 
Anthony Burke 
 
You're spending a lot of time actually designing. Talking about your designs with your tutors, with your peers, with your professors. And you're really hands on with making and drawing and doing those kinds of things. So studying architecture is a very different kind of degree. It's very creative. There's a lot of history and technical background to on board as well. 
 
00:00:57:04 - 00:01:14:17 
Anthony Burke 
 
But most importantly, it's a very social degree. You really are kind of socialising, your learning and your knowledge. As you get more and more proficient at architecture as you go up sort of through the year groups. So doing an architecture degree is the way to become an architect. You have to do that in Australia and you have to do that if you're going to work overseas as an architect as well. 
 
00:01:14:19 - 00:01:32:06 
Anthony Burke 
 
 
What different roles are there in architecture? This is a great question because there are many ways that you can be an architect or start with architecture and then move on to into a different kind of career path. So within architecture itself, yes, there is that practicing architect who runs a practice and designs houses and buildings for the people. 
 
00:01:32:08 - 00:01:51:21 
Anthony Burke 
 
There are also architects who move into academia like myself, who do the work to set up things like policy advice or to set up things like, town planning advisories and those kinds of things. There are those kinds of architects who don't design so much that might be maybe writing or advocating for certain kinds of positions about the built environment as a whole. 
 
00:01:51:23 - 00:02:10:03 
Anthony Burke 
 
So there's a really broad sort of, swathe of ideas about how one can be an architect today. What kinds of workplaces do architects work in, and what kinds of projects do they work on? Most architects work in a studio, and it's a different kind of situation to the normal office space. So a studio isn't just cubicles with a computer. 
 
00:02:10:08 - 00:02:29:05 
Anthony Burke 
 
Usually studios are open. They're generally creative spaces. It's spaces where you can talk with your peers and your colleagues about the kinds of projects you're working on. And even though you might be working very hard and doing long hours, you're still in a very social kind of situation in the architecture studio. The other thing about some what kinds of projects do you work on, really, 
 
00:02:29:10 - 00:02:47:06 
Anthony Burke 
 
As an architect, you can work on any kind of build project from furniture design, really, or small scale design to very large scale urban planning. So within that spectrum, any job that comes into an architect's office might have a relationship to any of those scales. So what does an architect do in their day to day work? Well, you might think it's all design. 
 
00:02:47:06 - 00:03:08:04 
Anthony Burke 
 
Actually, that's not the case. I'd say probably about 10 to 15% of your day would be just doing design work. A lot of the time that an architect spends is spent in client and people management. So you're really trying to listen to the clients, to the councils, to the builders, to the engineers, to all the consultants that you'd be talking to in any given day to make a project come to life. 
 
00:03:08:06 - 00:03:26:21 
Anthony Burke 
 
Another thing is to sort of organising the work flow, because there's a lot of work to get done, even in a simple design. Everything from the engineering and the landscape to the actual building fabric itself requires different types of outputs for different types of people. So there's quite a lot of production work that's required. But the thing that's nice about that is the drawing and the representation that goes on. 
 
00:03:26:24 - 00:03:43:00 
Anthony Burke 
 
There's a lot of design work that just happens naturally through that kind of process. You're always thinking as you draw. So if you're like me and you love design, then that drawing is not a task to do. It's a real joy to kind of keep thinking about how do I design and keep designing, even as I'm working on just the next set of floor plans, for example. 
 
00:03:43:02 - 00:04:02:24 
Anthony Burke 
 
What skills are important for an architect to have? You might think here that I would say drawing and maths. That's what most people think of when I think of what an architect does. I think actually not so at all. You can learn to draw and you can definitely learn the mass, so that's not a problem. But I think the real things you have to have as an architect is you have to have curiosity and you have to have empathy. 
 
00:04:03:01 - 00:04:28:07 
Anthony Burke 
 
Those two traits together, if you're both curious and empathetic, you will be a great architect because you're listening to what the clients want, your understanding what's happening around you. You can put yourself in someone else's situation and design something fantastic for them. I think the curiosity is something as well because architecture is a very fast moving discipline. Things are changing all the time and you've got to be curious enough to chase those changes and be interested in what's happening around the world. 
 
00:04:28:09 - 00:04:46:18 
Anthony Burke 
 
What challenges do architects usually face in their work? This is a really interesting question. I think one of the hardest things to appreciate about an architectural practices that it's quite responsive to, where is the work coming from. So on one week it might be residential work, the next week it might be small scale public work, or the next week it might be government scaled work. 
 
00:04:46:24 - 00:05:05:11 
Anthony Burke 
 
Being an architect means you need to be able to move fairly efficiently across all of those spaces, and that's something that's a bit challenging for people to get their head around. But I think being an architect that's interested, that's curious, that sees themselves is always upgrading their skills, which is something that we all do, means that you're tapped into those conversations all the time. 
 
00:05:05:11 - 00:05:25:11 
Anthony Burke 
 
So it's actually not as hard as you think. If you're the kind of person that's happy to lean forward into the conversation and get involved. What do you love most about being an architect? The thing that I love the most is the idea that you are always on guard for where things are happening, where the new design ideas are coming from, where new examples are for fabulous buildings to go and visit. 
 
00:05:25:13 - 00:05:44:20 
Anthony Burke 
 
It's that translation of the world around you into a proposal for something that will hopefully make someone's life fabulous. That's the part I love the most about, you know, being involved with architecture. What's your top tip or best piece of advice for someone who wants to become an architect? I think the best thing you do if you want to be an architect is go and visit some architecture. 
 
00:05:44:22 - 00:06:08:06 
Anthony Burke 
 
What I mean is, don't just sit at home behind your computer looking at stuff on the screen. Don't just spend your time with the online magazines. Go and actually walk around in really good architecture and there is tons around to see. So being amongst it, sort of learning how to read the architecture as you walk through it and understand the materials and the spatial effects and all of those things, how people use the spaces that are designed for them. 
 
00:06:08:08 - 00:06:29:19 
Anthony Burke 
 
That's how you sort of tune in to what architecture is all about, and that'll be the best thing you can do, because that'll set you up to ask the right questions, and you'll already start your design brain ticking over. That's the best thing you can do to get to architecture. I think that's all the questions for today. If this got you interested, checking out the UTS website and search architecture to learn more about working in this field.