A career in architecture can take you in a number of directions. Not only is it important to keep learning throughout your career to maintain your professional expertise, but it can help you to progress within a practice — or signpost an unexpected path towards a new sector or specialism.
Studying an official course
One way of dramatically expanding your professional horizons is to undertake an official course of study. Nathalie Baxter undertook a two year part time Masters in Sustainability Leadership for the Built Environment while an Associate at FaulknerBrowns.
“In the course, construction industry professionals come together from different backgrounds, different continents and different sectors,” she explains. “This was hugely inspiring and eye opening.”
The interdisciplinary aspects proved enlightening, with architects like Baxter studying alongside engineers and sustainability specialists across design studio tasks. There were different construction industry challenges and the team would see how different solutions would be appropriate in different parts of the world.
Baxter found herself interacting with specialists in different branches of engineering that she would not normally encounter in her architectural work. She learned from other city systems across the world in terms of addressing accessibility and sustainability issues in different ways.
“The driver for every course was how to collaborate,” she explains: a crucial skill for an architect.
Learning experiences such as this made Baxter realise that at, this point in her career, she was finding teaching more stimulating than practice. While she expects she will return to practice at some point, her studies showed her that the communication and interactivity of teaching is what she wants to pursue for the time being.
Adding a specialist qualification
"Before my course I thought it was a dark art," confesses Anna-Lisa Pollock of Penoyre & Prasad. She is referring to the Passivhaus designer course that she recently undertook. Having passed the exam, she is now an officially accredited Passivhaus designer.
"The main thing I realised is that Passivhaus is all about quality onsite, and the robustness of your construction detailing. It all comes down to designing to a really high standard, with excellent detailing."
"Passive design is about the building doing the job, not the technology. Even if you were not going to design Passivhaus buildings, the course would be well worth doing: ultimately it is about rigorous quality.
Pollock has been working on a Passivhaus retrofit project since completing the course. She believes that this expertise gives architects an extra edge, especially for public sector work: this is a valuable skill for a practice to have in house.
Quite apart from the in depth passive building design skills an architect can then deploy, Pollock points to the increasing opportunities for consultancy work in sustainable building that are out there.
"Clients need to understand how to achieve their ambitions. But even beyond that, the sustainability imperative will trickle down into standard domestic projects too."
Learning from other practices
One positive consequence of lockdown is that there has been an explosion of online content. A multitude of free and inexpensive content on all kinds of professional architectural knowledge is just a few search engine keywords away.
Dina Lockwood, Director of her own Buckinghamshire based practice, reveals that hearing how fellow architects work, via online presentations and webinars, has been truly eye opening.
Lockwood has found that practices with the most innovative attitudes to their own organisation often win the most interesting work and realise the most interesting buildings. She recalls a presentation at the RIBA’s recent Guerrilla Tactics: Reinventing Practice conference from Katie Reilly of Oxfordshire based Transition By Design (TbD) as being particularly inspiring.
TbD is a cooperative, owned and run by its staff, who are all paid the same wage. Cooperatives, Employee Owned Trusts and other practices with innovative attitudes to working life have provided inspiration for Lockwood's current plans to expand her micropractice.
Lockwood has worked on domestic projects as a one woman band for many years, and is now setting up a joint venture with her partner, whose background is in large scheme urban design, mixed use projects and masterplanning. Hearing from young, agile practices has provided many useful insights for Lockwood into how to do things differently.
“In some ways we are starting from scratch, and offering a mix of small project local knowhow with large scheme masterplanning expertise,” Lockwood explains. “We are learning from the visions and ideals of younger practices and marrying it to our own years of experience. It has been invaluable to see what other practices put in place from the start to optimise efficiency and maintain a work-life balance.”
Sharpening your business sense
Lockwood has also found webinars on marketing to be invaluable. They inspired her to bring in a marketing consultant to help shape the narrative of her new practice.
“The consultant asked ‘Why do you do architecture?’”, Lockwood reveals. “For me, it was that ultimately I want to create decent places to live, which everybody should be entitled to.”
The process is extremely productive in identifying not just your ‘brand values’ – the kind of appealing insights a potential client wants to see on a website – but in reminding you why you go to work every weekday, and reaffirming your motivation.
The business side of architecture is something that Watford-based architect Keri Barr also singles out. This is not something you are taught in architecture school, she points out. Barr cites a presentation she heard recently from AECOM’s Director of Innovation Dale Sinclair as having brought home to her the professional necessity of properly getting to grips with 3D design.
As a consequence, she has decided to increase her Revit understanding. Similarly, she has also found recent presentations she has watched on the use of virtual reality and embedding QR code links in her drawings to be very useful: they highlighted skills to add to her professional toolbox.
“In terms of fee proposals and conversion rates, I am interested in any skills that can differentiate me locally,” Barr explains. “With online presentations, I almost always come away with at least one thing to use. It’s essential to see how fellow architects are operating.”
Thanks to Dina Lockwood, Director, Dina Lockwood Architects; Keri Barr, Director, Keri Barr Architects; Nathalie Baxter, Newcastle University; and Anna-Lisa Pollock, Penoyre & Prasad.
This feature is one of a series that supports architects in building career resilience. The series helps architects at all professional levels with advice on career progression, advancement, promotion and learning.
The RIBA is interested in hearing from members about their own career challenges and successes. Please send us your own experiences, feedback and ideas.
Find out more:
- The RIBA CPD programme
- RIBA Academy: the RIBA's learning portal offers a plethora of different courses and learning experiences
- RIBA Professional Features, covering essential and topical areas of the profession, are published weekly and count towards CPD requirements as microlearning
- Do you have the right technical and practical experience?
- Learn the soft skills of leadership
