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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   8411 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 7, 2026

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When was Architect ever a terrible career? There definitely have been periods of oversupply versus demand and/or people learning that their dreams of being Frank Lloyd Wright that drove them through University aren't going to happen and please boxtick the generic townhouses. But that goes for the vast majority of creative jobs, and even other 'high agency' ones where it turns out the Orchestra of whatever requires a lot more Triangle players than it does Virtuoso Soloists.

I thought it always had a reputation for bad pay versus the amount of education required. In part because it attracted people who thought it would be enjoyable. Maybe I’m wrong on that. And there are definitely some routes you can make money like getting more into construction management/development.

I needed a career to pick as an example where human taste would have value versus AIs being very productive. Something that is affluent tastemaker and architect seemed like it fit that.

I mean sure you're not gonna make Surgeon or Corporate Lawyer money but I'm pretty sure you're still better off as an Architect than like pursuing academia or a bunch of other things that might require a thick stack of degrees to get you through the door. The most successful architects definitely end up more in construction management or in a generic quasi-sales/general business management role, but that's essentially every career.

I didn’t want to denigrate architects but mostly wanted to pick an white collar occupation that could rise in stature with higher productivity as excess wealth could be spent on design and community design.

True. Also a high-tier white collar profession that allows for nominal artistic creativity without obviously being a complete and utter crapshoot like being a musician or an artist.

I think it's just very hard to get started in that career. Of course every career has that to some extent, but in architecture it's especially hard to get people to trust you with that first, crucial career building step of being lead designer on a building. Meanwhile there's a ton of students getting architecture degrees thinking it'll be fun.

I would have loved to be a boxticker architect. Sadly, when I was looking at universities, they all wanted the next Frank Lloyd Wright. I walked into the admissions office, excellent SATs in hand, and before the topic came up was told, "oh, don't worry if your SATs are bad, we only really care about your portfolio!"

To which I (whose art courses had ended only slightly past stick figures) effectively responded, "Portfoli-what?"

Interesting. Maybe educational pathways in Australia are different for Architecture since my Architecture ambitious friends had essentially the inverse experience where they were great at sketching beautiful buildings then ran into a wall of the civil engineering adjacent subjects

  • Architecture is an art degree, while civil engineering is a STEM degree

  • But the govt. requires you to be an architect, not a civil engineer, in order to design a utilitarian apartment building, office building, school, or prison

Make it make sense. (Though, to be fair, not all states have this requirement.)

I figure when you have guild-like organizations advocating for the financial benefit of its members, any challenge to labor monopolies from rival organizations or individuals is always met with the greatest resistance possible. Allowing engineering credentials to be used in place of architectural credentials is a long term threat.

It's a general issue with university admissions, I think. No university department wants to be known as reliable producers of pretty-good-quality employees, they want to be known as the people who first spotted and nurtured a genius.

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