What to do once you finish Architecture school

When you just finish architectural school, you stand at the crossroads of your education, and well, your whole career. You most probably started your education as a 4 year old in Kindergarten, and roughly 20 years later, you have come to the official end of it. Let that sink in for a while. This is literally the junction at which you leave the main road and join the highway. Since it’s such an important point in your life, you’ll need all the advice you can get to move ahead. Here’s some for taking.

Find a new career
A lot can happen over 5 years of school. If over that period you’ve discovered that you’re interested in doing something else, then now is the right time to move on. In reality I understand it’s tough to do because you tend to guilt trip yourself thinking about the time and money your parents and yourself invested in this course. But that’s not the basis on which you should be deciding what to do. It’s hard to put a label on what architecture is about; it encompasses so many different fields. Moreover, at university, our brains are programmed to think like an architect, which stays with us forever. The knowledge you’ve gained can never go to waste, but will only be an advantage for you over your new competitors when you venture out into your new path, and guarantees excellence along the way.

Take a break
You just finished 2 decades of non-stop education and 5 years of intense architectural training. You deserve a break. Just as the late Architect Charles Correa famously pointed out the importance of ‘open to sky’ spaces in museums to pause and reflect on what you’ve seen in the past 15 minutes, so too do you need to reflect on what you’ve learnt. Go home, connect with your roots, revitalize yourself.

Study everything again
We live on a planet which is a billion years old which has a well recorded history of thousands of years. 5 years is a very less time to pack everything into. It’s almost impossible to remember everything you studied in say, history, like the story behind the Notre Dame Cathedral, or the stylistic principles of the Prairie School of thought. Apart from this, our minds were not matured enough to grasp everything at the first go.

What the teachers could best do was merely plant seeds in our head, which is no less a task. When we do actually get into our career, we will come across points where we would be required to research about something and realize that we indeed did touch upon it at school. The seed that was planted years back is now growing. When you go on a tour around the world, you see things which you once studied about, and the seeds come into action to make your curiosity grow and learn more. So read up, research and explore.

Start taking up projects
It may sound insane on the face of it, but a project need not necessarily mean a design of a school or a massive shopping complex. Building a small barn, or even a wooden shelf in a corner of your room is a task in itself. Start small; only if you master the tiny projects will you able to move on to greater things. If you come across your relatives babbling about ideas for their new home, put your foot forward and let them know your thoughts. You might be doing it for free, but the lessons learnt would be invaluable. Take the initiative. Your house is your first workshop.

Plan your career
By this time you would have had a significant amount of architectural influence and experience owing to your dissertation, thesis and your professional training. It would put you in a good enough position to know in which direction you would want to head. Think about what kind of architect you want to be. Speak to different architects about their experiences in their respective fields. Try to set your targets. Where do you want to start? Which areas do you want to explore? What should you have achieved by the time you are 27?

This the most important part, or what I call, the ‘concept stage’ of your career. You may detail out your entire project amazingly well, but if your concept is poor to begin with, you’ll still have a poor design.

Make your portfolio
The reason this comes after the planning of your career is because your portfolio should reflect the kind of things you are venturing out to do and not just a mashup of everything you’ve done in your lifetime. Making of the Architectural portfolio is a monumental task which may take many weeks or months altogether. If it doesn’t, you’re probably not doing it right. Of course, there can be a whole article dedicated to making your portfolio but generally, try to keep it as crisp and clean looking as possible.

Get a job
After so much of planning and preparation, the last thing left to do is to get a job based on your reflections. If you have any architects in mind who inspire you, try your best to get into their firm. Try to be wise and make yourself noticed. Drop in unannounced with your portfolio, making them obliged to take a look at you. This may be termed as rude, but if done within limits it will be forgotten in no time and if you do really get the job, you will all have a nice memory to look back on. Go crazy with your e-mail subject line. What’s the worst that could happen? You might as well take the risk and get noticed. The above mentioned tricks may not work all the time, but the bottom line I’m trying to drive home is ‘Make it happen!’

Climb up the ladder
The freshly graduated junior architects usually find it the toughest to settle into their workplace. You are not an intern anymore, so out goes the padded safety net to fall back on. And you aren’t a senior architect either and lack the understanding of so many things. You’re stuck in an awkward place in-between where you on paper you are termed as an architect but you’re really an inexperienced rookie. However, always remember that you may be the least knowledgeable person in the work place, but if your will to learn is great, you are bound to achieve great heights.

Do other things you love.
Just because you get employed doesn’t mean you should let go of your hobbies and other passions. Its highly recommended to broaden your horizons. Come up with a daily schedule and keep a strictly allotted time for your desired activity.

Get an additional source of income.
This isn’t for lack of salary, although most architects complain about how their salaries don’t justify the amount of work they do. But if you’re good at something and enjoy doing it, you might as well earn something from it as well. Think of something to do as a side business. It should preferably be something youre passionate about so that it doesn’t become a headache to maintain. You already have enough stress with your primary job.