Posts Tagged Work & careers
Workplace of the future
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on May 24, 2011
The year is 2018. What might your office environment look like? Here is the award-winning vision of London-based architects tp bennett
The Essay and Midlife Relaunch | Radio review
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 19, 2010
Sunand Prasad's clever musings on architecture are a daily treat this week
The Essay (Radio 3) this week features architect Sunand Prasad mulling over big questions about the built environment in clever daily nuggets. Last night's explored the resistance to modern architecture in home-building. "Many of us aspire to Regency mansions; few to interlocking spaces and plain materials," he suggested. But when we get old homes, with their period features, we tend to fill them with modern design and new technology. This conundrum clearly tickled Prasad.
Much blame, he accepted, lay with the way ground-breaking architecture translated into a disappointing reality. "Inspiring visions of modern masters were recycled en masse in combinations of materials that leaked, stained, rotted and generally failed," he said.
Challenging realities were a theme in Midlife Relaunch (Radio 4), which followed three couples in their 50s who had ditched the nine-to-five for a new life. Denise and Paul, who moved to Cyprus, had the toughest time – with jobs elusive and money fast running out. "We were very naive," Denise said.
The others fared better, but the dream life comes at a price. "I am physically very tired," said dairy farmer Fiona. "We won't be able to retire, really," a B&B owner conceded. But none of them regretted the adventure. "And to think we might not have done it," one said, reeling at the idea.
What to do with a degree in architecture
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on May 7, 2010
It takes seven years to become fully qualified, so no surprise most graduates go on to careers in architecture
Whether we live in them, work in them or simply stroll around them for pleasure, buildings are arguably the most public of art forms, a fusion of design and functionality that can be influenced by politics, economics, fashions and social trends, not to mention the villages, towns and cities in which they are built.
Seven long years of combined study and internships are required to achieve qualified status, so, as our data shows, it's hardly surprising that most graduates go on to work as architects or in architectural services. For some though, such as former Elastica singer turned abstract painter Justine Frischmann (pictured), an artistic streak coupled with unique controlling instincts can open doors to some unusual lifestyles and careers.
What skills have I gained?
Over the course of the five years of study (and two years of work placements) it takes to qualify, you'll have covered a wide range of subjects, including history, law, IT, technology and management, as well as a substantial design element. Combine that with numeracy, drawing, computer-aided design and project management skills, which you will pick up on all architecture degree courses.What jobs can I do?
"Beyond the obvious careers of architect and architectural technologist, architecture graduates can also aim for roles where their visual awareness and technical abilities, as well as their understanding of buildings and how they work, will be valuable and relevant," says Margaret Holbrough, careers advisor at Graduate Prospects.
"Some jobs will require further qualifications but interior and spatial design or landscape architecture, as well as website design, would each utilise the creative and visual skills of the architecture graduate. On the construction side, building surveying or development and planning surveying might appeal, or perhaps other roles within the community and local environment, like town planning."
There are some specialised areas that could also be of interest to those with a passion for the environment and history – such as historic building inspectors and conservation officers.
"Within the broadcasting industry, production designers in the film and TV industry need people who can visualise and produce sets and realistic locations," adds Holbrough. "Architecture graduates could fulfil that brief too."
Postgraduate study?
Apart from further qualifications in architecture, enabling you to become registered with bodies such as the Royal Institute of British Architects or the Architects Registration Board, some graduates choose postgraduate study in other technical subjects such as engineering, design or computer science.Data supplied by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit and Graduate Prospects
In search of the world’s best offices
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on March 16, 2010
A new book outlines some of the most creative working spaces in the world. But what makes a great office?
What's your place of work like? I'm not asking how friendly or productive it is. No. What I want to know is what your office is like in terms of design and decor, and whether or not this affects your creativity.
I ask because I've just been leafing through I Wish I Worked There! A Look Inside the Most Creative Spaces in Business, by design consultant Kursty Groves and Will Knight, co-founder of Brew, "a London and New York-based creative collaborative". This with-it duo guide us through 20 of "the world's most inspiring workplaces". None of these is a factory, workshop, laboratory or classroom. They are the offices of such ostentatiously "creative" companies as Bloomberg, Google, Innocent Drinks, Urban Outfitters, Virgin and Sony. You might expect them to be funky, and they are.
For the authors, this is clearly a good thing. Hip, hop and happening interior design is held up as the way to go if your brand wants to ignite the creativity of its staff. The essential ingredients, it appears, are walls painted the colours of a packet of Refreshers, beanbags, table-tennis tables, table-football machines, video screens, retro-chic 50s plastic chairs, green "grass" carpets, outsized toys and more beanbags.
I would guess that the majority of offices in Britain are more like the Slough branch of Wernham-Hogg paper merchants than Innocent Drinks' Fruit Tower HQ in Shepherd's Bush, west London, where bare-footed, tousle-haired "creatives" hang out in a trestle-tabled cafe, or Google's Zurich office, where hipsters in ponytails and mountain boots chillax in a bath filled with red foam blocks while staring, creatively, at a wall lined with aquaria.
The office, or workspace, as most of us know it, is a modern creation. True, imperial Roman officials and 18th-century bureaucrats worked in offices of a kind – Somerset House in central London looks like a palace but was, in fact, one of the city's first purpose-built office blocks – and yet when most of us picture an office, it's soulless and fluorescent-lit. Or, if you're lucky, a swish set of wood-veneered executive suites with deep-pile carpets and potted plants.
There have been any number of theories as to what makes the ideal workspace. By the 1950s, the open-plan office, although dating from half a century earlier, was becoming all the rage. By the 70s, the most advanced companies – Philips or IBMs, say – had moved to a form of office landscaping with execs tucked behind neck-high screens. They sat at "office systems" (a kind of bureaucratic G-Plan) instead of old-fashioned desks. There has been some improvement since, but this proto-call centre-style arrangement remains the glum norm for office design in the digital 21st century.
But then, in my experience of artists' studios, engineering workshops, publishers' offices and science laboratories, the mind is perfectly able to function without all those bright colours, fishtanks and video screens.
• I Wish I Worked There! - A Look Inside the Most Creative Spaces in Business by Kursty Groves, is published by John Wiley & Sons. To order a copy for £36.99 including free UK mainland p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 68467
• This article was amended on 16 March 2010 to correct misspellings in the names of Kursty Groves and Philips.
Career by numbers: Architect
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on November 12, 2009
£40,000 Average earnings for a sole principal architect with a small firm
£55,000 Average earnings for a principal architect in a partnership
£60,500 Average earnings for a private, in-house architect
7 Number of years of combined study and training required to become a registered architect
950 Average number of graduates who register each year
13,500 Students currently on UK architecture courses (most still go on to work in architecture-related fields even if they don't register)
44% work in private practice
29% are principals in partnership
12% are sole principals
9% work in the public sector
6% work as private, in-house architects
Percentage split 80% of architects are male, and just 20% are female
Sources: The Fees Bureau; RIBA
Architect job losses soar as crunch hits construction
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on March 25, 2009
• Institute urges ministers to 'unblock' funding
• Building workers' union seeks social housing boost
• Professions worst hit by the recession (pdf)
Architects are joining the ranks of benefit claimants at a faster rate than any other profession, according to a Guardian analysis of figures for the last 12 months.
Other jobs related to the construction industry, including managers, surveyors, engineers, bricklayers, carpenters and scaffolders, also feature prominently among the 20 professions that have seen the biggest increases in benefits claimants.
Construction unions and professional bodies said the actual numbers out of work were much higher than the official figures suggest and reiterated their pleas for the government to revive the industry by underwriting public building projects.
Office of National Statistics figures released this week show that between February 2008 and February 2009 the number of architects claiming benefits rose by 760% from 150 to 1,290 - the biggest increase among recorded professions.
The second biggest increase was among architectural technologists and town planning technicians.
The Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) said the figures came as no surprise and estimated that the level of unemployment and under-employment among its members was at least 30% higher than official figures.
Riba's president, Sunand Prasad, said the problem was "gigantic". He added: "I would estimate that those figures represent a fraction of the reality, based on our returns, anecdotal material and our projections. And the reason is simple: construction always gets hit in the neck in a recession. It's one of the first casualties of a decline in the economy."
He predicted levels of unemployment in the industry would get worse: "Architects are a bellwether for what's going to happen to the construction industry - buildings that are not being designed today are not going to be built tomorrow."
Prasad said that in spite of the government's commitment to public projects, work had stalled because of a reliance on private finance. Riba had urged the government to "unblock the pipeline" by funding the building of schools, clinics and other public buildings directly from the exchequer for a period of three years, he said.
Riba is also pressing for a project to make social housing more energy efficient as an eco-friendly means of creating jobs. Prasad added: "The biggest danger is that we lose people that don't come back and we are unprepared when the recovery does happen. In the early 90s we lost a whole generation who went on to do other things and that's noticeable in the profession now."
The construction union Ucatt said the numbers out of work might be double the ONS figures because about half of its members were self-employed and did not qualify for some benefits.
The union wants the government to back a huge social housing building project to help create jobs in housing - the worst hit sector of the building industry - and to help the 1 million people living in inadequate accommodation.
"If the money spent on propping up the banks had been spent on social housing then the economy would be in a much healthier state," said Alan Ritchie, Ucatt's general secretary.
Paul Kenny, the GMB general secretary, said: "Large parts of the construction industry is on its knees.
"The GMB has asked the government to acquire unsold blocks of flats and turn them into social housing but that programme is stuck. The government needs to look again at getting it working."
The legal profession has also been badly hit. Lawyers came ninth among the professions with the biggest increases in benefits claimants - up from 350 to 1,570 over the last 12 months - an increase of 349%. Legal secretaries came 12th.
The Law Society said it had set out a detailed agenda to help solicitors survive the recession, including practical guidance for members facing redundancy, a pastoral care helpline and online seminars on "surviving the downturn".
The society's president, Paul Marsh, has also written to Revenue and Customs asking it to suspend its system of taxing law firms before they have received payment for their services.
• This footnote was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Wednesday 25 March 2009. Above we quoted the Royal Institute of British Architects as estimating that unemployment and underemployment among its members was at least 30% higher than official figures. In fact, Riba's president, Sunand Prasad, said that in his estimation 30% of architects were currently unemployed or underemployed.