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Could You Be an Architect?
Workbook
Students all over the country get into architecture school and drop out before they graduate. Thousands of people every year graduate from architecture school but never become one. Don't let either happen to you! Find out if you're cut out for the profession from someone who knows. Before you spend over $150,000 on a college education, spend less than $15 and find out if architecture is right for you.
The Workbook
What's Inside?
The Workbook Design Challenge
A real architecture project with drawings and sample designs. Be the architect. You can hand sketch or draw in CAD.
Answers
Answers to your questions about architecture as a career.
Get Started!
A real home needs an addition. You provide the design.
*All the drawings you see below are included in the Workbook! You can download the CAD drawings too.
Step 1. Review the site.
sun, zoning, views, etc.
Step 2. Study the existing conditions.
style, access, flow, construction, materials, etc.
Step 3. Reference the sample traditional style addition.
first and second floor access, matching aesthetic, progression of form
Step 4. Review the sample modern style addition.
access strategy and room types altered, juxtaposed styles and materials, simplified forms
Step 5. Design on your own addition!
Print the drawings to sketch or .dwg files to draft in CAD.
What Else?
Answers! - to all your questions about architecture as a career.
Change Careers
I hear from and meet a lot of people in their 20's and 30's who are interested in architecture as a second career. They come from all walks of life and professions...
Plan for Your Career
You can prepare for the university while still in high school... Drafting is a dying art but it's not a waste of time...
Portfolio preparation may be very important. Some schools require...
Alternate Careers
The architect's creativity, thought process and problem solving skills may come in handy in a wide variety of fields like film, art, illustration, animation, and creative writing...
Who Architects Work With?
An extensive list of all the professionals you'll work with as an architect including: interior designer, landscape architect, structural engineer, mechanical engineer...
What do Architects Do?
Universities spend a lot of time and money teaching design. But architects do much more than that. Included you will find an extensive list of what architects do besides design...
Sound Advice
My first day in college a professor told our class of more than one hundred that many of us wouldn’t make it through the architecture program (and many didn’t)...
The Workbook
Plus!
Five things Architects Do Well
Drawing, Numbers, Creativity, Words and Diligence. How to pursue each and how they make the architect special.
How Architects Draw
Nothing can replace a quick hand sketch for a client, however, a computer is the drawing tool of choice for everything else. It's fast and it makes duplication and changes...
Questions and Activities... Parti diagrams, sketching and design
How Architects Use Numbers
I have been told more than once that the only reason someone decided not to study architecture was math. That’s a shame. Architecture is defined in three ways; numbers, words and...
Questions and Activities... Scale, dimensions and a square foot exercise
How Architects Create
Are you inventive, imaginative and good at coming up with ideas? By the time most students are ready for college, it's likely they know if they're creative. Creativity is important for...
Questions... Designed to get you thinking about the specifics of your addition
How Architects Use Words
I never heard much about language proficiency in college. But the ability to command language is critical for the architect. Words are another way she communicates....
Top 25 list of architect's favorite words. Look 'em up, you're gonna hear them a lot!
Who is the Architect?
Architects must be industrious, diligent and disciplined. The profession requires hard work, whether in school, in the office, or in the field. The first four requisites...
Questions and Activities... A self assessment of who you are and how to get where you want to go.
Could You Be an Architect Quiz
Take Doug's Could You Be an Architect Quiz online and get the results. Read the Quiz and Answer explanations online OR have it all in this PDF / ebook form forever!
if you haven't already...
Take the Quiz!
Doug Patt
About the Creator
Doug has been in the profession for over two decades. He is a registered architect who works on high end residential projects. He has a YouTube channel devoted to teaching architecture with hundreds of thousands of subscribers and millions of video views. He has worked on projects published in professional journals and honored with national awards. Doug has written a number of books one of which is a top selling book with MIT Press called 'How to Architect.' Doug is also a classically trained painter with expertise in color theory and an inventor with a couple of patents in his name. He has a passion to teach and share his expertise for architecture. He has an online academy "The Architect's Academy" with hundreds of hours of content. And he's developed a five star mentor program to provide a one-to-one consultative environment for young adults navigating their school and career decisions.
The Workbook