The main question for everyone who studies architecture is ¿What is an architect? Well, in acordance with the technical meaning an architect is a person legally autorized to practice architecture but in fact beeing an architect is much more. An architect is an artist, a creator, a profesional devoted to design, someone who manages to control time and space…
This sounds great but, in fact, beeing an architect is not an easy task. Learning architecture implies to learn to see, there goes some tips
-Delve into what we look at in order to turn it into though
-Get used to analyze what surrounds us
-Drawing is a process of interpretation of reality
-Travelling allows us to acquire new points of view
-Reading allows us to travel where we cannot and to deepen ideas
-Taking photographs, understood as to create a unoque gaze among the infinite possibilities
-Whatching films that are composed of light, space, movement… like architecture
Other important thing is to learn to think, specially to think in a lenguage able to be understood by colleagues because the only way to be critical, suspicious and curious is taking part of a collective thinking by shareing your ideas and having a continious dialogue.
Finally, last but not least, learn to create, this consists in understanding the needs of the users, the composite rules, the materials and the construction elements with the aim of finding technical solutions to our ideas and find a constructive viability.
Some prominent figure Alberto Campo Baeza ones said: «To be an architect is to be able to turn a house into a dream. And at the same time being able to turn a dream into a house. I repeat that an architect, what he/she does is built ideas, dreams, materialize ideas. Or make dreams come true.«
Some tips for young architects are:
1. We must love architecture to be able to study it.
2. Start thinking about the why of things.
3. Crumble every building, studying every detail.
4. Get used to the analysis.
5. Think «simple». Order from the general to the particular».
6. Maturity
7. Take time to prepare ourselves
8. Enter the field where we can see in action the machines and methods that construct modern buildings.
9. What really counts is the quality of character.
10. Do not enter any architecture competition under any circcumstances, except as novices.
In Spain, the profession of architect is regulated by «Ley 38/1999, de 5 de noviembre, de Ordenación de la Edificación»
It regukated the building process, defining the agents that intervene in it, establishes obligations and responsabilities, guarantees the users, establishes basic purposes of the buildings.