From Classroom to Studio: 10 Insights for Aspiring Architects
Gary Wang, Founder and Principal of Wang Architects
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As an acclaimed architect and professor, Gary Wang, AIA, is in an ideal position to help architecture students successfully transition from the classroom to professional practice.
“It’s not always an easy transition between school and the real world,” explains the founder and principal of Wang Architects in Georgetown, Texas, who also lectures at the University of Texas at Austin.
“Architects are often grouped with other professionals like doctors and lawyers, but students need to understand that architects have a different responsibility toward society,” he says. “What we create is highly visible and meant to endure for a long, long time—which shapes our cities, neighborhoods and the very way in which we live.”
Here are 10 things Wang believes architecture students need to understand before entering the profession:
1. Efficient and effective communication is key. Because architecture is a visual discipline, architects need to know how to communicate through their drawings first, and then support them through their words. “In the past there were architects who could do well by hiding in the corner, drawing and having limited interaction with others,” says Wang. “In today’s world, that practice no longer exists, in large part due to social media and open content sharing.”
2. The ability to “do” is just as important as the ability to think. In school, students can sometimes ‘talk’ their way through critiques. The concept can be strong, and reviewers can read depth into the projects. But in the real world, you can’t hide behind words. “Application and rigor are equally important in this business; one can’t supersede the other,” he says.
3. Knowing how to draw by hand is a must. While sophisticated digital tools are available and helpful, Wang asserts that “working through design issues by hand is almost always more fluid and efficient, before going through the process of digital input.”
4. Having an understanding of art and culture helps you provide the best solutions for clients. Wang believes there should be a balance between consumerism steering architecture, and architectural design helping to shape consumer culture. With this in mind, he suggests students find a way to incorporate humanities courses like art history or anthropology into their schedules. “We need professionals coming out of architecture schools to be more well-rounded so that we can lead culture, rather than just feed it,” he says.
5. An architect needs to be able to work effectively with colleagues, clients, contractors and outside consultants. Wang notes that architecture schools teach students to be solo artists, but in the real world, a good architect needs to function as a holistic and inclusive team player who’s a positive influence on others. “It’s our job to listen to the client and use our knowledge and skills to provide the best opportunities possible, which is often different than what they first thought they wanted.”
6. Being humble and teachable is important. Wang says architecture students are trained to be overly assertive and self-confident in school, but that they would do better by learning the ropes as they did in the old model of apprenticeships. Many firms are having to make financial investments in the younger generation when they hire entry-level architects.
7. Precedents, precedents, precedents. Students are taught to believe they need to invent, and while there is room for innovation, having a solid understanding of both historical and contemporary architecture is important. “The reality is that 99 percent of what we mistakenly think we are innovating has already been done by someone else…probably better than we could do it,” Wang says. “We need to be able to make something new with precedents as our starting point.”
8. Architecture is not a linear process, but rather an iterative one. Young professionals need to recognize that most often, their first thought won’t be their best one. They also need to understand that their path to success will be littered with failures. “We have to try different solutions to see what will work best,” Wang says.
9. Don’t become an architect for the money. Although architecture is often equated with other high-earning professions, it rarely yields the same hefty paychecks. “You can’t legislate or mandate creativity and passion,” he says. “The more you care about the building’s design, the more inversely proportional income can be to effort. Often, good architects ‘subsidize’ the architectural fees with their own time investment.”
10. If you’re doing it right, it doesn’t get better. Often students think that the demands and time-consuming requirements of architecture school will go away once they’re working at a professional firm. “They don’t,” says Wang. New graduates can expect to do pin-ups of their designs, which are subject to critique, and wait to see which concept prevails… just like in school. “In creative fields, we tend to believe our designs are somehow expressions of us, but in fact it’s not at all personal—they are just design options. The studio critique model is a good one for getting to the best solution for the problem.”
Wang, who started his academic training as a biology major at the University of Michigan, is grateful he discovered architecture as his vocation. He regularly teaches graduate and undergraduate design studios at the University of Texas at Austin, and he is an appointed member of the National Ethics Council for the American Institute of Architects (AIA).
Wang is married to Allison Miller, Ph.D., associate professor of art history at Southwestern University. When not leading his five-person team at Wang Architects, he enjoys reading and drawing with his seven-year-old identical twin daughters and spending time outdoors, either running or hiking.
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