Everyone’s An Architect Sometimes

I hear often, “You know, I was going to be an architect but I was terrible at math.” I typically chuckle and shake my head in an “I’ve heard that one before and I’m not quite sure what to say” way.

Here’s a secret: I’m an architect not because I’m good at math but because I absolutely love the essence of what architecture represents. I am one hundred percent passionate about this field – everything about it, even the bad. I love shapes and the spaces they create. I love watching people interact with each other while walking through a hallway, discussing their day. I love looking out of a plane and seeing the grid lines created by low tracts of land. I love how the ‘a’, the ‘r’, the ‘c’, the ‘h’, the ‘i’, the ‘t’, the ‘e’, the ‘c’, the ‘t’, the ‘u’, the ‘r’ and the ‘e’ create an inspiring and wonderful word and gets me just as excited today as when I graduated from college over 20 years ago.

If you love these things too, then go, be, learn, create and collaborate. Become an architect. It’s a wonderful career and an amazing foundation for other life choices. And it’s not a bad education either, though its code name is “archi-torture.”

~Barron Schimberg, AIA, LEED AP