Rationale for dropping architecture

I think it’s definitely true when people say that you have to take some risks and make some mistakes before you realize just how little you know.

I also told my friends this earlier this week, “you have to destabilize yourself once in a while to build your character”. Now I realize that this is something I’ve lived by for my entire life.

People who care about me all asked me why I suddenly gave up on my architecture degree. They’re not wrong about the spontaneity of it all; I was sitting in SI 311 (AI-augmented UX) two weeks into my sophomore year second semester when I decided to quit the architecture program. Before I get into the reason why, I want to first say that I feel I’ve made the right choice. I love the communities I am currently a part of, and I’m excited to learn about my future as a product designer.

Reasons for Quitting

1. I personally believe that the inevitable, periodic decline for the industry is happening right now

Construction for new buildings, in general, has been incredibly expensive because of rising interest, material cost, and lack of labor. I think the golden age of architecture is honestly long gone. Yes, building are still getting built, but we’re no longer in an era where architects’ work shape national identity or have substantial power on the global stage.

Put simply, people simply don’t care as much. The government recently delisted architecture as a professional degree; while this fortunately didn’t affect me personally, it goes to show that raising the next generation of architects definitely isn’t society’s priority right now.

Working in corporate consists of tolling away at Revit daily. Clients control the direction of the project. With multiple architectural designers on a project, your own voice simply gets muddled. My rationale for choosing architecture is to be able to design something with my own vision, and have people derive value from it by using and interacting with it.

I love exploring new mediums, I dislike following concrete/rigid procedures. The corporate architecture culture doesn’t prioritize that. I also really dislike Rhino (which is a commonly-used CAD program in architecture school) because from my own experiences, Taubman studios use it in a very rigid manner (University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture).

You can argue that architects working for starchitect firms at least make a decent income and have a stable career, but even that is no longer true.

As I am typing, protests are happening in the UK right outside BIG’s front door. For context, BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) is one of the most renowned architecture firms internationally. I got to meet Ingels personally last year at Taubman College. Workers are experiencing mass layoffs, unreasonable work schedules, and underpayment. This company is literally one of THE giants of the industry. Just imagine if OpenAI or Amazon pulled this stunt in the AI and e-commerce industries respectively.

2. Expectations of Architecture School, or Taubman College Specifically

Taubman, like a lot of other 4-year architecture programs, make students take liberal arts courses for a few years before you can officially begin studio. In a 5-year accredited program, you start studio immediately, and can start preparing complete portfolio pieces as a first year student. I came into Taubman with an established portfolio, two Summer program certificates (at USC and Cornell respectively), and proficiency with Rhino & the Adobe Suite. I was ready to go all in and start creating full-scale projects and take on real project briefs. Instead I was met with the module system, which basically forces me to study architectural foundations for my first two years of college. If my goal was to one day work for a competitive firm or enter a prestigious graduate program, Taubman’s curriculum leaves me very limited time to build a top-notch portfolio. I felt very burntout by the idea that I was fighting an uphill battle. I want to apply what I’ve learned right now, I want to build something tangible right now, I want to have my work seen and be used.

I dual degree’d between UX and architecture for a semester; that same semester, I also competed in Hackathons and joined Atlas Digital, a competitive tech consulting club. This exposure showed me exactly what I needed to see: in this fast-moving, constantly shifting industry, my skills could be applied, and that everything you could ever learn is already at your fingertips. That semester, I won awards at hackathons, got to work with software engineers, and visit the offices of top-tier tech giants. At some point I realized, architecture (at least at Taubman) is so grounded in history and honoring the past, it has few interactions with emerging technologies at an undergraduate level. At least this was the case for Taubman. My last semester in architecture felt like I was stuck in an echo chamber; some of my peers enjoy this environment, and all the cheers to them. They are awesome, lovely, passionate people, but my experience with the college had already soured.

Lastly, getting an architecture internship or job as an international student is HARD. Even harder than tech sometimes, because a lot of these firms don’t sponsor. If I had stuck with architecture, I’d be paying 800k total for tuition alone, and my starting salary would be 80k. High investment, low return. Although money isn’t my utmost concern, I don’t have enough love left for the industry to justify this ROI. Did I also mention that around 6,000 architecture students graduate every year, but only 1,000 new entry level positions get added every decade in the states?

I would like to end this entry on an important disclaimer:

Architecture is a beautiful study (notice how I said the study and not the industry). It’s a study where many other disciplines converge. Architects are trained to understand the political, social, economic, and practical implications of our built environment. There is so much creativity and technical skill that goes into being a good architect. Intentionally and thoughtfully designed spaces bring joy to my life. Masters like Kengo Kuma or Frank Gehry still strike my heart with their works.

If you’ve read all the way to the end, thank you. These are my own subjective thoughts and I wrote everything at 2 AM on a random Thursday.

There will be more rants coming soon!