Originally posted by Chrisman
You do realize that your profession just reiterates the work of others. You could get someone from a third world country slap the crap together. Yeah, but I'm sure you think you're creative ripping off Egyptian design and Roman design, slappin' them together and called it modern.
THen you have either
1) never attempted to design a building.
2) seen the works of bad (most probably post modernist - not modernist) architects.
I dont want to get into a flame war on careers like Chef Boyardee did, but it is a complicated profetion. And it cant be said that we stole ideas from egyptyans (if it were stealing idead, it would mostly be from the greek), the egyptians took the ideas from Mesopotamian architecture, and the Romans took their ideas from the Greek. It is a work in progress, hard to find a point where it starts and imposible to determine when it will stop.
I do not reiterate on the work of others, I assimilate the experience of their work and add my touch, style, technologies necesities and feelings to adapt it to the environment im designing it for. If there is something common from Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Mesopotamian etc architects, its not the ideas they use, but the analitical way of thinking that we use. After all, thats how, and why we are trained.
When you say modern, you are probable refering to contemporary, as modern is a term used more frequently for the international architecture, the result of the industrial revolutions witnessed primarily in Europe and the United States. Modern Period ended somewhere in the early to mid twentieh century and gave way to a series of movements including post-modernism (which does incorporate alotf of classical elements, like columns and artificial decorations-not my favorite style). Currently we are going thru a style where everything goes....everything except classical or post-modernist. Right now technology is affected the design process alot, and we are starting to see again (finally!!) a more visible union between architecture and engineering. Basically making the structure beautiful and in harmony both with the spacial features of the building, as well as with the scale and necesities of the human body.
In conclution, no its not a copy/paste, its an evolution. And yes, probably anyone can "design" a building, but not everyone will be able to design a good, safe, beautiful and comfortable building, it takes decades of experience. Thats why most "good" architects tend to reach their fame in their late fifties. Heck, some die poor and hated, and become extremely famous decades after.
Its not an 8-5 job, its not a 5 days a week job, its specially not a well paying job, but its fun (i cant imagine doing anything else, I love this profesion more than any other hobby I may have), and will let me feed my family (once I have it that is jeje).