If you’ve driven around any new suburban designed areas in the recent years, you’ve noticed how they all look eerily similarly designed and laid out, with the same mixture of national retail shops and restaurants, and other types of businesses, from dentist offices to real estate title offices. A generic mass produced design with design creativity being displaced by quick and repetitive build processes has reduced the beauty and aesthetically engaging landscape into drab and repetitive, boringly familiar retail clusters. While there are some benefits of convenient consumerism to this design layout, it’s balanced by a lack of spark of diversity. We travel to experience new sights and sounds, feelings and foods. What are those experiences if so many places look close to the same? Enter: the need for revolutionary and architectural designers to advance the design field to the next level.
Architects and designers literally create the visual world in which we live, work, play and are entertained. By having the same experience whether in Denver or Atlanta, there is little sense of awe or newness. While some retailers have a few layout varieties of their stores for different geographic and demographic mixes, there are still a plethora of opportunities to diversify and make more unique design decisions for our current, as well as future generations to enjoy. Demolishing buildings that are mere decades old is wasteful and harmful to the planet. Architecting buildings that can last centuries seems to be a notion of a different century, as buildings can now be erected and demolished within a few short years, only to build a newer, bigger, perceivably better one in its place. Is something truly better if it’ll follow the same fated path, instead of being designed and built to last for a few hundred years or more? Castles and buildings in Europe still stand that are 1000 years old, and are used with added slight technological improvements over time, like modern plumbing.
How can we contribute to the betterment of infrastructure and building design? For starters, encouraging the youth to pursue such career paths is a great way to get fresh new minds in the mix of change. There are traditional educational options like bachelors and masters programs that lead to successful careers. Getting the IPAL NCARB is an avenue in which many that didn’t pursue their bachelors in architecture, but in another field, can make their way into the world of architecture. There are always options to take career turns, even if you started out in another focus field.
No matter your professional start, if you have a burning passion to make changes in the visually experienced world around you, pursuing a career in architectural design can revolutionize the very buildings in which people frequent. Incorporating thoughtful design features such as porches, large windows, visually appealing external facades and other varieties can be deeply rewarding, both to you and to millions that will experience the result of the design.
