The transferrable skills of an architectural training
A letter to disillusioned architects trying to take the leap
Dear disillusioned architect,
When I signed up to study architecture for my undergrad degree a dozen years ago, it was far from being an informed decision. I was 18 and had no clue what I wanted to do in life. As a teenager who loved art and design, architecture seemed to be the only semi-creative degree that fulfilled my parent’s expectations of me becoming a “licensed professional.”
The rumor I heard was that — even if you don’t want to become a practitioner for life, the intensity of architectural studio training will prepare you for careers outside of its traditional boundaries. So I went into it thinking that even if I didn’t want to do architecture forever, I could still run with a pretty solid foundational education.
As I graduated and entered into the field, I found myself trapped in an institution set up to funneling into its subjects into a very narrow professional track with extremely limited wiggle room. It’s like how doctors don’t usually switch out of medicine. It took me a whole decade to get out of a profession that damaged me because I feared “an incoherent professional story.”
On the other hand, there was some truth to the saying that architects can thrive in other disciplines. I had learned of so many amazing, free-minded entrepreneurs, artists, and even entertainers who came from the same field. And somehow they have figured out how to bring “a unique perspective” to their new body of the work. I was always so, so jealous.
What is that unique superpower we as architects bring to the table? Is the superpower only limited to a few extraordinarily talented individuals?
This question bugged me every single day for almost a year because I had to deal with the “rebranding myself” part of the career transition challenge. Not being able to offer up a convincing story meant that my past education and experiences were going into waste — at least on my resume or LinkedIn. Even every conversation I had with my mom about my career change ended with her disapproval — “okay, so you’re going to throw away all that education and investment.” But how can I blame her?
So I tried googling the answer or asking people about it — what exactly are the most essential “transferrable skills” for architects moving into UX (or something else)?
One said he found that his architectural training prepped him well in defending his ideas. Another mentioned the crazy work ethic that we bring to the table. Someone talked about the ability to embrace complex systems thinking. Then another said architecture provides the quintessential training to designing anything. A few said they would about it and get back to me.
Sure, these were all parts of a whole, but none gave a full picture.
And of course, there are always those who look towards a more literal approach to connecting the dots, and that is by developing their architectural interests as their foray into tech. Think smart/sustainable cities, AR/VR, CAD/BIM, or services that involve disrupting urban communities and spatial relations (eg. AirBnB/WeWork).
As a former architect with a heavy academic bent, I was almost tempted to come up with some big philosophy or theory about this, but that’s not what I, or the professional world, needs. Even with promising articles like this and this (both dated 2016 but still really relevant), I still couldn’t distill the answer down to that one thing.
There was no time for lengthy explanations; when you are in the midst of a career change, what you are dealing with is a loss of self-identity. You always want to have a short-hand answer the question: “so what made you want to transition from architecture to UX?” because of the immense social pressure to explain yourself to everyone — friends, family, potential employers, professors and former advisors, strangers that you meet. And in the paradigm of elevator pitches, the answer had to be concise.
Truthfully speaking, I didn’t realize how painful designing buildings was to me until I truly left it. I was not born to be passionate about spatial forms or the brick-and-mortar environment. However, I was always fascinated by information systems and media environments, and that was my focus in academic research. When I was in elementary school, I started a magazine that relied on the fax machine for its dissemination. Then the internet age arrived, I delved into HTML, and immersed myself in graphic and interaction design in middle school. In retrospect, architecture and the built environment was much more an acquired interest. Life is too short — since I’ve decided to make a career overhaul, I didn’t want to linger in the past “just to look coherent.” This made connecting my present with my past all the more difficult and confusing.
A while back, I read a post by another architect-turned-UX-professional, Shailee Sheth, who wrote this and I quote:
“The skills of an architect add a different perspective to the field of UX. What makes the former standout, is how well their right side of the brain is groomed in the intense process to take a design from concept to reality.”
So eloquently said, and it was the beginning of clarity for me — however, reciting a paragraph like that felt like I was stealing someone else’s story. I needed to craft my statement.
It was not until I started my first real job as a UX professional that I began to reflect upon this in a much more visceral way.
Currently, I work as a UX-design-team-of-one in an early-stage startup, Empowerly, with just a handful of coworkers and one founder/CEO. When a company has ten people, we all have a strong sense of ownership over the product. Since I am the only designer, I quickly learned that one of the most valuable I could do is to crystalize our product vision. With limited resources at hand, the rough sketches and hi-fidelity prototypes go a long way in instilling confidence amongst our team members and garnering support amongst investors. These images also empower us to ask for the resources to realize them.
If you are an architect, you’d probably think — hang on a second, that’s exactly what I do in my job too! And you’re right. I‘ve come to realize some of the fruits of my architectural training. And it is this:
The ability to transform nebulous ideas into a set of “blueprints” that can inspire multi-stakeholders to rally for our cause.
The ability to transform nebulous ideas into a set of “blueprints” that can inspire multi-stakeholders to rally for our cause.
If you are an architect, you would know that one should never, ever refer to drawing sets as “blueprints” unless they are literally blue…
Point is — I’m intentionally drawing on the slightly dreamy qualities of term “blueprint” because I’m using it more for metaphorical than literal reasons.
In architecture, the crux of our art is not the end product itself but the renditions of it. It is about creating a clearly defined, well-articulated vision, but we stop short of actually building it ourselves. In the construction industry, the people who work on delivery would be the contractor and his construction workers, while in product development, those would be the software engineers. Sure, we might have to manage the delivery part, but it wasn’t why we entered the role in the first place. We signed up for it because we wanted to be artists or visionaries, not because we wanted to become project managers.
In less flamboyant words: We specialized in doing just enough to communicate the big ideas and support key arguments with evidence to get everyone on board.
To this end, as architects, we spent years and years learning to make our artwork speak louder than our words. For a time, I questioned that, but now I’m beginning to see its virtues.
My high school teachers who knew I was applying to architecture derided that “all architects do is draw pretty pictures.” But the truth is that only by rendering that idea in a drawing or a physical/CAD model, could stakeholders be convinced of a vision, and to review the details of it critically.
We were trained to conceptualize.
We can simultaneously zoom out and zoom in.
We know the importance of narrating a compelling and coherent story.
We know where to seek and inject evidence to support each turning point of that story. We leave no stone unturned.
We were trained to value every mark drawn on a napkin paper.
We know what it means to flesh out intricate details of a concept before it is given physical form — on a time crunch.
We know how to convince an audience.
These are powerful skills. And I’m sure they apply to many roles, not just UX. There is not a day that I go to work and feel like my years of intensive studio training had “gone to waste.” When I acquired the real opportunity to exercise these skills in a fast-paced startup environment, I quickly realized how treasured and valuable these skills are to our business and to those whom I report to, especially as the UX-team-of-one.
So if a three-year-old asks, I’d say that my expertise in crafting blueprints of big ideas started way before my UX boot camp. And I’m sure it’s the same for you.
Don’t underestimate that superpower. If you agree with me, feel free to steal this narrative — the world needs to know.
With much love,
Me.
