<p>i want to start an architectural firm since architects in firms do not get paid enough. i will be getting a B.Arch but to start a firm should i continue and get a M.arch or go to business school (MBA)? i know i should probably work a while before i get my own and pay myself… please give me some path advice on how to get there. thanks</p>
<ol>
<li><p>For your internship, work for a famous, high-design, brand name architect–a name future clients will recognize. </p></li>
<li><p>Aim to open your business by the time you are 28–before 30 at the latest.</p></li>
<li><p>Tell everyone you know (and hopefully you know lots of people) that you are going out on your own–about eight months before you do so. After you open your business, continue telling everyone that you are looking for work. Call people just to tell them that. Schedule periodic calls to remind people that you are still looking for work.</p></li>
<li><p>Concentrate on high-end residential work to start. It is high paying and it gives you the best opportunity to work with high-design, substantial materials and powerful clients who may one day build much bigger buildings.</p></li>
<li><p>Architecture is a very simple business. You do not need a business degree but you need to be able to diligently use financial spreadsheets–tracking your income and expense and projecting your future income. Personally, I like QuickBooksPro. If you can afford it, buy a copy and teach yourself how to keep track of your income, tax and expenses.</p></li>
<li><p>Profit is made when you hold expenses down to a minimum.</p></li>
<li><p>Pay yourself well. Start out at a fairly high hourly rate–and make yourself increase that rate every year. Wealthy clients will respect you for demanding high rates for yourself. Bargaining hard for yourself gives the client comfort–they know you will bargain hard for them too.</p></li>
<li><p>Get a substantial retainer before every job–it makes the client more serious. Get a signed contract–the AIA short form is terrific.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>From what I hear, a MBA won’t be that great of a use for you…though I can see that an architecture degree can be very beneficial if you were to do business or entrepeneurship. M.Arch’s are useful if you want to teach…
i think ultimately…any architect starting out his or her own firm will face a time in which you won’t be getting any money until a lot of clients come to you. the three architects i’ve worked for all started out working in their homes…or living in debt…but the payoff later on is quite nice.</p>
<p>The thing that an MBA might be good for is not the degree itself, but networking with potential clients.</p>
<p>What I would add to cheers’ list is this</p>
<p>*do side jobs and competitions on your own time while you are working for someone else to help yourself build a client base</p>
<p>*don’t go out on your own until those side jobs increase in quantity/frequency enough to pay the rent. Architecture’s not one of those businesses where you develop a product and then find customers for it, it’s one where you want to start out with some clients in your pocket already.</p>
<p>You must have clients to start your own firm. It is the most important part of your business plan. You must think about marketing yourself 24/7. Clients will not come to you regardless of how good you think you are. Once you have clients (hopefully paying) you will figure out all the rest. You don’t need an MBA. You can pay people to figure things out for you.</p>
<p>“i want to start an architectural firm since architects in firms do not get paid enough”</p>
<p>I have known lots of reasons why friends have started architecture firms. Most have to do with a burning desire for independence, and a chance to do things their own way. Making more money is generally not one of them. It will take years of pouring money back into the business before even the most successful owners begin to see serious money. </p>
<p>If you want real money take the MBA and go work for a developer. Otherwise find a good firm and after a few years you will know if you still have a burning need to start a firm. You may find yourself making pretty good money. I would suggest saving at least 6 to 12 months of living expenses and some working capital before you jump. </p>
<p>rick</p>
<p>I suggest you jump into your own firm when you get your first big job–one that will pay a fee equal to approximately 50% of your salary. </p>
<p>For example, if you get a $200K renovation/addition/cottage job which pays a 12% commission, that is a $24,000 fee, more than half of an annual junior architect salary. That is enough to start your own firm, in my opinion. You’ll have to hustle to get the next few jobs going alongside your first–but that’s the story of being your own boss. You are not going to develop the cahones until you actually need them. Might as well jump into the fire with your whole being.</p>
<p>The start-up of an architectural practice takes very little capital–if you’ve got a computer and software. (Used to be a desk and draughting tools). I didn’t have six months expenses in my pocket–nor did I need it. The profit margin in my own firm has been fairly high since day one. </p>
<p>My first project came through the recommendation of a friend–a few months after I told her I was starting my own firm. It was a $100K addition to the weekend home of a very senior record company executive. That client was thrilled to launch the careers of a couple of young architects. The person who recommended us got lots of kudos and recommended us for another project–this time for a senior executive in the film industry. That turned into a $450K apartment renovation job. We later did a $1M job for that same executive. During the first project, she recommended us to several of her friends and we perfected a call list to let everyone knwo we were looking for work. The projects just rolled in after that. We have heaps of repeat clients and clients who turn into life-long friends.</p>
<p>I’m always the contrarian, I know, but I did one competition and found it to be a waste of time–even though I got Honorable Mention and an invite to some fancy dancy opening. A few clients have placed projects into magazines but I haven’t found that to be necessary or valuable. I avoid the press now–and deflect calls from the press to the Owners.</p>
<p>After my next large project goes into construction, I may decide to raise my profile in order to draw institutional projects like museums and government buidlings. Still undecided.</p>
<p>cheers-it seems like one of the hardest part about gaining clients when starting out is that since you’re so young, it’s hard for clients to trust you. how do get people to trust you especially when you haven’t really designed anything for anyone yet?</p>
<p>Wel, it ain’t easy–especially if you look like you are 17 when you are 28 and you’re the wrong damn gender. During that first year, I lost 11 out of 12 interview calls–the one I got was the $450K project. My partner did much better–4 out of 7. </p>
<p>Interestingly, my client/project wins tended to have more substantial clients–I also have the phenomenal repeat client record–and more substantial built projects. In those first two years, I did lose one very very big client who went on to become one of New York’s biggest ibankers/philanthropists. I blew the interview process. He was up for giving the young guns a go on a $750K project–but his wife didn’t trust me. I could have played the interview much much differently–and I never ran an interview in that way again. I may be stupid, but I am usually not stupid twice. </p>
<p>When you start your own firm, you should have a number of projects from your internship in your portfolio. We still get projects and clients from one of our internship projects–a massive project we did for a famous architect. We pop that project back into the portfolio when we interview for big ,big projects. “This is the massive project we worked on for muckety muck architects in New York.”</p>
<p>Works wonders all over the world.</p>
<p>Grey hair and wrinkles really help, I’ve noticed, but the key ingredient is confidence. That’s why ten to thirteen semesters of design studios are so important. Surviving juries/critiques with grace, humour, style and some profundity is a vital skill for success for a high-design architect. Says me. Wealthy, powerful clients want to hear things they’ve never heard before. They want to learn and they are willing to pay big bucks to do so.</p>
<p>Years later, clients and contractors will quote something I said to them during the process–something said to get them off whatever dime they were standing on. I usually have no recollection of what I said–I just remember that I was able to move them in my direction. ;)</p>
<p>cheers, i have some quick questions,
so you got B.Arch and worked for a firm and started your own after a while…
so you think getting a M.Arch or MBA wouldn’t really help if one has a B.Arch to start a firm? but wouldnt more education help to get connections and more knowledge and such?</p>
<p>I’m not pro-MBA and I’m not pro-double major. An MBA is all about studying various business cases. It’s time well spent–for students who are passionate about business. A talented architect would not take two years off from architecture to study business–espeically not as a youngster. You might want your business partner to have an MBA–that happens once in a while.</p>
<p>An MArch II is a terrific experience for a BArch. It’s mind-opening. It’s that many more design studios and an architect needs as many as he/she can afford. An MArch II helps if you want to teach–or if you want to pursue partnership status in a large firm (doesn’t guarantee anything, however, espeically not for women).</p>
<p>I’m not sure an MArch II makes a huge difference in opening a firm–and you want to be careful that you don’t end up doing your internship at age 35. You tend to meet other architects in grad school–not more clients. I’m not sure clients care about MArch vs BArch… Heck, we weren’t even registered when we did our first projects. We had a structural engineer stamp the drawings.</p>
<p>Clients tend to pay attention to where you went to school, who you worked for in your internship–and then–what projects you’ve done. Sometimes they just like your Issey Miyake suit.</p>
<p>issey miyake?! haha can young architects even afford that?</p>
<p>“doesn’t guarantee anything, however, espeically not for women”</p>
<p>what do you think is the best way to go for a female architect?</p>
<p>Opening your own firm with a partner or two is the ONLY way to go for female architects. Check through the partner lists of most big firms to confirm.</p>
<p>Even when you come across a female partner in a big firm (building big commercial buildings–not small scale residential or interiors), chances are she is not a lead designer. To confirm, ask older practice owners if their female parters are design partners–or not (usually not).</p>
<p>It’s not a glass ceiling–it’s a granite ceiling girls. I hope you’re tough enough to break through it anyway!.</p>
<p>“To confirm, ask older practice owners”</p>
<p>Here’s the problem with this: younger women are having more success at the same point in their careers as those older women did at that point. Women fresh out of school today have more opportunities than women fresh out of school 20 years ago did. So it would follow that a woman with 10 years experience now will have more opportunities than a woman with 10 years experience 20 years ago, and a woman with 10 years experience 20 years from now will have more opportunities than a woman with equivilant experience now. The career of an older woman and the struggles she had to go through are not representative of what a woman has to go through now.</p>
<p>The field is being flooded with women, and they aren’t being kept down anymore. But architecture is an old person’s profession, and so the changes happen from the bottom up. The bottom rungs of the latter have changed, the middle rungs have changed, the top will change too by the time these kids are ready to own a firm. The sort of rhetoric you spout only serves to make these girls feel oppressed before they can have even encountered anything of the sort, and they are not nearly as likely to as you indicate.</p>
<p>Really lara? You can prove that to me you know.</p>
<p>Post up established firms with female design partners at the head.<br>
Post the list of design partners at any high-design firm which does not have a female at the masthead.
Post the faculty list at any architecture school.<br>
Post the list of speakers for any architecture school lecture series.<br>
Post the female winners of the Pritzker Prize.<br>
Post the female designers of major built buildings since 1990.<br>
Post the percentage of female work shown in ANY grad school publication.
Post the female AIA award winners for major, non-residential work
Post the names of the female FAIA members who are lead designers of major built work.</p>
<p>When you consdier that the schools have been producing 50% female graduates for the last 25 years, the stats for female architects are terrible–and even worse when you factor in female lead designers.</p>
<p>Part of the problem is that the construction industry is 99.8% male–and aggressive male at that. Most young students have no idea they have to mix it up with that burly crowd in order to be successful architects.</p>
<p>The other part of the problem–from my ‘ancient’ but shattered granite perspective–is that the profession does a HORRIBLE job of telling female students how to succeed as designers. Instead, they sell females a whole bunch of fancy degrees that only have 6 semesters of design studio behind them–rather a crippling factor when you are out in the marketplace competing against guys with 13 semesters of design studio. </p>
<p>Plus, they forget to mention to students and interns that the opportunity to design major buildings will be VERY rare.</p>
<p>Then they push females into non-design or reduced design positions–like residential work or interiors or project admin.</p>
<p>I would love to be dissuaded of these opinions, however–if you have the facts to back up your rosier view. I’ve met and employed plenty of recent female grads. The best junior design architect we’ve ever employed was female. I’m still crushed that she left to raise a family. She had MAJOR talent.</p>
<p>^ cheers or any architects that owns their own firm</p>
<p>may i ask you how old you are currently and how old you were when you opened your firm and how much you are making now?
and the degrees you obtain and the years to obtain them?</p>
<p>to all architects now-
any regrets? if you didn’t choose to become an architect, what would you have picked?</p>
<p>cheers, I don’t even know where to begin with this advice of starting firms with no money and no licence because that is the only way for a woman to succeed. But let me address a few of the points;</p>
<ul>
<li><p>There are many roles in the profession, and designer is not the only one that matters. Just measuring women who are designers does not do justice to their influence. A woman runs the local office of both HOK and Gensler. Are they ‘designers’? I don’t know, but they have the power to change any design they don’t like. </p></li>
<li><p>You feel that the only way for a woman to succeed is to start her own office. Do you really think it is easier to convince clients to trust you with major commissions than to convince the partners in a large firm? This may be true with residential, but it is not the case with any commercial work I have seen. Better learn to paly golf.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>-There are certainly some crappy jobs in this profession, but there are a lot of fulfilling career paths that one can follow. The idea that the only possible career path is to work for a star architect in New York, then to start your own firm before you are 28, is simply myopic. It may be a valid path, but certainly not the only one.</p>
<p>The architectural profession is changing rapidly, but your still seem stuck in 1985…</p>
<p>Springsteen, Madonna
Way before nirvana(1985)
There was U2 and Blondie
And music still on MTV
Her two kids in high school
They tell her that she’s uncool
'Cause she is still preoccupied
With 19, 19, 1985…:-)</p>
<p>rick</p>
<p>Cheers, I apologize for putting the song in above, I just could not figure out how to edit it out this morning. I placed it there in good fun, but I know things intended in good fun can come off as mean spirited on the internet. It popped into my head when I was thinking how in the 80’s I shared your attitude about New York. I just think there are many more options these days.</p>
<p>regards,
rick</p>
<p>rick12, Could you talk about some of the non-designer career paths/roles in architecture?</p>