If your career as an Architect, Engineer, or indeed, as any Built Environment professional, hasn’t quite worked out as planned, don’t despair – your in-demand transferable skills could stand you in good stead for a range of other creative pursuits!
What do musicians John Denver, Art Garfunkel, Seal, Chris Lowe of the Pet Shop boys, and three of the original members of Pink Floyd have in common? What about American actors Courtney Cox, James Stewart, George Takei, and Samuel L Jackson? Or politician Benjamin Netanyahu, journalist Janet Street-Porter, and fashion designer Tom Ford? The answer is that they all studied architecture or engineering before changing career direction.
Training to work in the property sector provides a great liberal arts education and anyone who has gone through the process is likely to be an open-minded, flexible thinker, who is able to provide creative solutions to all manner of problems – qualities which are highly-valued by employers and co-workers in many different sectors. So, if you think that maybe, just maybe, there’s something out there you might be better at – say, creative writing, music, acting, journalism or even running a magazine, then you should feel confident about considering a change of direction. Property people can understand and interpret the requirements and constraints of a “brief,” can set clear objectives and milestones, are good at time management and team working, and have the ability to carry out thorough research; studying examples of the product they are trying to create. These are all key to the success of any project; whether it’s designing a building, writing a song or story, or developing a character in a play or movie, it’s the same analytical, disciplined process.
The great English author and poet Thomas Hardy, and American novelist George Saunders (who wrote the Booker Prize winning “Lincoln in the Bardo”), even spent time as practicing Built Environment professionals before thinking better of it. Hardy’s time as an architect must have helped him develop his powers of observation; his ability to see and accurately record the details of both the natural and built worlds because his descriptions of landscape, places, and buildings are among the finest in English literature. Hardy deployed his knowledge of architectural terminologies both literally and metaphorically to wonderful effect. He also knew the importance of having a clear structure and a logical approach in both the design of buildings and in storytelling and believed that in architecture and poetry, a “…rational content must be carried within their artistic form.”
Hardy left architecture for a combination of reasons, including a perceived impediment to his own upward mobility and social acceptance amongst his peers and prospective clients. His father was a Dorset stonemason and builder, and so his family would have been regarded as “trade” rather than of the professional classes. He also increasingly felt that architectural work was monotonous and mechanical and that his health was suffering in the foul airs of 1860’s London. But if those were the push factors, then the pull was that he was beginning to receive positive responses to his writing and must have sensed the world was trying to tell him something. By the time he left London to return to Dorset he had honed his skills to the point where he was ready to commit to a literary career. Later of course he went on to great fame and fortune and it must have given him sweet satisfaction to design and build his own large country house in 1885, Max Gate, outside Dorchester.
And what was true for Hardy in the nineteenth century remains true in the twenty-first. George Saunders, who originally trained and worked as an Engineer, has talked at length about the attributes and attitudes that engineering gave him and which he still applies to the writing process. That most underrated of creative qualities – dogged determination – is one he seems to value particularly highly. Even if a story isn’t going well, he keeps working towards a positive solution; just as he did with complex engineering equations at college, believing that setbacks are a part of the problem-solving, truth-searching process. He also utilises the scientific method and believes it can be an excellent template for the writer, that it should be an explorative process rather than thinking you know the truth and finding a way to prove it. And, finally, there is rigor. When Saunders used to get poor marks for his university thermodynamics tests, he recalls it wasn’t good enough to say, “but I tried really hard” and he has applied the same toughness to his literary work. It is the attitude of mind one needs to achieve anything worthwhile.
The study of any Built Environment specialism provides an appreciation of the sweep of history; of political, artistic, societal, and technological change. It develops the ability to analyse and apply creative intelligence to solve problems, promotes an aesthetic awareness and sensibility and explains how to convey ideas through images and verbal communication. If you then add a working understanding of the law, some knowledge of environmental issues, and an ability to deal with complexity and diversity – plus IT, physics, and some applied math for good measure – you’ve got a pretty decent skill set. The graduate of such a learning programme could hold their own in most fields of endeavour. So, the next time you’re feeling stressed or discontented, maybe you should think about making a change? After all, your top-of-the-range education and training means you’re talented enough to go anywhere you want.
Acknowledgements:
Thomas Hardy and Architecture, Patricelli & Hitchens
Interview with George Saunders, Mines Magazine.
