For design and build services, get an architect

that differentiated architecture from the engineering profession. The art side of it was only meant for architecture.

Architecture described today, is defined as an art, science or profession of planning, designing and constructing buildings in their totality taking into account their environment in accordance with the principles of utility, strength and beauty.

To be an architect, one has to take half a decade of learning and that meant 10 semesters of drawing, planning, designing, and learning all types of vertical structures from the simplest to the most complex ones — stand-alone residences, whether low cost housing, complicated high-end residential buildings to high-rise and mixed-use condominiums, and commercial complexes; airports, stadiums, gymnasiums, inter-city transport systems, hospital complexes, subdivisions and human settlements; houses of worship, hotels and hospitality buildings; shipping port terminals, institutional and industrial shelters, and even cemeteries, crematoriums and funeral parlors. In fact, there are a lot of shelters for man the architect does.

The education does not stop there. Before the architectural graduate can practice, he has to take his apprenticeship program of at least two years under a licensed professional architect to be exposed to the rudiments of construction — from the design process of a vertical structure, to planning the implementation of the project to the actual supervi

- rials, actual project management and to the post-construction services. The architectural graduate now collaborates with the design and the construction team under the professional architect to produce a stunning piece of quality shelter for man. This is the part where I feel most people do not understand or appreciate of the architect’s work.

After the architectural gradu

to take the architects’ licensure exams that would mean probably another six months of review classes. It is safe to say almost eight years of learning before he takes his oath as a professional, assuming he passes the licensure architect, the dreamer of shelters, the artist in his own right, and the professional to bring order to man and his environment. Not even other allied technical professionals could do that.

Thus, architecture is not a walk in the park. It is not comparable to any other technical professions, nor would people who begin to understand and appreciate what an architect does, can simply now say architects just draw beautifully.

I am even more convinced that most people have never met an architect, or if they have, they always think that architects are engineers. Maybe they have never talked to or hired the services of an architect. For those that know that architects do not only draw, they look at the architects as professionals who are expensive to hire. That is why they settle for other allied professions whom they think are capable enough to practice architecture which is wrong. In the latest earthquakes that occurred in Mindanao, there were vertical structures built by allied professionals which collapsed. And that is why I would like to emphasize that people get the right professionals for the job.

And this is where society should now understand that architecture is for architects such that medicine is for doctors, engineering is for engineers, lawyering is for lawyers, nursing is for nurses and so on. We are a developing country and it is up to the architects and the tri- media networks to educate the masses who an architect is, what they do just drawing.

Architects can be good managers, planners and good visionaries. We do plans and designs, and project management. We design and build vertical structures. We supervise and even do construction management, heritage conservation, urban and rural designs, liturgical architecture, regenerative architecture and adaptive re- use. Not only that, architects excel in evidence- based research learning resettlement projects and structural design conceptualization; hospitality design and a lot more. I mean a lot more including tourism architecture and hospital planning; including PWD- friendly buildings. Generally speaking, the works of the architects are all on vertical structures. Even complex airport terminals, shipping terminal ports and consolidated metro transport bus systems and shelters for light rail trains and subways.

That is why the United Architects of the Philippines has been pushing for the education and awareness for society to appreciate what an architect does including letting architecture be known to the public by its architects campaign advocacy for vertical structures of man “For your plans and designs, get an architect.”

In any construction of vertical structures, the architect does the planning and design conceptualization, puts together the schematic drawings in place, polishes other than