Path to architect licensure evolving
Evolving approach streamlines track to attainment, acknowledges that tech has modernized the profession
Changes are gradually coming to the ways that architects can get licensed, reflecting the evolution of a profession that has helped to shape the environment around us.
“I think this is unprecedented,” said Michael J. Armstrong, CEO of the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards which is generating the changes.
The single most significant change would be a new path labeled “licensure upon graduation,” which would be a structured, streamlined approach to becoming an architect. Another change that’s already underway is a redesign of the Intern Development Program, which is a major step in the journey to become an architect.
One starting point for the overhaul of the licensing requirements is a single statistic: The average age at which a person gets licensed or registered as an architect is 34. In addition, only about half of the graduates from architecture schools go on to be licensed, Armstrong said.
For a 17- or 18-year-old college prospect looking at careers in today’s economy, spending the next 16 years to become a licensed architect can seem pretty old school compared to what might be achieved over the same period of time in information technology, Armstrong said.
“We hear from people who have a lot of career options when they go to school,” he said. “There are choices out there that didn’t exist before.”
David Dekker, principal of Studio Southwest Architects in Albuquerque, was licensed at age 26, or about as fast as it could be achieved in the early 1980s. He credits his comparatively fast track to licensure largely to his upbringing.
“My dad was an architect. From the time I was 10 years old, I was running blueprints in the office. Later I worked summers in construction and did drafting for my dad,” said the Texas Tech College of Architecture graduate. “That kind of background allowed me to take the exam and pass it.”
The proposed licensure-upon-graduation path would require a buy-in from architecture schools. Preliminary indications are that licensure upon graduation could be done within six years of entering a program, Armstrong said. Thus, a traditional college student could become a licensed architect at age 24 instead of an average of 34.
“This type of program would be highly structured,” he said. “It would take a highly disciplined student to complete it.”
Established in 1919, the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards is made up of the licensing boards of the 50 states, including the New Mexico Board of Examiners for Architects, and some U.S. territories.
The council’s main job is to design the tools and procedures that can be used at the state level for licensing architects. States don’t have to adopt the council’s recommended tools and procedures or can make changes as they see fit.
Members of the state Board of Examiners for Architects have followed development of a licensure-upon-graduation path, but “has not made a thumbs up or thumbs down on that proposal,” said board Director Wren Propp.
The architecture profession didn’t come into its own in New Mexico until about the 1880s, when most of the architects’ buildings were generated by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway, according
to a history of the role of architects in the state posted at the state Board of Examiners for Architects website.
Anyone could call themselves an architect back in those days, which eventually resulted in the state Legislature passing a law establishing the state board of examiners in 1931. In the first year, 29 architects were registered, a word that is synonymous with licensed.
A major supporter of the law was John Gaw Meem, the Santa Fe architect who turned vernacular pueblostyle architecture into an iconic symbol of New Mexico.
The profession was initially comprised of Anglo men. The first woman was licensed in 1950. The first state resident with a Hispanic surname was licensed in 1952. In 1972, the University of New Mexico established a separate School of Architecture, according to the history document.
There are currently 2,131 licensed architects in New Mexico, about a third of whom actually live here, Propp said. Most licensees are out-of-state architects who want to be qualified to do projects here.
A 100 years ago, most architects learned the profession through apprenticeships rather than by attending architecture school. Apprenticeships were imbedded into licensing process through what’s now called the Intern Development Program.
Las Cruces architect Jim Vorenberg is a throwback to the apprenticeship era.
He’s a college graduate but didn’t attend architecture school, learning the profession entirely the oldfashioned way by working under fellow Las Cruces architect Rembert Alley. It took six rigorous years of apprenticeship before he passed the architect registration exam, he said.
“He was a hard taskmaster, but it paid off,” Vorenberg said. “I enjoy this work.”
That old-fashioned apprenticeship path to an architect’s license is now closed. A degree from an accredited architecture school is now a prerequisite.
The architect registration exam has evolved substantially over the years and more changes are planned. When Dekker took it, the exam was two consecutive eight-hour days. In 1997, the exam switched from pencil and paper to computer.
Currently, the exam is divided into seven tests that are taken separately. On average, aspiring architects spend two years working their way through the tests. By the end of 2016, Armstrong said the exam will be reduced to six tests, each 2 to 4 hours long depending on subject area.
A context for the effort to streamline the licensing of architects is the immense impact that technology has had on the profession. Sophisticated calculators, at least by the standards of the day, were the workhorse tool for Dekker when he was in architecture school. Go back further, the go-to tool was a slide rule.
“We’re trying to acknowledge that technology has modernized the profession,” Armstrong said. “Architects used to spend days doing things they don’t even do anymore. A computer does it for them.”