What is an Architect?
Have you ever dreamt of being an architect? We all have at some time or another, but what is an architect, and what does an architect do? This is what I will try to answer.
To know what an architect is, we need to know what an architect does. An architect is responsible for creating architecture, but what is architecture? Architecture comes from the Greek word ἀρχιτέκτων (arkhitekton) which comes from the word “architect” put together by the two words ἀρχι- “chief” and τέκτων “creator”. So, architecture, according to the widest interpretation of the word, means “creation”. So you can say that architecture is what binds it all together, “the creation” and an architect, the chief creator. You may further expand on this idea and say that architecture is what binds humans, processes, and technology together. What do I mean by that? Well, Architecture gives our cultural environment structure. It’s how we have defined that our culture should work. In this way, you may say that we all participate in creating architecture and that an architect is nothing but a person that has this as his professional title. What is important to note is that by technology, I am not only referring to machines and software. Technology is the tools that we have used for executing our processes from the beginning of man until this day. A stone hammer is also technology. To most people, architecture is invisible. That’s why it’s so hard to define. It’s not the buildings themselves that represent the architecture, the buildings are just the output for what architecture really is, the ideas and concepts that hold the building together. The rest is just structural engineering.
So why do we really want to become architects? After all, we all take part in defining architecture. If I may speculate, I believe it’s because we understand that the persons that define the concepts and ideas for binding our culture together are the people that really hold the power over our lives. It’s not necessarily the domain of our politicians and CEOs, it’s the domain of the architects that comes up with the ideas and concepts that we will use from cradle to grave.
Architecture is more than just what we define as such. The word is just a concept we have chosen were ideas and concepts are needed in order to define which tools to use and how the processes for using these should be put to good use. When you need a person to do this job, you hire an architect, and in turn, this person may or may not call himself an architect. It all depends on the architect that decided what an architect really is and should be doing.
