Blueprint for Design

Many hats are worn today.

Our hats are stolen by knaves!

Authority ours!

Establish a new order now!

Take your hat back now!

Ok this non-sense Haiku is the topic for today, sparked by a dialog about the overuse of the title Architect in our society to describe everything but an actual legal architect. The root of this dialog began when I posted a well, general complaint on LinkedIn about how when you look for architecture jobs on line 95% are really IT jobs for computer scientists who call themselves system architects.  Think of how much it’s over used by everyone to describe someone in charge of planning well, anything.

This is further confused by the fact that there are others who can only identify the work they do as an Architect, but they actually shouldn’t really say they are one because they have not completed their license. To the layperson it doesn’t matter, they just know you have something to do with designing buildings, and they secretly wish they were you.

Anyway, out of that dialog I said, hey why don’t we do some good ole theft too? The IT crowd has a project management system Sigma Six of classification that rips off martial arts, let’s to the same! Only we’re architects so maybe it should be hats or ties or turtlenecks. I like the idea of hats, so I’ll go with hats.

The system I propose is this:

White = college student/ recent grad (>1 years experience)
Brown = intern in IDP
Green = intern completed IDP
Blue = Intern taking tests
Black = Architect

Degrees (signified by a stripe, dot, triangle or something on it)

4th =drafter

3^rd = Job Captain

2^nd= Project Manager

1st =Project Architect

Honors (signified by a star or a golden section spiral or something cool)

Masters degree in architecture – purple

PhD in architecture – white

Professor, adjunct – orange

Professor, tenured – yellow

Each project built that made it in to a magazine – pink

Each lawsuit successfully won – red

It could go on and on, but here is what I propose – by having a real designation, sub grades it would be more readily apparent where we are in our path. Let’s take back the name, so when someone who hasn’t got the right to be called architect says they are one we can ask, “Really, what is your color and degree?” The posers will stammer and say something about they are working on it, those that have been seriously pursuing the career can retort (like me) Architect – Brown Hat, 2^nd Degree!

So there are other issues, who would hand out hats, pins and other insignia: NACRB, AIA, B4D? What would the hats look like? Would they have to double as hard hats? (Ooo – HELMETS).  When and where would it be worn? What are the penalties for wearing the wrong color hat?

Anyway, besides this too long diversion on my system, it is a real issue, how do we get our hat back?