I would like to offer my form letter to those of you who, like me, have listed "project manager" as well as "Architect" as your job title and consequently have been inundated with information technology junk e-mail. I respond to these with the following:
"(Place name of offending signatory here)
I am an Architect!
A real architect with a Bachelor of Architecture degree, i.e. a 5 year degree(or your professional degree), from the (your alma mater), an NCARB Certificate(if applicable) and active state Licenses in (number of jurisdictions licensed in) states.
I had to practice in another architect's office for a minimum of three years and fill out a massive amount of paperwork just to gain the privilege of taking a seven part test over the span of a week that, if I passed, would demonstrate my competence to use the title "Architect"!
In the course of practicing Architecture, I also manage projects of a design and construction nature, therefore earning the right to call myself a Project Manager.
Now because I listed the above credentials on some Web site registration form I now get thousands of e-mails from presumptuous and ill-informed sales organizations, like yours, that think I will be buying computer software and hardware for LANs and all manner of digital installations.
The I.T. world has decided to appropriate the term "architect" to apply to the group of technogeeks that create much of the crap that has been foisted on our world as more valuable than actual creation of things of permanence and substance. This is probably a move to give the electronic elves respectability and status by attempting to associate with a REAL profession.
As you can probably tell by now a meeting would be a waste of time.
Please remove me from whatever faulty database you obtained my name from."
Alter as you see fit for your circumstance!
-------------------------------------------
Todd Corbet AIA
Virginia Beach VA
-------------------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 03-26-2014 09:29
From: Eric Davis
Subject: Architects and Designers
Mike notes below that
"It's always been interesting to me that architecture is the only term that seems to include design within itself."
I can't speak to what the laws are in Alaska, but in Illinois there are titles other than architect that include design without being labelled as a Designer. From the ILCS:
""Illinois licensed design professional" means a person who holds an active license as an architect under this Act, as a structural engineer under the Structural Engineering Practice Act of 1989, or as a professional engineer under the Professional Engineering Practice Act..."
In other words, you aren't licensed to do design - in areas impacting the public's health, safety, and welfare - if you aren't one of those. Which is why, for example, a PE or architect has to sign off on roadway signage developed by a graphic designer. Of course this all-in with engineers in architecture acts has as much to do with legacy issues as anything else. Engineers got there first back in the day and wouldn't allow passage of an architectural license act unless they were also allowed to continue doing everything that up until then the laws had allowed them to do.
This phenomenon, it should be noted, has interesting repercussions for the discussion of whether interior designers should be licensed, an argument currently raging in several states around the country (a situation monitored closely, regularly, and collaboratively by the AIA's State Government Network, it should be noted - your AIA fees at work). Absent such grandfathering, the creation of an interior design practice act would mean that architects who currently do or would seek to do interiors-only projects would have to either a) hire a licensed interior designer, or b) test for, pay for, and maintain continuing ed for an entire second license - a/k/a pay a new tax - in order to continue doing what they are currently legally authorized to do.
But even then there's the whole discussion of whether the education and training programs (alleged to be in place already) for a licensed interior designer practice act are or could ever be sufficient to take into account the whole spectrum of relevant issues beyond just the interior, in order to adequately protect the public's health, safety, and welfare, in the holistic way and to the same extent that currently only licensed architects are educated and trained to take into account...
-------------------------------------------
Eric Davis AIA
President
Public Design Architects LLC
Oak Park IL
-------------------------------------------