101 Things I Didn't Learn In Architecture School: And wish I had known before my first job

By Sarah Lebner

Your first architecture job can involve a very steep learning curve.

This book helps students and graduates of architecture kick-start their career and shave months off their professional development.

This book will help you:

• Understand construction basics so you can avoid embarrassing

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sarah Lebner
• Release date: Dec 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9780648693710

Sarah Lebner

Sarah Lebner is the Director of Cooee Architecture, a regional Australian practice focusing on energy-efficient and low-carbon homes. Before this, Sarah was the Principal Architect at multidisciplinary firm Light House Architecture and Science in Canberra. She was a recipient of the 2023 Dulux Study Tour Prize, and the Australian Institute of Architects's 2020 National Emerging Architect Prize winner. Sarah was shortlisted for the international design competition Capithetical; tutored undergraduate and postgraduate architecture students in design, practice and sustainable technology at the University of Canberra; and has participated in volunteer construction programs in Kenya and the Solomon Islands. This book is Sarah's passion project, allowing her to share her experience and mentoring skills more broadly, to help young architects bridge the gap between study and practice.

Book preview

101 Things I Didn’t Learn in Architecture School

And wish I had known before my first job

Sarah Lebner

First published in 2019

© Sarah Lebner, 2019

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (for example, a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review), no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All inquiries should be made to the author.

ISBN: 978-0-6486937-0-3 (Paperback)

ISBN: 978-0-6486937-1-0 (E-Book)

Printed by Ingram Spark

Cover design by Rachel Clements

Edited by Simon Rose and Emma Moylan

Disclaimer:

The material in this publication is of the nature of general comment only and does not represent professional advice. It is not intended to provide specific guidance for particular circumstances and it should not be relied on as the basis for any decision to take action or not take action on any matter that it covers. Readers should obtain professional advice where appropriate, before making any such decision. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the author disclaims all responsibility and liability to any person, arising directly or indirectly from any person taking or not taking action based on the information in this publication.

For those who significantly shaped my early career:

Gurdev Singh, Ann Cleary, Rob Henry, Jessica de Rome, Robbie Speight, Andrew Verri, Jenny Edwards.

Thank you for inspiring me.

Introduction

Starting your first architecture job can be a bit like graduating from primary school to secondary college. Your hard work and dedication at university may have you feeling somewhat confident with your skills, but this can evaporate in a flash on your first day at work.

I speak from experience. I landed my first job with a local architecture firm in the final stages of my undergraduate studies, having only just turned 21. I’d won more than one design award and was among the top students in my year, but very little of this mattered as I began my career as a student draftsperson. On one of those early days on the job, I roughly recall the following conversation:

Supervisor: Alright, so the first thing I want you to do is pretty easy. We just need to add a window here.

Me: Okay! How do I add a window?

The supervisor patiently explained all of the line weights used to draft the window, finishing with the recommendation that I use the .10 line for the window mullion.

Me: Alright … What’s a mullion?

And so on.

The other factor that can add to naivety before your first job is simply your age. At 21, there were a lot of industry terms and processes that the average 40-year-old might know, but that I’d never really understood. I didn’t know what a ‘tender’ was, or indeed what a lot of industry consultants did, and in the short three years of ‘adulthood’ that I’d experienced up to that point, termites and condensation hadn’t come up in many conversations with my peers.

However, I bumbled on, testing the patience of all of my mentors, and after a very steep learning curve over ten years, I’m not only a registered architect but an award-winning principal architect of a medium size residential firm.

Now that I can reflect on the many silly questions asked and gaping holes in my industry knowledge that have slowly been filled, I can create one resource that I wish I’d had, namely this book.

The following pages cover 101 things that my colleagues and I wish we’d known or better understood before starting our first architecture jobs. I hope that they save you a few of the embarrassing moments, silly questions and painfully awkward ‘I have no idea what they’re talking about’ situations that I endured.

Sarah

How to Use This Information

While this book includes many items of general knowledge that may be useful to young architects all around the world, please note that this first edition is the Australian one. Consequently, references, terms and processes will relate specifically to the Australian architecture and construction industry.

Even if you are in Australia, you’ll always find variations between locations and firms, particularly between different sectors such as private, public and commercial architecture firms. Remember that this book is a general introduction, so don’t go correcting your boss on the first day if they do something differently!

I’ve done my best to keep this book concise, covering what I believe is the most basic or common explanation.

Please treat this information as introductory, sitting on a spectrum of grey, rather than black and white definitive answers.

If a particular topic interests you, or you’re seeking clarification, I’d always recommend that you conduct your own up-to-date research from a trusted source to find and confirm further details.

Join Our Community

If you like this book, then you’ll probably be interested in our FREE Job Seeker Workbook, available at myfirstarchitecturejob.com.

This book is only one part of My First Architecture Job. On our website, you can find further resources, articles, book recommendations and products.

You can join our community of young architects by following us on Instagram @first_archi_job, or on Facebook at facebook/firstarchitecturejob.

Sadly, many practitioners in our industry cling to the view that young architects must suffer through a gruelling ‘rite of passage’ where they’re thrown in the deep end in their first architecture job, with little support or mentoring and often accompanied by low pay and long working hours.

I created My First Architecture Job to change this. I’m passionate about passing on lessons we’ve learnt so that the next generation can get a head start and be better architects far more quickly than those who went before them.

Contents

Introduction

How