Architectural Designer

An Architectural Designer is an Architect who excuses themselves from the construction aspects of the building process, choosing instead to spend their time focusing on the actual design. This is a somewhat privileged position for an Architect to attain—most Architects prefer to design, but involve themselves in construction management because of business demands. So if you want to stay on the creative side of architecture as an Architectural Designer, nurture your innovation, and make your time more valuable behind a pencil than on the build site.

Architectural Designers sketch out all sorts of structures, from hospitals to restaurants to bridges. In fact the range is so broad, that typically you’ll choose an area to specialize in. But no matter which area you choose, your process is always somewhat the same.

You begin each job by researching the proposed project and interviewing the client. You need to be aware of the lot size for the building, budgetary restrictions, utility availability to the site, building codes and the customer’s desires before beginning your design.

Taking all of these components into consideration, you use hand drawings and CAD (Computer-Aided Design) software to create structurally sound and visually enticing building that suits a client’s needs. In most cases, given that you specialize in the design side of things, you’ll hand off the project to someone else after these designs are created.

Depending on the company you work for, you may work as part of a design team or as an individual to create blueprints from scratch. For this reason, you must work well with others, be detail-oriented, and love expressing creativity.