A Star In The World Of Architecture

For this week, I am going to talk about Frank Lloyd Wright. You have probably heard of him before, he has designed quite a few really nice and interesting buildings. Frank was born in 1867, in Wisconsin. Early on, he only ever used natural materials. He liked his buildings to embrace their natural surroundings. 

One of his most famous buildings in America is called Falling Water. He built a residential style house over top of a real natural flowing water fall. It was built in 1935 in Mill Run, Pennsylvania. The project back in 1935 only cost $155,000. If it was built in 2013 it would be well over 2 million to complete. 

Frank, was an architect for almost 70 years before he died. He had designed over a thousand different homes and buildings all over the world. His styles have been said to have had a global impact influencing not only America, but also Europe and Asia. 

Design Design Design...

For this week, I am going to talk about who an architect works with on the job. They work with multiple people. Such as contractors, engineers, landscape designers and of course the clients.  One person can't build a building by their self.

Contractors and engineers both aid in the building progress from the ground up. They are responsible for following the design and seeing it through. The landscape designer though doesn't go into play into the building is almost done. They plant the shrubs and flowers and anything else necessary

The clients are the most important people besides the engineers. The clients tell the architect how they want it. How many bedrooms if its a house or how many class rooms if it's a school. They also work with the landscape designers to tell them how they want the yard designed. Every thing is based on their opinions.

Technology Rules The World

Last week, I talked about the tools an architect uses. For this week, I'm going to talk about the most important thing they use. It is called Auto Cad a form a Auto desk, which is design software. Everything is moving into technology even architecture.

Auto Cad comes in many different versions so you can use it in multiple professions. It is very common in an engineering profession though. Its common because it makes a 3-D image of the design you create on it.

 Auto Cad helps aid in the design process by making it easier to come together. In such ways, instead of erasing and undoing you can just hit the undo button. You can also use multiple materials so you can see it in different styles.

Tools Tools Tools

For this week, I am going to talk about the tools an architect uses daily.  I know just being in class I have over 20 things in my bag. So I'm not going to drag out and explain all the tools. The main tools used on the daily are a lead holder, straightedge and eraser/ eraser shield. 

A lead holder is basically a lead pencil that has thicker more defined lead in it. An architect won't just have one lead holder. That'd be stupid. They need certain lead to draw different lines. It all depends on how thick they want the lines to be. They normally will have at least three different ones. That way they can just pick up the next pencil instead of taking the time to switch the leads out. 

A straight edge is a parallel bar connected to a drawing board. It is used to line your paper up straight. It is also used to draw horizontal straight lines. You can place a triangle on it so you can get straight vertical lines as well. It's very useful to the architect when drawing plans. 







An eraser is common sense I think on what it does, but an eraser shield on the other hand is a very nifty tool. Say you want to erase something but there are other lines in your way. An eraser shield is this little object that has different holes in it to get little details erased with out ruining the whole drawing. 

Career Options

This week, I will tell you about careers options you can specialize in. Basically there's a different type of architect for different projects. There are residential, commercial, industrial and landscape architects. I'm only going to focus on explaining what two of them do. 

The first one I'll explain about are residential architects. Residential architects are responsible for designing houses for private residences. They work directly with home owners. They might not always be designing the house from the ground up though. Sometimes they could be doing a house remodeling.   They have more creative freedom with their projects. They even may be self-employed. 





The next one I want to explain about are commercial architects. They are responsible for the design of buildings such has hospitals, schools and malls. They don't get as much freedom in their designs are residential architects do. Their buildings are designed for a purpose rather than comfort. They normally work in groups and each do certain parts of the building. 

I'm not going to go into details about the others but ill sum them up. Industrial architects design technical projects, like bridges. Landscape architects design just what their name says. Landscape. Some architects will be able to do all different types of designing. It all depends on what they want to do with their career.