My father used to tell me (and now I am telling you) that you go to college to learn how to learn. When this bridge is finished, you won’t see any of the columns in the glass wall.ĭid I use some math skills to solve this problem? Absolutely, but none of this is magic and absolutely none of it requires trigonometry, calculus or physics. We also sized the vertical columns that connect the structure at the floor to the truss structure at the ceiling with 2″x3″ tube steel so that the width of the members could be enclosed within the metal of the window system. There is enough of an offset with the steel beam so that the glass at the floor has a place to set. The arrangement and sizing of the structural steel was worked and re-worked until we got it to this point. In the detail above, we are looking at the corner of the bridge walkway where the glass floor and the glass wall come together.
Do I have enough space for all the parts I need? Do things line up? The the components equally spaced apart when required? (think window-wall). Whenever I put together a detail for a project, one of over-riding controls is the size of the parts that come together. Most of the math that I work with is associated with dimensions. It isn’t the complexity of the math that’s the challenge, it’s coming up with the problem in the first place. Addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, that’s about it. Now that I am 20+ years removed from structures classes, I can safely say that 99% of all the math I do day in and day out involves the same sort of stuff my daughter is mastering in the 5th grade. Whenever I get emails from people who are concerned that their math abilities are lacking, I can’t help but laugh when I think about how ill prepared I was for what I needed to get done. I came out of high school with only Algebra 2 under my belt and when I stay down in my physics class and my structures class and everyone – and I do mean everyone – sitting around me had already completed Trigonometry and Calculus, that’s when I realized I was in a bad spot and had some serious catching up to do. If you really think being an architect is the right thing for you, the math shouldn’t stand in your way. I DID get through it and so would everyone else who wanted to be an architect. I look back on the notes on these pages and a part of me wonders how I ever made it through … but that’s part of the message. The image above is a page out of my college structures composition notebook … yes, I still have it (along with all my other college notebooks, to what end I have no idea). This is one of the more popular questions I get asked and today I am going to try to answer that question once and for all. ~ just about every high school kid thinking about becoming an architect
I did a quick search for the phrase “good at math” in my Google mail and I received back 114 emails (and that just dating back to January of 2014).ĭo I have to be good at math if I want to be an Architect? You can’t be completely incompetent either, but if you can through school, it’s all downhill … at least until you have to the architectural licensing exam, but that’s a different post for a different day. It’s too bad that more than most people think this but just like a handful of other stereotypes about architects that aren’t true, I am here to tell you that you do not have to be great at math to be an architect. At parties across the land, as soon as someone finds out there is an architect in the crowd, there is a story being told about how they wanted to be an architect but since they couldn’t draw or weren’t very good at math, they decided to do something else. If you ever thought about being an architect but thought you couldn’t handle the math, you aren’t alone.
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