In the construction industry, there is a saying that the old four schools refer to Tsinghua University, Tongji University, Southeast University, and Tianjin University. They were the first to offer architecture-related majors and have a significant influence in the industry.
I completed my bachelor's and master's degree in one of the old four architecture schools, and after graduation, I worked in an architectural design institute in a first-tier city.
Before entering the school, I was full of longing for architecture, and I felt that this industry had both the rigor of science and engineering and the romance of art, and the salary package was very good.
Graduation caught up with the contraction of the construction industry. Orders for new projects have plummeted, it is difficult to collect payments for old projects, high investment and low returns have become the norm, and the college entrance examination admission score for architecture has been declining year by year.
Looking at today's cold wave, the high score of the year is more like a joke.
The good times of architecture are gone
Compared with majors such as humanities and social sciences, which have always been difficult to find jobs, the ancestors of architecture are indeed broad.
In 1992, China launched a comprehensive housing reform and implemented a housing provident fund system[1].
In the same year, the real estate industry heated up dramatically, and construction projects were carried out across China [2]. The number of real estate development companies has increased from more than 3,000 at the beginning of the year to more than 12,400 in one year, a fourfold increase. Investment in real estate development reached 73.2 billion yuan, an increase of 117% over 1991 [2].
In 2003, the Notice on Promoting the Sustainable and Healthy Development of the Real Estate Market officially defined the real estate industry as a pillar industry of the national economy[3].
Under the influence of this document, in 2003, the country's cumulative real estate development investment exceeded 1 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 297, the highest increase since 1995 [4].
The high profits have brought unprecedented opportunities to the real estate-related industries. Architects also have a lot of opportunities and high incomes.
The 2000s and 2010s were a veritable era for the construction industry. At that time, almost all architects were able to get high salaries.
Architects who have studied abroad and work in foreign companies work four days a week and receive a monthly salary of $1,000 and a subsidy of $10,000. Although the salary of the architect of the state-owned design institute is not so high, he can receive many projects privately from Party A, which is commonly known as "speculation" in Shenzhen. There is no fixed amount of income from speculation, and some people earn more than their annual salary [5].
Architects have a high income and are well paid. The reputation of architecture majors in colleges and universities has also been rising.
In the 2013 annual report of Max, architecture was ranked as the preferred major of Chinese graduates, and in the report, architecture not only has the highest employment rate and working conditions, but also has the highest employment satisfaction score [6].
But by the mid-2010s, as the real estate market saturated, the architectural design industry had to face more profound challenges.
The number of projects has decreased, the cost of design has fallen, and designers have begun to face the dilemma of salary cuts and reduced bonuses. Many designers and design firms have had to look to transform or downsize to adapt to the new normal of the industry [5].
According to industry sources, the monthly salary of designers of state-owned enterprise design institutes in a first-tier city has fallen to more than 3,000 yuan.
This is because the remuneration of a designer in the construction industry is usually made up of a monthly base salary, an advance bonus, and a year-end bonus at the end of the year.
Among them, the proportion of year-end bonus usually reaches more than 50%, and when signing a labor contract, the contract only includes the basic salary that is almost the same as the minimum wage standard, so the range of salary can be fluctuated is very large.
However, the reduction of salary does not mean that the work is easy, but the worse the market, the higher Party A's requirements, and the more serious the overtime.
In 2015, the name of architecture had disappeared from the rankings of Max with a high employment rate and the highest monthly review income, and has not appeared since.
According to Max's 2023 China Undergraduate Employment Report, in the employment satisfaction survey of the 2017 undergraduate graduates five years after graduation, the satisfaction rate of the construction industry was 68%, ranking first from the bottom with the accommodation and catering industry [7].
The admission rankings and admission scores of the top architecture schools have also decreased visibly in the short term.
In the past five years, the minimum admission rank of Tongji University has dropped from 554 to 2,138, a decrease of 1,709, while the lowest admission rank of Southeast University has dropped by 2,095 [8].
On the occasion of 2019, the total score of the Jiangsu college entrance examination is 480 points. This year, the highest score for the first batch of undergraduate admissions in Tongji Architecture in Jiangsu Province was 429 points [9], the highest score for admission to Southeast Architecture was 421 points [10], and the cut-off score for the first batch of undergraduate admissions of Tsinghua University in Jiangsu Science was 421 points [11].
If education is regarded as an investment in human resources, our group of students who are admitted to the architecture major with high scores are facing a kind of failure.
Studying architecture is a penance
In fact, being admitted to the architecture major not only meant that we had to pay a higher score in the college entrance examination, but also meant that we had to face a longer and more difficult university life.
Unlike other majors, the duration of an undergraduate in architecture is usually five years.
On the one hand, the reason for the longer duration of study is that it is in line with international standards. In 2008, China, the United States, Canada and other countries jointly signed the Canberra Architectural Education Agreement, stipulating that only after completing five years of professional education can international mutual recognition be obtained.
On the other hand, it is determined by the basic teaching content and training objectives of architecture, which covers a wide range of contents, spanning many fields of science, engineering, literature and art, and is a combination of science and art, science and engineering and humanities.
According to the curriculum in Tsinghua University's undergraduate training program for architecture, the professional education of architecture includes basic courses, major courses focusing on architectural design, practical training, and comprehensive training [12].
Among them, the basic courses are divided into six categories: mathematics foundation, design foundation, architectural history, architectural technology, interdisciplinary courses, and architectural art [12]. Almost every category of this is enough to be pulled out into a large category of disciplines, which shows the wide range of disciplines.
Even, the basic course is not the most credit-taking course. The "top priority" of the architecture major is architectural design as a major course.
As a design course, its "big" is first reflected in the arrangement of class hours, 6 class hours per week, usually 2 times a week, once on half a day, outside the classroom may have to occasionally find a teacher to open a small stove for the promotion of the program.
Generally, 8 weeks is a project cycle, listening to lectures in class, communicating with teachers, self-study outside of class, modifying the plan, and conducting a unified evaluation and defense at the end of the project.
And it was the final drawing review defense that gave birth to the "Picture Week" that frightened architecture students. Staying up all night during the picture week is the norm for everyone. Everyone competes with each other, the concept of the volume scheme, the effect of the volume surface, and the fineness of the volume model.
The whole process is costly and costly. The cost of materials and laser cutting for an ordinary model is about a few hundred yuan, and if it is a large model, it may be nearly a thousand yuan. Models made of 3D printing or other special materials are usually more expensive, and there are thousands of dollars.
Finally, with drawings taller than a human and expensive models, there will be a speech and debate about the plan. It is not uncommon for them to be denied and overturned throughout the design process. For so many years, it can be described as a triple cultivation of physiological, mental and wallet.
Moreover, life is not a simple linear reasoning, and learning hard never means that future work will be easy.
The life of the architect, how can it still be so bitter
In some industries, you are a skilled worker for two or three years, and you are a veteran in the company for five or ten years. But architects are not among them.
In addition to the long study time, architects also have to go through a long training process after work. An architect in his thirties and forties is still a proper "young architect".
This is due to the fact that, on the one hand, the construction project itself has a long lead time, and on the other hand, the actual project involves a lot of expertise outside of schooling.
An ordinary construction project usually takes two or three years, and if it is a large project such as a hospital, a stadium, or an airport, it is common to spend four or five years. In the process of project implementation, it is not only necessary to understand the knowledge of the building itself and the different characteristics of each project, but also to understand other knowledge such as structure, water supply and drainage, electrical, and civil air defense.
Not only that, but in order to have better career prospects, architects also need to pass 6 relevant exams and obtain a registered architect certificate. Obtaining a certificate does not mean that it is a one-time thing, and you need to continue your education every few years to maintain the validity of the certificate.
In addition, as Party B, it also needs to meet the high requirements of Party A and frequently change the map. Young architects are often under heavy pressure.
A study of 166 respondents, the vast majority of whom were under the age of 40, found that architects were typically required to undertake more than two project tasks at the same time, with more than half of the respondents working more than six days a week, often working more than 24 hours of continuous overtime [13].
My personal experience is that the turnover rate of my colleagues is extremely high, and the shortest stay is only a few months.
In addition, the construction industry generally implements a lifelong responsibility system.
As the project leader of the design unit, the architect shall bear the relevant legal responsibilities for the project quality accident for life, including civil liability, administrative liability and criminal liability. In other words, if there is an accident in a construction project, the architect will be held accountable as long as he is alive.
This was originally intended to push architects to take responsibility for their work. However, compared with the international architect responsibility system, there is an obvious imbalance between the responsibilities and rights of Chinese architects.
In some countries, such as the United States and Japan, architects are not only responsible for design, but also participate in project management, which allows for higher income security and greater design autonomy.
In contrast, Chinese architects have very limited rights, especially in project management and financial allocation, and are obviously constrained by the client.
Logically, rights should be seen as a reward for assuming responsibility, while responsibility is a restriction on the exercise of rights. This mismatch between power and responsibility will only further deepen the practice difficulties of architects.
All this, coupled with the dismal income of the current industry, it is difficult not to discourage the students who chose architecture in the first place. However, the high cost of learning and professional barriers in architecture make the sunk cost of changing careers higher than that of other majors.
It is true that this is a long shirt that cannot be taken off, and it is an obsession and a knot that cannot be let go, but as young architects, what have we done wrong?