If you’re thinking about a career in architecture, you’d better be good at using both sides of your brain.

It’s only one of the talents demanded by a profession which relies on both logic and creativity.

Cameron Gillies of Sturgess Architecture in Calgary is a good example of the new generation of upcoming architects. He’s about a year-and-a-half into his three-year internship after earning his architecture degree.

Gillies believes that two halves of his education – structured and unstructured, creative and sequential – have been complementary in his chosen career.

He originally started out in engineering, but found it
didn’t engage his creativity. And when he looked at his future as an engineering student, he didn’t see a humanities class such as history of Western literature being entirely useful. He tried some arts courses, but found them “too loosey-goosey.”

But architecture has helped unite both aspects of his
interest.

“We don’t sit around here performing calculus all day, but the type of thinking that math requires – sequential, logical, problem solving – is invaluable,” he says.

“There is non-linear, random thinking – that’s where new and unlikely ideas come from – but it requires a framework or methodology to get a handle on it.”

Naomi Minja, director of communications for the Alberta Association of Architects, says the three-year internship comes after a professional second degree from a recognized architectural school. Most Canadian universities offer an M.Arch., though a few still use a B.Arch.

After the internship, there are exams to write and an interview process prior to professional registration.

The Architects Act and the Alberta Building Code set out the rules for which building designs must have an
architect’s stamp. However, an approving authority can demand one even for buildings that do not require one.

There are about 600 to 700 architects registered in Alberta, says Minja. The figure is a range because the association’s 1,010 members include architectural interns and licensed interior designers.

Gillies says the two halves of the education are complementary. “There are things you won’t learn except in school and things in practice that you won’t learn any other way.”

Universities teach topics such as the history of architecture, which explores where we came from as a civilization in architecture. Building technology is the study of essential structures of buildings and systems such as mechanical and cladding systems.

And in a studio design course, you might have a semester to come up with a building for a part of a project.

The internship provides day-to-day learning that you don’t find in school. How do you deal with people at the city who might not agree with a plan? How do you deal with customers, contractors, consultants, tradespeople and building codes?

About 10 years ago, Gillies saw a TV show about careers that rated architecture as one of the least promising jobs for the future. There was a feeling in the air in those days that the engineers could handle the design
problems.

He notes that life has changed in the last decade with a new awareness of design. It even crops up in popular TV shows and magazine articles on home-related issues.

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Calgary was about to celebrate its first century when Michael McMordie arrived to join the fledgling faculty of environmental design at the U of C in 1974. He wound up chairing an ad hoc heritage committee for city hall.

Michael McMordie

That committee led to the establishment of heritage
planning in Calgary, one of the achievements the Heritage Canada Foundation cited in announcing that McMordie will receive the Gabrielle Leger Award for heritage preservation at a ceremony in Halifax next month.

McMordie was also involved in saving the Burns Building, has consulted on historic buildings for the cities of Calgary and Edmonton as well as Parks Canada, and is in his last year as president of the Calgary Civic Trust. He was also one of the founders of the Canadian Architectural Archives, housed at the U of C.

As well, he served the U of C as dean of general studies from 1990 to 1998 and is now director of the resources and the environment program – an interdisciplinary graduate studies program that spans several departments.

McMordie is originally from Toronto, obtained his architecture degree at the University of Toronto and worked for a practice in Toronto for a time.

He studied at the University of Edinburgh on a British Council scholarship, then stayed to teach from 1965 to 1974, when he came to the U of C faculty of environmental design and joined the architecture program.

McMordie says the civic trust is organizing a unique gathering this fall of Rocky Mountain- area mayors, planners and university scholars to look at urban issues.

The group is working with the Centre for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana, which sponsored a similar conference a couple of years ago.

It would be good to keep that sort of informal think-tank going, he adds. “There are regional issues here despite the 49th parallel.”

One matter of interest on the heritage front is legal covenants to preserve historic places, which are widely used in the U.S. and U.K., but not in Canada.

The covenants offer a way for an owner to give up control of the historic aspect of a property, whether a room, a facade or the grounds, and still retain ownership and the right to sell. It might help to change tax rules so owners could regain some of the potential revenue they’re foregoing, McMordie says.

At one time, he notes, the Alberta government was more interested in the historic aspect than the architectural aspect of heritage.

“Architectural history is economic history. It costs money to build buildings and you have to have confidence in the future,” he says.