OPINION
AN ARCHITECT’ S DREAM IS A CIVIL ENGINEER’ S NIGHTMARE
by Dion Greg Reyes
I t has been a well-debated topic to whoever has a more complicated job, or which one is better: architects or civil engineers. While to answer which one is better is quite an unsound thought, it is safe to say that civil engineers have a more complicated job. I will say all these according to my biases because I am a civil engineer and I have experienced firsthand how difficult it is in the construction industry to implement what architects do.
Civil engineers might as well agree with on this one: an architect’ s dream is a civil engineer’ s nightmare. To be able to fully understand that expression, we have to know what architects and civil engineers do. What architects essentially do is control and innovate the overall aesthetics of a building or structure. They study and focus on the aesthetic principles of design and push its limits when it comes to layout; they think outside of the box to provide the most appealing structures according to form and function, and also to local laws that will affect their design.
That’ s the scary part: when architects think outside of the box, civil engineers might as well hide in that box. Civil engineers are basically the builders of the structures that architects put in construction plans. We make sure that what the architects want will be constructed according to their specifications. Armed with technical knowledge and planning, we have to find ways to make them work considering all construction and structural codes necessary. It will need several engineering laws to be followed that are deep-rooted in math and in physics for the structure to serve mankind for a long time. It will require computations to prove that the structure is safe to be constructed and feasible. This cannot be done by architects because, as the good old joke goes, architects are civil engineers who cannot do math.
Apart from the feasibility of the design of the architects, civil engineers also deal with problems on how to construct them in real life. Every single item on the plan must be followed – each material, dimensions, and location – which were mostly assigned by the architects. Civil engineers supervise the construction work, as we have the knowledge of what should be done to accomplish a building or a structure and what kind of building methods and practices should be done. Perhaps there is already a grasp now what it means to say that an architect’ s dream is a civil engineer’ s nightmare; when the imagination of architects go wild, civil engineers themselves go wild in providing how such imagination can become real.
There would not be so much of a problem if the two can meet halfway: an architect can be free to design a structure with the permission of a civil engineer that the structure can be built. Otherwise, it will be a riot. Others say that civil engineers can become architects on their own by having the right amount of imagination. While that can be true, we might end up having curve-less structures everything will just be straight lines as that is an easier task for civil engineers to prove to be feasible and easier to construct. That is the reason why civil engineers and architects need to have the collaboration in producing structures that will serve the next generation. It isn’ t about who is better than the other, but about what each one can contribute to accomplish a project. It is only just sometimes, architects bring so much headache to civil engineers when they go out of bounds.
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