What Types of Skills Are Best for an Architecture Major?

Think that majoring in architecture sounds useful, but aren’t sure if you’ll be able to thrive in the department? Here are five major skill sets you’ll need to be successful during your college years as an architecture major and beyond.

Math and science skills

Even though many people see an architect’s finished product and think it’s about design, architecture is heavily rooted in strong mathematical and scientific skills, including geometry, algebra, engineering, programming and physics.

To succeed as an architecture major, you’ll have to have strong math and science skills to understand how and why certain designs and ideas may or may not work before they’re built. Your calculations, after all, could make or break a project.

Design skills

Unsurprisingly, design skills are extremely important, regardless of whether you’re creating a new piece of machinery or designing an entire building. Architecture majors need to be able to have calculations to back up their claims, but anything they build must look elegant as well.

Analytical and problem-solving skills

When it comes to majoring in architecture, it’s not enough to know which equations to type into a calculator or computer program; you need to understand how those calculations act in practice and not just in theory. You also need to be able to understand why certain numbers aren’t working out as well as how to fix them.

The same principles go for the design side of being an architecture major: Why are some designs and plans better than others? How can you continuously improve your work? This desire to never leave anything unsolved will serve you well in architecture.

Team-building skills

Architecture majors are working with many other people, like designers, engineers and other architecture majors when creating complex projects, so it’s important to know how to not only be part of a team but how to lead one when necessary.

Communication skills

Because you will be working with so many different types of people as an architecture major, you’ll have to be able to efficiently and effectively communicate your ideas to people who work on various projects. This also means knowing how to explain your ideas and findings in a number of different ways so people of varying knowledge and experience levels can understand what you’re talking about.

Next, learn more about this college major such as What is an Architecture Major and is it Right for Me? and get more career tips for internships and entry-level jobs such as What is an Internship?