Are Architects Engineers?

If the architects just design a form and engineers just do some calculations and figure out some numbers, who actually do the work? Are architects the real engineers? “Logic will take you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere” –Albert Einstein

Civil engineering and architecture are both careers that involve building. The architects' design plans, buildings, and other structures. The key difference between an architect and an engineer is that an architect focuses mainly on the artistry of the building and create spaces, whereas an engineer focuses on the technical side of the building. Heretofore the world of the engineer and the architect had rarely coincided but increasingly, nowadays, big projects in the public sector such as a museum require the cooperation of both the fields of profession. No civil projects are completed without an architect on board. The role of an architect in society is becoming important, as their contribution to the initial stages of concept development is recognized.

 The very sense of the misunderstanding between the civil engineers and architects is revealed in terms of the diverging attitude towards aesthetics. In earlier days engineers used to build a building and the aesthetics, the so-called ‘add-ons’ were done by architects. For instance, Leonardo da Vinci, who painted the last supper, offered his services to various potentates as an architect for the design of their building and as an engineer for structural details. But in contrast, the architect’s diet today is so interesting and varied, that to consider changing disciplines is almost unthinkable.

It is infelicitous that the discipline of civil engineering permits works ethic which can disregard the one part of the design process that cannot be empirically measured. By this desertion by some of the aesthetic appearance, and its contributory factor to urban design, it also has pessimistic entailment in terms of a structure’s existent environmental impact, its significant place, and its connection with mankind.

Clearly, architects will have a chance, as these to our central thinking. Many people maintain that the basic difference between engineers and architects is that engineers are concerned with controlling forces, while architects control spaces. Architects, in general, require a series of aesthetic choices, each heavily informed by other factors- light, spatial, social, structural, climate, etc.

Nevertheless, the part of the creative process that generates the relationship between all the components of a building, or the spaces between them, and the way the whole sits with its surroundings, need not go unnoticed by engineers. And, by the same token, the architect should not ignore the mean by which confinements are achieved. To make architecture out of a structure is not a delicate alternative; the decision to do so, however, is the biggest exclusive factor in asking whether architecture has become engineering.

The engineering discipline is questionable of any of its own that dares to step outside the safe science of the profession into the galaxy of arts. Calatrava, for instance, is not admired by as many engineers as architects. But the contribution of both professions is essential in building and designing an edifice, which is structurally strong and safe, and aesthetically very pleasing.