Questions to Ask an Architect About Their Job

All 92 questions

About the job 24

How do you tell a client that their favorite idea will not work? I draw it honestly and let the drawing do the talking.
How has the computer changed the way you design? A change that took a week of redrawing now takes an afternoon.
How long did it take from your first class to your license? About eight years of school, office work and exams.
How many projects are on your desk at once? Four, at four different stages.
How much of your week is at a desk, and how much on a building site? Four days at the desk, one in boots.
What do architects and engineers disagree about, and who usually wins? Column sizes. Gravity wins.
What do people assume architects do that you never do? Choose the paint colors. Mostly we argue about stairs.
What do you ask a new client before you draw a single line? How they want to feel when they walk in the door.
What do you notice in a room that other people walk straight past? Where the light switch is, and which way the door swings.
What fills an architect's week that most people would never guess? Phone calls and emails. Drawing is the treat.
What happens to a design when the money runs short? The fancy roof goes first. The good windows stay.
What is the hardest part of any building to get right? The entrance. It is the first thing everyone meets.
What is the longest you have worked on one building? Six years, from the first sketch to opening day.
What is the smallest thing you have ever designed? A bus shelter with one bench.
What kind of buildings do you design most? Schools and small libraries.
What part of the job still makes you nervous? The first visit after the walls go up.
What should a student draw, build or read before architecture school? Draw every day, and measure the rooms you like.
What was the first design of yours that actually got built? A garden shed. I still drive past it.
When did you first know you wanted to design buildings? At ten, when I planned my treehouse on paper before I touched a nail.
Which drawing tool on your desk is the most worn out? An eraser, rubbed down to a pebble.
Which matters more in your work: drawing well or listening well? Listening. A beautiful drawing of the wrong thing is still wrong.
Which part of the job did architecture school not prepare you for? Explaining a budget to someone who loves marble.
Which rule in the building code do you run into most often? The one I still have to look up every single time.
Who has to say yes before one of your buildings can go up? The client, the engineers and the city's building office.

A building from sketch to site 14

How do you choose between brick, wood, steel and concrete? Budget first, then weather, then what the street already has.
How does it feel to walk through a room you once drew on paper? Strange. It is always a little bigger than I pictured.
How does the land around a building change its design? A slope gave one house its three levels.
How many versions do you draw before one is chosen? A dozen rough ones and three careful ones.
How often do you visit a building while it is going up? Every week, in boots and a hard hat.
What do you check first on a site visit? That the walls stand where the drawings say.
What do you do when the builder says a drawing cannot be built? Listen, sketch on the spot, and meet in the middle.
What do you look for the first time you walk onto an empty site? Where the sun comes up and where the rain runs off.
What happens at the very end, when the keys change hands? One long walk through the building with a list of small fixes.
What is the biggest change you ever made after building had started? We moved a staircase to save an old tree.
Where does a new building start: a sketch, a model or a list of rooms? A list of rooms, then a very rough sketch.
Which day of a project do you look forward to most? The day the scaffolding comes down.
Which material do you love that clients rarely pick? Rammed earth. It looks like a layer cake.
Who do you hand the finished drawings to, and what happens next? The builder prices them, and then the questions begin.

Models and drawings 13

Do you still draw by hand, or is it all on a computer now? Both. Ideas by hand, everything else on screen.
How do you show a client a room that does not exist yet? A walk-through on screen, then a model they can pick up.
How does a whole house fit on one sheet of paper? Every wall is shrunk by the same amount, so it all stays true.
How many sheets of drawings does one building need? A small house needs dozens. A school needs a stack.
What can a model show that a drawing cannot? How the light falls through a window.
What did your drawings look like when you were a child? Castles with far too many towers.
What do people most often misread on a drawing? Which way a door opens.
What do you build your models from? Cardboard, foam and a great deal of glue.
What do you sketch on when an idea arrives and there is no paper? Napkins, receipts, once the back of my hand.
What happens to your old models when a project ends? The best ones sit on a shelf. The rest become packing.
Which drawing takes the longest to get right? The cut-through view, where every floor has to line up.
Which kind of drawing do clients understand fastest? A sketch of the room as you would see it from the door.
Which pen or pencil do you guard from your coworkers? A fat soft pencil with my initials scratched into it.

Favorite buildings 13

What detail do you add to a building just because you love it? A bench by the front door.
What does a house need before you would call it well designed? A window seat and a kitchen you can talk across.
What is the best staircase you have ever climbed? A stone spiral inside an old lighthouse.
What kind of building would you most like to design one day? A public pool with a roof that opens.
What sort of place would you travel to just to look at its buildings? Any old port town with narrow streets.
Which building do you walk out of your way to pass? A corner bakery with a curved glass front.
Which building do you wish you had designed? A footbridge near my office. It is so simple it annoys me.
Which building made you want to become an architect? The library I visited as a child. It had a round reading room.
Which building material do you most like to touch? Old oak, worn smooth by hands.
Which of your own buildings are you proudest of, and why? A school where the hallways are wide enough to sit in.
Which old building would you save if it were about to be torn down? The brick mill by the river.
Which ordinary building in town do you think is underrated? The bus depot. Look at the roof next time.
Which room have you stood in that you still think about? A small chapel lit from one high window.

Funny ones 14

Could you build a gingerbread house that would pass inspection? Yes, until someone eats a load-bearing wall.
Do you judge your friends' houses when you visit? Only the bathrooms. And never out loud.
Do you measure things for fun when nobody is looking? Stair steps, with my shoe.
Do you move the furniture around in hotel rooms? Only the chair. It always belongs by the window.
Has a model ever fallen apart in front of a client? The roof slid off mid-sentence. I called it a skylight.
Have you ever been lost inside a building you designed? Once, in a parking garage. I blame the signs.
How many pencils do you lose in a week, and where do they turn up? Three. Usually behind my ear.
If a giraffe hired you, what would the house look like? Tall doors, taller windows, no ceiling fans.
Is your own home finished, or is it the last project on your list? One door has had no handle for four years.
What did your block towers look like when you were small? Tall, wobbly, and guarded from the cat.
What do you say when someone asks you to just draw a quick house? I smile and ask how many bathrooms.
What is the strangest thing a client has asked you to add to a house? A slide from the bedroom to the kitchen.
What is the worst door you have ever met? One that says pull and has to be pushed.
What would a sandcastle built by an architect look like? Level, with drainage, and finished after the tide.

For a class visit 14

Can you design a house with a secret room? Yes. I have drawn one behind a bookcase.
Can you draw a straight line without a ruler? Nearly. Years of practice, and it still wobbles at the end.
Do you build the buildings yourself? No. I plan and draw them, and builders build them.
Do you wear a hard hat? On every building site, and boots too.
How do you make a tiny model of a big building? I cut every wall from card, much smaller but the same shape.
How do you make sure a building will not fall down? Engineers check every beam and column with me.
How long did it take to build the last school you drew? About two years, and I visited every week.
What do you draw with at work? Pencils, pens and a computer.
What is the hardest thing to draw? Stairs. Every step has to fit exactly.
What is the tallest building you have drawn? An office building with twelve floors.
What is your favorite shape to use in a building? A circle. Round rooms are hard to build, so they feel special.
What would you put in a playground if you could choose anything? A hill with a tunnel through it.
Where does the word architect come from? From old Greek words that mean chief builder.
Which school subjects help you be an architect? Art and math, and more writing than you would think.

How it works

These questions to ask an architect about their job open on the working week: clients, engineers, the building code. Five more groups cover one building from sketch to site, models and drawings, favorite buildings, funny ones and a class visit.

Read the full guide

One building, from the first sketch to the keys

Set the box by Print this list to A building from sketch to site to follow a project in order: the empty site, the versions, the builder's questions, the day the scaffolding comes down. Every example answer is made up, and on paper the examples sit on a sheet of their own.

Questions and answers

What should you ask an architect about their job?

The parts nobody sees: who has to say yes before a building can go up, what architects and engineers disagree about, how much of the week is spent at a desk. About the job holds 24 of these.

What are funny questions to ask an architect?

Do you judge your friends' houses when you visit? Could you build a gingerbread house that would pass inspection? What is the worst door you have ever met? Funny ones holds fourteen.

What does an architect do?

An architect plans and designs buildings and oversees their construction. The word comes from Greek words for chief builder. Training and licensing differ from place to place, so one question asks how long it took this architect.

Is this a list for choosing an architect to hire?

No. The questions are about the work itself, for a school report, a career day or plain curiosity. Nothing here helps you pick an architect or price a project.

Notes

Every card on this page was written to be read aloud in front of children and grandparents: nothing sexual, no alcohol or drugs, no bullying and nothing that singles out a group of people. If a card misses that mark, please tell us through the contact page and we will remove it.

More notes about this page

Answers on this page were checked against standard reference sources on the date given under the list, and questions whose answer changes from year to year were left out. If you spot a mistake, please tell us through the contact page.

Cards and picks are random and meant for fun. Skip any card that does not suit your group; the host's call is final.

How this list was compiled: Own list, written for this page on 2026-10-09: 92 questions to ask an architect about the job, in 6 groups, each with one invented example answer that describes no real architect, firm, client or building. Nothing was copied from another site. No question asks what an architect earns or where anyone lives, and no line gives advice on hiring an architect or on building. Five example answers lean on general facts, read on 2026-10-09 at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architect: an architect plans and designs buildings and oversees their construction; the word comes through Latin from Greek words for chief and builder; hand sketches are still widely used while computer technology is the standard; engineers are consulted on the structure; and the work is inspected on site as it goes up. The same article says training and licensing differ from place to place, so no line gives a figure for them. Licence: own work