Out of Architecture

The Value of Architects Beyond Traditional Practice

By: Jake Rudin, Erin Pellegrino

Narrated by: Jake Rudin

Out of Architecture is both a call to reassess the architecture profession and its education, and a toolkit for graduates and working architects to untangle their skills, passions, and value from traditional architectural practice and consider alternate pathways. Written by design professionals and expert career consultants, this book is informed by numerous client accounts as well as the authors' own stories and routes out of architecture.

The initial chapters follow the narrative of a typical architecture training in the US, highlighting the many highs and lows, skills honed, and ultimately the huge disconnect that can occur between architectural education and practice. Subsequent chapters explore a disillusionment with the profession, unhealthy work cultures, mentorship, working with lead architects, toxic perfectionism, and the notion of a calling. Authors then present the hopeful accounts of many architects who escaped a profession known for its grueling working conditions to find fulfilling, well-paying, creative jobs that better utilize the skills of architecture than the architectural profession itself.

Written in a unique combination of storytelling and analysis, this patchwork of client and author stories makes for an immersive, provocative, and enjoyable listen. A wide range of architecture students, graduates, educators, and professionals will recognize themselves within the chapters of this book and find prompts to reassess their working practices, teaching styles, and the profession itself. It will be of particular value to those students skeptical of joining the architecture workforce, as well as those further along and considering a career change.

©2023 Erin Pellegrino, Jake Rudin (P)2023 Erin Pellegrino, Jake Rudin

Required listening for all potential, current, and former architecture students

Jake and Erin get right at the heart of why architectural education is so compelling and special, but also often sets the stage for a professional life plagued by disappointment, burnout, and abuse. The book will make you think deeply about what you love about your work, how you want to spend your time, and what your value is to yourself and to others. While the book is unflinchingly critical of the profession, it comes from a place of deep love for architecture, architects, and architectural education. The book is compelling, sometimes uncomfortable, but also ultimately optimistic and empowering. I could not recommend more highly both as a tool for personal reflection, and as an instigation for the types of difficult conversations we need to be having as architects, designers, students, and educators.

valuable perspective

I have loved architecture since is I was child and now in middle age I seriously was considering the traditional pathway to professional architect. Now I see there are so many options to pursue my passion! Thank you for sharing your stories!

A terrified insight into the world of professional architecture

This shorts book offers a depressive but honest take on the reality of working as an architect or aspiring architect can be, and the possible ways to improve your professional and personal life

Much needed in the industry

This Is a much-needed book in an ever evolving profession that is architecture. This is a perspective on the built environment that expands the prescriptive definition of what architects should provide to the world. It’s a guide book and a spring board that you can pivot to bring your expertise, knowledge and insights to so much more than just a building.

The book every architecture student must buy.

When I finished this book, I just sat there thinking; I wish I had had this book 25 years ago. I'm now a licensed architect, founder of an Architecture design-build firm, and an architecture teacher; however, I dropped out of Architecture after finishing my undergrad degree 25 years ago. For most of my career, I cultivated a unique and diverse background working in design, "Architecture adjacent," As I like to say, working as a kitchen designer, developer, or in Retail design & marketing. I only ventured alone into my architecture firm after trying to insert myself back into a Big A architecture firm without satisfaction. It was not until I read this book that I saw that my frustrations with the architecture profession were not an isolated case. Young architecture students are told there is only one way to practice architecture, but that is far from the truth today and never was. The next generation of young architects and designers, especially young architects of color or from underprivileged backgrounds, must re-think the architecture profession, and this book is a great start. The architecture profession is stagnant, and we need more architects like Jake and Erin to help push it forward!

Thanks for a great book.
Sincerely,
Jeremy