The two-minute tutorial: Why sharing knowledge matters in architecture

One thing that has always kept my faith in architecture as a profession is people’s willingness to help one another. No matter how busy someone might be, I’ve found that there is virtually always a willingness to stop for a couple of minutes, look over at your screen and show you how to do the thing you’ve spent the last half an hour trying to solve.

Looking back over the last seven years, a huge proportion of what I know about architecture has come from these moments. Without them, I’m not entirely sure I’d have made it this far.

Architecture requires us to hold a huge amount of information in our heads. Alongside learning how to design buildings, we are expected to navigate increasingly complex workflows, regulations and technical requirements whilst becoming proficient in several complex software packages. Sometimes the difference between struggling with something for half an hour and solving it in two minutes is simply having somebody nearby who has encountered the same problem before.

At university, this happened constantly, and moving into practice, I’ve realised just how valuable that culture of shared knowledge continues to be within a supportive studio environment like 24/Three’s.

The software might change and the problems might become more complicated, but the principle remains the same. We all gradually build up our own collection of shortcuts or workarounds, many of which have been handed down from somebody else.

Nobody enters architecture knowing everything they need to know. We rely on the experience of the people around us, just as they rely on ours.

So, if your colleague needs two minutes of ArchiCAD help, I’d give it to them.

I certainly needed it.

Author: Jay Nathan