Is an architect considered an engineer?

Question

If not why.

Answer 1

No. Architecture involves knowledge of art, the use of structures, the ambience, how people feel in the space and things like that. It is combined with enough structural math so that architects can design strong buildings. Structural Engineering is much more math intensive but nothing in the way of art.

Answer 2

An Architect is not an engineer.  An architect design a building for the space it will use.  An architect may make some structural consideration like they would want a columns here or walls there but the engineer, the structural engineer is the guy that make the architect dream happen.  They will look at the plan the architect has drawn up and try to make it structurally sound.  They may move columns or walls while considering the architects view.  The architect is a creative person that designs for human needs, they need enough math to understand basic concepts that they may encounter in theory.  The structural engineer is a math and science guy the engineer has to learn all about structural material and how to design them and what goes into making a building strong enough to support its own weight and natural forces that are imposed on the building (gravity, wind and seismic).  Although it does not seem like it from all the math and science that is endured in structural engineering training, the engineer do have to be creative.  When designing a building, an engineer has to design the steel flooring with enough economy that material is not waste yet enough material is there to support forces imposed on the building.  Another example, is sometimes engineers are challenge to design a building to provide unusual spaces that an architect has invisioned but does not know to produce effect because of the lack of structural knowledge.  The engineer sometimes has to come up with new ways to make an architect vision possible. Look the BroadGate Office Building in London in which there are no column in the lower parking area because the engineer came up with a design of using a steel arch on the outside of the building to transfer all the vertical forces to the side of the building eliminating columns at the center of the building.  Or the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis in which the arch is reverse to acheive the exact same thing.  You have to be create as well as analytical to be a structural engineer or any engineer for that matter.

Answer 3

An engineer ...Specializes  in   "Problem solving" tasks

While an architect  is one that designs robust  , and feasible structures.

You  judge your self...

Is making a  building structure ... a big problem for you ?...

So you might wann consider that cave men may look  up to  architects as engineeers.

Answer 4

The two fields intersect, but it is possible to be a good architect with very little engineering skill. Similar for example to being a "sales engineer"

Often there is an assumption of significant engineering skill on the part of an architect - especially say in bridge construction!  an "architectural engineer" would be expected to be a full blown engineer who works directly on making architectural ideas into engineering reality.

On the other hand there are architects whose job is to provide artistic interpretations which are then given to an engineer to "sort out."