<p>Is there a difference between civil engineers and architects?</p>
<p>I can't find anything that distinguishes both professions.</p>
<p>Then you haven't looked real hard! =) They're quite different.</p>
<p>Architects determine what the building looks like, where the walls go, what the "look" of the building is going to be, and how the space is organized so that it will be both aesthetic and functional. Architecture is much more "art" based.</p>
<p>Structural engineers, who are a subset of civil engineers (who also design roads, bridges, utilities, subdivisions, lakes, rivers, flood control, traffic, analyze soil, and all sorts of other things), design the skeletons of the buildings so that the buildings in the pretty pictures that the architects draw will actually withstand gravity, wind, snow, earthquakes, hurricanes, and whatever else the earth chooses to throw at them. Structural engineering is much more "engineering" or "physics" based.</p>
<p>Like my physics teacher once told us, architects design and make things look cool while engineers make them work.</p>
<p>As a structural engineer, its also possible to make art through exposed structural design, think China's birdnest by ARUP or Professor David Billington at Princeton.</p>
<p>Architects make buildings look pretty. Civil engineers make sure they don't fall down.</p>
<p>You should probably cross-post this in the Architecture forum since there's a bias here towards engineers. </p>
<p>In addition to making buildings look pretty, architects have to make it functional, inhabitable, and comfortable to live in. They're also responsible for making it comply with the building and zoning codes. I'm sure there's other stuff too that I'm forgetting that architects would be able to tell you.</p>
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You should probably cross-post this in the Architecture forum since there's a bias here towards engineers.
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<p>This. Architects have a big responsibility. I just have to work within their framework, but they have to <em>define</em> the framework. They also have to coordinate ALL the subconsultants (at least, they do with a typically-contracted building), so there is a TON of management and traffic-directing that they have to do. It is not a job I envy. I'd hate to be the one that my boss calls every morning to yell at that we don't have the elevator information that we need... Dude can YELL. Multiply that times ten consultants. I'm also pretty sure that anyone that's not a starchitect (starchitects are the big-name ones like Gehry/Gropius/Saarinen/Frank Lloyd Wright) typically gets paid less than structural engineers do. And frankly, it's a lot easier to make it as a successful engineer than it is as a successful architect... To be a successful engineer, you have to be good at your job and you have to work hard. To be a successful architect, you have to be good at your job, you have to work hard, and you have to be really, really lucky.</p>
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As a structural engineer, its also possible to make art through exposed structural design, think China's birdnest by ARUP or Professor David Billington at Princeton.
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<p>There's still an architect who guides that process. The structural engineer just has to work a lot more closely with the architect on those projects. </p>
<p>(What did David Billington do, and why cite him as a source...? All I can find that he did is a bunch of research on thin-shelled concrete structures like cooling towers... I'd much sooner cite Santiago Calatrava, who is both a structural engineer <em>and</em> an architect.)</p>
<p>At our U, it's said the difference between architectural engineering and architecture is "about $20K, to start".</p>