Have you worked with this architect? Thoughts?
Hi all: We’re considering going with an architect named Sarah Jefferys to handle some pretty major renovation for a duplex apartment. Has anyone worked with her and if so we’d definitely be interested in hearing your impressions. Thanks, Rich
Hi all:
We’re considering going with an architect named Sarah Jefferys to handle some pretty major renovation for a duplex apartment. Has anyone worked with her and if so we’d definitely be interested in hearing your impressions.
Thanks,
Rich
A few points to clear things up. Let me say first off that I’m a bit biased about what licensure actually means, since I am an architect (so there that’s out of the way). But at least in New York State:
-There is no calling oneself an “architect” without a license and the full process that entails, just as no one can say they’re a doctor without all the education, testing, and internship that the title represents. I mean you can, but it would be a felony, which you might appreciate if you discovered mid-trial that someone calling themself a lawyer representing you had actually never passed the bar. Or mid-surgery that your doctor did not go to medical school.
Actually forget mid-surgery. Say you meet someone at a cocktail party and they call themselves a medical doctor, and you later hear they hadn’t gone to med school at all, wouldn’t that creep you a bit?
-A non-licensed designer can not be an owner, part- or co-owner of a firm that practices architecture. Straightforward enough.
-yet an architect (or engineer) may legitimately “stamp” the work of another person who’s not licensed under certain conditions. It can’t be done as a formal part of a firm’s services when the owner’s not an architect — for example having an architect on the staff of a developer to rubber stamp the developer’s work. Probably a good thing.
Now understand for an architect this power, if you could call it that, is definitely a mixed blessing. There’s a running joke in every architectural firm when an intern begins the testing process he or she is asked “are you sure you want to do that?”
Which boils down to this — the state grants powers to licensed architects to do things like change C of O’s, file plans, all that good stuff representing public safety. In exchange, the architect becomes liable for the project for the duration of their lifetime. Longer if their firm continues after it. A designer has no such liability. Sue a designer and they can dissolve their LLC faster than a gypsy cab company.
So here’s my bias part: I believe licensure is a hard process and takes years. I think this suggests a measure of seriousness and responsibility about what they’re doing. I think someone unwilling to take these steps can be talented and brilliant and do what they want, but not go knock down walls in multi-tenant dwellings without professional advice on board.
Remember I am trying to outline how things are SUPPOSED to work, not how it plays out with creeps like Scavono or whatever his name is running around loose.
Hey 4:31, say what?
“if you expect to be cogently comment here.”
to 4:22 pm
losted? Is that a word.
If it is it is a new one!
If there are licensed and non-licensed architects to choose from, why would you choose a non-licensed one? If someone jumped through all the required hoops necessary to be a licensed professional, why not reward them with the job? Isn’t it kind of like going to law school but not taking the bar? Or finishing med school but not getting certified? Come on.
Wow–some people are truly mean. Hard to believe.
Shut it, Ysabelle. It’s not just your spelling. You need to go back to school yourself and learn English, if you expect to be cogently comment here. You routinely make no sense whatsoever. Seriously. It’s not just that half the time I disagree with what you write. It’s that the other half of the time I don’t even know what you are trying to say.
Putnamdenizem looks like he knows what he is talking about.
Ysabelle you have posted smart comments in the past, but now seems like you have losted.
Way too much spare time.
To 12:32pm
Thanks for telling me the forum became a spelling bee.
I am not plugging my architect friends for jobs.
Believe me they have enough.
The expansion of Columbia University might go on forever!
Ysabelle, sorry, stop talking rot (as Sarah Jeffrey’s might say.) An architectural business is a business, and not everyone in it needs to be licenced, not even the owner, unless (s)he represents herself as so.
Many firms hire consultants – engineers and others who are not licenced but have the expertise. The plans are signed off by the appropriate person. And believe me, the consultants can charge a lot of money for their knowledge and the licence makes no difference.