When you’re an architect, continuing education is a must. In many states, it’s required to maintain licensure, and it’s also required for membership in the American Institute of Architects.
But even if continuing education for architects was not required, it’s a critical component of staying marketable in your field. Architecture is a broad discipline with many specialties, and the more you know about them, the more valuable you are.
PDH Academy has a broad offering of continuing education classes for architects in a wide variety of areas.
- Sound Advice for Acoustics — Have you thought much about acoustics in your designs? Perhaps not, but it can come into play in many designs. The average home may not give acoustics much consideration, but apartment and commercial buildings surely do.Acoustics in architecture come into play most often in venues such as concert halls and movie theaters. But acoustics is also a consideration in muffling noise in multi-family dwellings and any commercial building in which musical instruments are used or music is played, such as bars or music schools.
- Taking Shelter from the Storm: Building a Safe Room — Everyone knows that storms are getting worse and wreaking more havoc throughout the world. Creating a safe place for residents to take refuge in an emergency is becoming a pressing need.It’s critical when you are creating a space that is meant to withstand danger that it do so, and this continuing education course for architects covers designing safe areas for different types of threats as well as how to identify and correct weak spots.
- LEED for New Construction Application for Multi-Building Campuses — LEED is the wave of the future. The life of our planet is not infinite, and new methods of lowering our impact on the environment are constantly being invented and reinvented.This continuing education class for architects goes over how to design a group of buildings that will exist in concert with one another and meet stringent LEED requirements.
- Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties — Restoration architecture is becoming a big business, with many cities, towns, and owners of private properties wanting to rehabilitate their buildings, bringing them back to their original splendor, while still keeping true to the original construction and materials.This class teaches architects how to rehab a building while meeting the standards outlined in the National Register of Historic Places.
Plenty of free MOOC classes on architecture can be found online as well. Although these do not award continuing education credits or count toward recertification, they can be fun and open you up to new concepts as a professional in your field.
One highly rated class is A Global History of Architecture, which covers important buildings in history and their impacts on culture, technological advancements, and the influence of climate change on architecture.
Another well-loved course is Smart Cities, which explores how urban life affects the advancement of architecture. Data collected from inhabitants influences how cities adapt and how prototypes of buildings and urban designs are developed.
It’s important for architects to keep up with changes in their field with continuing education courses, but it’s also invaluable in making you, as an architect, more marketable. View all of our courses for architects and sign up for one today.