Architecture as a profession is the practice of providing architectural services. The practice of architecture includes the planning, designing and oversight of a building's construction by an architect. Architectural services typically address both feasibility and cost for the builder, as well as function and aesthetics for the user.
Architecture did not start to become professionalized until the late nineteenth century. Before then, architects had ateliers and architectural education varied, from a more formal training as at the École des Beaux-Arts in France, which was founded in the mid seventeenth century, to the more informal system where students worked in an atelier until they could become independent. There were also so-called gentlemen architects, which were architects with private means. This was a tradition particularly strong in England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Lord Burlington, designer of Chiswick House, (1723-49) is an example. Some architects were also sculptors, such as Bernini, theater designers such as Filippo Juvarra and John Vanbrugh, and painters, such as Michelangelo and Le Corbusier.
In the 1440s, the Florentine architect, Alberti, wrote his De Re Aedificatoria, published in 1485, a year before the first edition of Vitruvius, with which he was already familiar.[2].[3] Alberti gives the earliest definition of the role of the architect. The architect is to be concerned firstly with the construction. This encompasses all the practical matters of site, of materials and their limitations and of human capability. The second concern is "articulation"; the building must work and must please and suit the needs of those who use it. The third concern of the architect is aesthetics, both of proportion and of ornament.
The role of the architect is constantly evolving, and is central to the design and implementation of the environments in which people live. In order to obtain the skills and knowledge required to design, plan and oversee a diverse range of projects, architects must go through extensive formal education, coupled with a requisite amount of professional practice.
The work of an architect is an interdisciplinary field, drawing upon mathematics, science, art, technology, social sciences, politics and history, and often governed by the architect's personal approach or philosophy. Vitruvius, the earliest known architectural theorist, states: "Architecture is a science, arising out of many other sciences, and adorned with much and varied learning: by the help of which a judgement is formed of those works which are the result of other arts." He adds that an architect should be well versed in other fields of learning such as music and astronomy.[3] Vitruvius' broad definition of the architect still holds true to some extent today, even though business concerns and the computer have reshaped the activities and definition of the modern architect in significant ways. (From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture)
