The Architect
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.