Interior Design

I am definitely most interested in the field of Interior Architecture and Interior Design. The one part of architecture that I have been thinking about from the beginning is Interior Design/Interior Architecture. I feel as though an Interior Designer doesn’t use as much math as a regular architect, but I’m sure there is still math included in the whole process of designing and building.
Interior Architects designs what will go inside of what the Architects has designed. In this field it is very common to use computer aided programs, which help with the planning, designing, and drafting. An Interior Architect focuses on attractive, but functional designs. As for the field of Interior Design, the arts are heavily studied, along with things like three-dimensional design and computer aided design. Both regular architects and Interior Architects must complete required education, and get a license in architecture.
After looking at several sites I found that the most common course of education consists of a taking a five year program at a university, and completing some form of internship. The whole process will usually take around eight years.
Once a licensed architect, the next thing to do is find projects on your own, or possibly find some with the government or smaller firms. Most architects are self employed, which is why networking is so important in this career. It was recommended to start looking for contacts while still in college, and get internships at “reputable firms.”
I found many schools that had Interior Design programs, but the one I am most interested in is probably New York School of Interior Design. This college really stood out because the campus looks amazing architecturally, and is in the area of many resources such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Other schools that interested me, but not so much as NYSID, were Mount Ida College, Rhode Island School of Design, and Bauder College.

What an Architect Does, and how Math is Involved

An architect basically plans out and designs the building, and will most likely be on site when the building is being constructed. “An architect is trained and licensed in the planning and designing of buildings, and participates in supervising the construction of a building. A looser usage of Architect is: the translator of the building user's requirements of and from a building into an inhabitable environment.
Professionally, an architect's decisions affect public safety, and thus an architect must undergo specialized training consisting of advanced education and a practicum (or internship) for practical experience to earn a license to practice architecture. The practical, technical, and academic requirements for becoming an architect vary by jurisdiction.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architects)
When architects are planning and designing the building, mathematical components are involved, such as measuring the space needed for the particular building. These components are involved to make sure of the most functional and effective building possible. “Architects plan, design and review the construction of buildings and structures for the use of people by the creative organization of materials and components with consideration to mass, space, form, volume, texture, structure, light, shadow, materials, program, and pragmatic elements such as cost, construction limitations and technology, to achieve an end which is usually functional, economical, practical and often artistic.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture#The_architect)
Quite a bit of math is used when making the sketches for the buildings, in that the architect needs to draw the building to scale, so it ensures the size of the building will fit in the specific amount of space, and the amount of materials and detail. When the drawing is drawn to scale, a lot of the math is already done, and the dimensions are ready to be read off. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architectural_drawing)
Architectural drawings are drawn according to a set of conventions, which include particular views (floor plan, section etc.), sheet sizes, units of measurement and scales, annotation and cross referencing. Conventionally, drawings were made in ink on paper or a similar material, and any copies required had to be laboriously made by hand. The twentieth century saw a shift to drawing on tracing paper, so that mechanical copies could be run off efficiently.
The development of the computer had a major impact on the methods used to design and create technical drawings, making manual draughting almost obsolete, and opening up new possibilities of form using organic shapes and complex geometry. Today the vast majority of drawings are computer generated. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architectural_drawing)
I found this link interesting because it said a lot of what kind of math was used with architecture earlier on, with people such as the Ancient Egyptians, Greek, Indians and architecture of the Renaissance. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_and_architecture)




This is a temple in India, and it is obviously very architecturally complex, and you can tell by noticing how the sides are not straight or smooth, and it also is not the same width the whole way up (the bottom is wider, and the sop gets smaller).
This article is really long, but if you look at specific parts it has good information about math possibly being involved with the building of the pyramids. Along with talking about the pyramids, it also lists and briefly explains many older people who worked as architects, or at least worked a little with architecture. http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/HistTopics/Architecture.html