Thinking of studying architecture to become an architect? You might be wondering whether you need to be good at maths.

You might struggle with maths, or perhaps you love maths and want it to be something you’re doing every day in your career.

I want to clarify whether you need to be good at maths to be an architect or study architecture.

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I want to split this up into 2 parts.

Firstly, do architects need to be good at math?
Secondly, do you need to be good at math to study architecture?

For the first question, it’s well known that architects must be good at math – right? Is this really the case?


Well, yes. Architects do need to have some knowledge in math. There are times where you need to calculate stair risers and going or how long a wall should be in terms of the material you’re using. For example, if you’re using a brick you can’t just say a wall is going to be 5m in length, you need to work out a length for that wall that allows it to be built out of the brick size.

But this takes some very basic mathematics. It doesn’t take a math specialist to work out how many bricks make up a 5m wall.

Therefore, you need to know some basic mathematic arithmetic – nothing more advanced than what you learnt in primary school. You don’t need any calculus or trigonometry unless you want to be an architectural engineer. In that case, then yes, you need to be good at math.

Does being good at math make you a better architect? Sure. Having knowledge in math is going to help you. Being good at math is all about solving problems and requires deep thinking. This is inherently what architecture is all about. Being a problem solver.

Does being bad at math make you a worse architect? No. If you don’t know basic mathematics because you didn’t pass primary school, you can be valuable elsewhere. Architecture is a profession involving sooo many different skills. From creativity to business skills, management, analytics and technical work, people relations, software skills. Mathematics is a very small portion of what architecture is and if you’re not great at it as an architect, you have specialists who can help you. You have people in the office with you, in most cases.

So architects do need to have some very basic mathematics skills, but do you need to be good at math to study architecture?
No. You don’t need to be good at math to study architecture.
Already being good at math is going to be beneficial, but you can enter architecture school with no previous knowledge. The reason behind this is because there are no prerequisites to study architecture, in Australia, anyways.

You don’t need to complete any previous math courses to apply for architecture school.
Because there are no prerequisites, it’s assumed you know nothing.

It’s expected you learn everything along the way. You don’t need any Pythagoras, or calculus, or trigonometry. Having these things and challenging yourself in high school to study more difficult math subjects is always going to be beneficial and make you a better problem solver, but you don’t need to be particularly skilful in these things to get started with architecture.

It’s expected you learn everything in your degree. If you are willing to learn with an open mind, you’ll become a successful architect for sure.


On the podcast for architecture students, you'll hear from practicing architects, other students and me, Kyle, a third-year architecture student from South Australia.

Doing so, you'll learn the tips and tricks to excel past the rest of your cohort and build the skills needed to take your work to another level.

Check out the playlists on my channel for more videos like this one!

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