Porsche Design Building

How Porsche Got Started

Ferdinand Porsche was an automobile engineer with more than a thousand patents to his name, and played an important role in the development of airplanes and the construction of tanks for the Wehrmacht as well. In the 1920s he was appointed chief engineer at Mercedes-Benz in Stuttgart and later set up his own engineering workshop. There he designed, among other things, the Volkswagen. He acted as chief of operations at the plant where the Volkswagen was made, Wolfsburg, and at the end of the war he was interned by the Allies.

He was released a few years later and immediately went to work building his first car with his son, Ferry Porsche. This car was named the Porsche 356, after Ferry, and was a sports car with styling reminiscent of the Volkswagen. In fact it had the same four-cylinder boxer engine, and wore it rear-mounted, just as the VW did. This meant that it was far from being a powerful sports car, boasting a mere 40 bhp and a maximum speed of 87 mph (140 km/h). Distinguished by its elegant and innovative body, the Porsche 356 was first produced as a convertible and then as a hard top. Father and son developed it in the workshop of Erwin Komenda, a master of restrained streamlining who had been in charge of sheet metal and design techniques for Ferdinand Porsche since the VW Beetle. This new style of closed coupe designed by Komenda soon became the embodiment of the sports car, due in part to its "fastback".

Erwin Komenda and Ferdinand "Butzi" Porsche, the founder's grandson, continued this tradition with the 911.

The 911 became instantly recognizable: it had an attractive sloping bonnet reminiscent of the 356, what later became characterized as "frog eye" headlights, curves running from the top edge of the windscreen to the rear bumper, and a straight waistline. From a functional and technical point of view it shared more in common with a BMW 1500, but it retained the distinctive stylistic features of the original Porsche. The new 911 became the keystone of Porsche's identity, even though the design was not always fully appreciated. During the 1970's and 1980's, many Porsche designers attempted to distance Porsche from its legendary design and nearly brought the company to the edge of disaster. The more modern 924 model, "a people's Porsche", developed with Volkswagen, as well as the 928 fell short fulfilling expectations, and failed to allow the company to branch out in new directions and styles.

However, in the 1990's the company seemed to realize that what some perceived as a stylistic straitjacket was in fact a market advantage. During this period Porsche embraced the timeless nature of classic styling to become highly profitable. Nearly forty people now worked in the design department solely dedicated to further improvement of the long running 911. Such developments included the 911 GTI, put forward by the in-house designer Anthony R. Hatter as a powerful combination of sports and racing car. In 1999, Porsche's chief designer proudly unveiled the new Boxster, enabling Porsche to establish a second independent range of successful models.

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Do architects get paid good money?

I wanna be an architect and design sky scrapers. It's a big passion I have. I have many ideas and can't wait to see them built. Would I make good money? like enough to own a Porsche and design my own house?

Landscape Architect
$56,000
Project Architect
$68,000
Solutions Architect
$93,000
Data Architect Jmb
$84,000
Solution Architect
$93,000
Software Architect
$95,000
Enterprise Architect
$92,000
Data Warehouse Architect
$89,000
Data Architect
$94,000
J2EE Architect
$102,000
Technical Architect
$99,000
Infrastructure Architect
$110,000
Senior Application Architect
$101,000
Information Architect
$75,000
Java Architect
$92,000

you see:
Earnings for architects vary widely, depending on experience, talent, and location. The median income for all architects in 2004 was $60,300 per year. The highest ten percent of architects earned more than $99,800 per year. Graduates just starting their internships can expect to earn considerably less.

Getting the Job

A good way to enter this field is to get a part-time job in an architectural firm while attending high school or college. After college graduation, the school's placement office can provide leads on internship openings with architectural firms. Other sources of job information are professional journals, newspaper classified ads, and job banks on the Internet.

For More Information

American Institute of Architects
1735 New York Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20006-5292
(202) 626-7300

http://www.aia.org

American Institute of Architecture Students
1735 New York Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20006
(202) 626-7472

http://www.aias.org

Society of American Registered Architects
305 E. Forty-sixth St.
New York, NY 10017

http://www.sara-national.org

National Architectural Accrediting Board
1735 New York Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20006
(202) 783-2007

http://www.naab.org

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