probably the case...

i started archi-school in 89, so this year makes it, what, 18 years of education and practice, and i still don't know that much. my old BOSS (and still mentor) still doesn't know that much and he had his licence about the time i was born. specific knowledge can be hired. figuring out how to manage the knowledge requires more work. i think the architect is hired for the latter more than the former however we choose to package it.

theory is not always wacked out. it is a mistake to see the world as bipolar like that. architecture is all about smudging...maybe is why it doesn't compare well to lawyering and doctoring.

recent BIG office interview is interesting example of how a firm can work in slightly dif + interesting way. maybe not a normal firm, mind. but who wants to be normal?

flashing details, mother fucker, flashing details

- to quote myself from earlier in this thread "I find it odd that so few recognize how the academy seems to condition graduates to despise practice ... architecture happens in firms - not in the schools" - sadly, you demonstrate my point, in spades.

it is easy to get things built - granted sometimes what we'd like to be remembered by. It is a difficult choice to choose not to build, until the right project comes around.

That said an architect that doesn't have a completed project to his name brings an interesting perspective to the architectural discourse and hence to architectural practice. We must not negate this! At 30+ I have been lucky enough to be involved with a variety of projects, both as lead or assistant to, as a project manager, project architect and sometimes just doing on-site clerk duties. I know practicing architects twice my age that haven't built anything asside from houses, or detailed anything but pisspools - but does that provide me with better qualifications to lecture or tutor than someone with 30 years of experience? That in the real world is the question you are asking.

Much of architecture isn't practice but understanding architecture...subtle but significant difference

The best teacher I ever had was a guy I worked with from Columbia, we used to ride the subway from Copley Square to Harvard Square and walk thru the yard and by gund hall and on towards Summerville
almost five days out of the week. He had studied in Columbia, Italy,
France and had worked in Denmark and the USA. He was one of the lead designers in the firm where I worked. I assume he became registered, but at the time was not. My education was our conversations as we wisked thru the City. I recall him telling me he wanted to take a Graduate Level Class at MIT and filled out all the paper work and was ask to come in for an interview. Which he accepted. The person interviewing him ask him so what makes you feel you are qualified to attend MIT at the Graduate Level. He motioned for the guy to come to the window and started pointing out buildings on the skyline inwhich he had had a part....needless to say they allowed him the opportunity to learn once again.

there seem to be a lot of people with a chip on their shoulder with this issue. for people on both sides of it, i'd ask, why does your position need to be so dogmatic? fortunately, most a-schools are not either/or.

- please help me understand this phrase: "much of architecture isn't practice but understanding architecture" - I have only a masters from an Ivy and 30 years of practice - I have to say your words makes little sense to my feeble brian.

here, after all these years, I find that the role of an architect is not to build, but to just think about buildings. my, how could I have missed the mark so far?

well, this change sure will lower my E&O premiums.

im not certain what the argument is about really.

by meta's definition zaha, rem, steven holl and others should not have been teaching all those years and yet they are without a doubt some of the leading thinkers in our profession today and seriously influencing the physical built culture all round the world (whether you like it or not). i would say also that many corporate offices have had a positive effect, both in schools and in the real world...so this isn't even an issue of corporate vs creative/artsy architects. the world would probably look different if we had only the corporate geeks teaching, but thankfully that was not the case.

the problem is not that studio culture in university teaches antagonism for practice. that is never true, it can't be. we are all too aware of the real world in which our discussions and education are located and focused...only an ideologue can believe any school thinks reality is for losers.

i really believe this is about good and bad teachers, about individuals, and not about our profession in general. certainly there are issues. issues are normal. nothing works perfectly. that does not mean the schools are broken at any fundamental level.

By this yardsstick, none of the Archigram team would ever have been allowed to teach - Peter Cook, Mike Webb, Warren Chalk, Ron Herron, David Greene. And they are/were all wonderful teachers.

thats the other thing - dont you have to be an academic to teach? Why cant someone who does awesome work become a teacher even if they never were part of that? Like Mies?

this conversation can go no further without alcohol...

you're not drinking, vado?

I went to a somewhat small school, but thought things were well balanced. We had some amazing studio teachers, and some good building systems teachers as well. We took classes on how to complete technical drawings and were expected to provide at least a couple for each studio project. For example you were expected to have detailed wall sections, when appropriate, to demonstrate you understood the way the building would be put together. The guys that taught us the details and construction docs tended to be a bit more conservative and had tons of built work, where as the design teachers were obviously more creative and taught in a different manner, but the combination was very valuable toward the overall education. Now as I sit at my corporate job I feel that I had a great push from school into work. Sometimes I wish I had not picked up that passion for design in school though, cause i sure don't see much creative work now.

i think this has to be started at the question what is design?

- nice! My point was really that one's architectural education is likely to be coloured by those who practice in the conventional sense and those that do not. it might help to re-read what I posted. I wrote about understanding architecture - not about thinking. I guess the subtlely was missed on you; 30+ years and an Ivy education - your mother must be proud. Snark!

r u kidding vado?

i almost never post on archinect without alcohol involved.

interesting in this context to read the lebbeus woods interview onBLDBLOG. now im assuming the Woods is not a 'licensed' architect, but it would be hard to argue that he shouldn't be taking design studios.

meta, the flipside;

student; i found this book by derrida, and was wondering if we could discuss...'

teach; 'sorry no time, lets discuss it over lunch some time, I have to see a man about some shoes, don't design anything until you've completed the project establishment forms, actually don't design anything till I get back. just work on the door hardware schedules, that's all your going to need for the next few years anyway'.

'oh, and can you fix my pda?'

/sarcasm + snak + tounge in cheek

nice upside don't design anything till I get back. just work on the door hardware schedules

meta, by 'design studio' I was referring to Ledeux's eye's use of the phrase in the argument that licensure should be a requirement.

perhaps what we may be arguing is what exactly a 'architecture studio', as distinct from a technical class or a theory/history class. I see them as being complimentary parts of a whole, in which the studio is a synthesis of all aspects of the architectural process.

smudging and all that

best studio instructor of mine was a yale architectural school drop out who then went to art school in uc irvine and became one of the best conceptual artists around, representing the country in documenta couple of times.

hell, i could do that. but i still didn't feel like a great studio instructor.

I've scanned through all of this thread and am surprised nobody has pulled out the old line:

Those that can, do... Those that can't teach

Teaching at any level is a noble profession. Some would argue the most important. However, I did have professors that clearly were there only because they failed in the professional world. I also knew several people in college that went into education (now teaching the youth of this country) only because they couldn't hack it at engineering school, business school, or make the cut in architecture school.

I'm not in favor of making it a requirement for arch college prof's to be registered architects. However, I am in favor of having well qualified individuals as professors. There are several people graduating with MArch degrees that don't have the first clue about how a building is put together. And yes, THAT DOES MATTER, and I blame less than qualified profs that use the classroom to make up for their failings in the professional office.

I think the biggest failure of our architecture colleges is graduating students that don't have the faintest sense of reality concerning the business of architecture. Then they wonder why less and less people are taking the ARE all the time...and so many arch grads flee to different professions. Hmmm?

- aquapura, you hit on a sensitive nerve for both sides of the debate.

clearly, there is a large divide between many schools and many practitioners -- and a lot of stubbornness on both sides. this seems to me unnecessary and not in the long-term interests of either institution.

it would be nice if the academic community and the profession could rally around a broad definition of good architecture and what it takes to make that happen in day-to-day practice -- and then cooperate in pursuit of that ideal. but alas, I'm at a loss for ways to make that come about.

instead, both sides seem to want to invest their energy in finger pointing and arguments in defense of their own position. it's really sad.

Good point quizzical. I too am at a loss. Generally I tend to side with the professional world having many times been frusturated with essentially rudimentary training of the latest BArch and MArch crop. That said I've also played a role in work which I would not call "good architecture" by definition.

I think a good architecture college needs a healthy mix of profs. Some theory driven pie in the sky dreamers, the others down to earth realists. While I loved the theory classes from my education, today I need to concern myself with real world projects, real world codes, real world constructability and real world budgets. If you never have a professor that reminds you of reality the professional world will be a big wake up call.

As a m.arch student who's just returned to school, I am really appreciative of the balance between 'art' and technical sides.

Studio is crazy. Anatomy books, x-acto blades, dissections, Rousseau. Mind-bending stuff, in a good way.

I got out of 'history' class because I'd already taken something comparable.

Then there's drawing. I've done 10 years of life-drawing in school, and in just 4 weeks I've learned more than in the past 4 years. I love drawing, anyway.

Then there's the technical stuff. We have two structures/technology classes. One deals with structures with an eye to efficiency, sustainability, and alternative means of construction. The other technology class is run by the principal of an engineering firm (30+ years experience) and two of his employees, former students at my university (both of whom are practicing architects AND engineers).

I had heard that my school was VERY theoretical and arty, but I'm pleasantly surprised with the technical education I'm getting as well. I've heard in previous years that the technical courses didn't even occur until 3rd year. I'm in my first semester.

Oh, and it seems that most of our profs are practicing architects, whether licensed or not (about half come from other countries, such as the US, Brazil, and England). I got to listen to all the Studio profs speak on the first day of the semester, and it's readily apparent who the nutcases are. I want to take studio from profs with big ideas, but who can communicate with me, a non-architect, non-academic. Some of those profs seemed to be on their own planet, trying to impress us with seemingly made-up words that don't mean a whole hell of a lot.

what do you think of accreditation, meta? is it failing, picking up wrong points? was your uni not accredited?

my old uni has a policy that it divides on purpose the focus of the work, so that undergrad is technical and grad school is more theoretical. this is done for accreditation purposes.

who is pointing fingers at who? i actually don't see anyone blaiming anyone else for anything...just a bunch of anger over how bad the education system is. and then rections from folks like me who actually think most schools are quite good. if there are problems they are problems of detail, and of indiviuals, as far as i can tell.

reading dwgs is proof of what? cad ability? give me a break. i learned cad in a week. how to set up a dwg set is more difficult but still not rocket science. i can teach it to anyone in a day.

as for other tech issues. hmmm, i use most of the eco-tech stuff from school fairly regularly. sun angles, psychrometic charts, hvac loading tables, etc. in london i had to do wall sections showing dewpoint and temperature changes to meet the code. that doesn't happen in japan though i sometimes do it just to check. i don't do the engineering, though at one point i could have done some of it.

detailing i have to say i could never have learned anywhere but in an office. the range of possibilities is too wide to impart anything more than an understanding of its role in creating a building...but then again none of the above is rocket science. any bright person could pick it up pretty fast. and we do. not sure what the issue is. as long as there is balance in the education then qualifications in the strict sense of licencure does not matter as far as i can tell...i mean a certain percentage of the profs HAVE to be licenced for a school to be accredited, right? so it isn't as though everyone is inexperienced in office world...maybe schools have just decided, along with NCARB that education in university requires an internship to be completed, and that is why graduates are not quite ready when they get out. is that a problem? it seems to me it is realistic more than anything...

the problem is that both employers and new graduates think that they should be able to hit the ground running the day after getting their diplomas - the employers wanting productive cad-pushers/set-put-togetherers, the new grads wanting to strut their design chops in real construction.

ain't gonna happen. the the part in italics is why.

what new grads usually bring are presentation skills, that is if they learned photoshop and illustrator etc. this usually involves a boss standing behind you making changes at the 11th hour. this happens a couple of times a month in a regular sort of office. otherwise, you are doing production sorts of things which usually are not taught in school. occasionally you get to "design" some things but this usually requires the ability to achieve a suitable solution in a short period of time. ie new construction to match existing. this, however, is not how we are taught to design in school as we are always looking for more or unique solutions and want to dig into to something to find out what its really about. when in fact we don't know how wide a corridor needs to be or how high a counter is or whatever. i would guess that most students coming out of grad school couldn't draw a typical section of the simplest 2x wall construction. this isn't a criticism of school really because if you did in school what you did in an office everyone would transfer to a different major. its more an experience thing, the more you do something the more you know what you know and also know what you don't know.

stephen / vado: my take is slightly different. post-degree, I think the issue primarily is performance expectations relative to compensation.

employers generally understand the training burden they must undertake, but have tremendous difficulty reconciling that with the pay requirements of emerging grads. the economics just don't work for the first year or so.

recent grads, on the other hand, have this shiny and EXPENSIVE new degree - they generally are unaware of what practice is like and expect it to be like school, where they were successful and productive.

it's a situation fraught with difficulty - and leads to frustration on both sides.

As I told SuperHeavy just yesterday: I consider myself extremely lucky that I worked in architecture firms every summer of my undergraduate education - the school--->work transition was quite easy in this circumstance.

I highly recommend that arch students try to get some time in a firm while in school. And I think schools should work to help their students have this exposure.

lb - that's very good advice. those students we see who have considerable office or construction experience upon graduation are immediately productive, able to make meaningful design contributions and worth considerably higher starting salaries.

Based on this discussion--how do all of you feel about concurrent education; working during the day (practical education); taking classes at night (theory)?? The bridge between the two isn't expressly taught as a class, but it happens as the process of progressing through the program--sometimes a student brings in their experience from work in a Studio (sometimes students have more professional experience than instructors) and sometimes the theory informs the work a student performs professionally--they begin to understand why they are doing something, instead of just performing the task. It's like being taught math only with a calculator, versus being taught the process by which the calculator derives the answer. With the first way, you'll only be able to do math with a calculator and are stuck with the techniques of that calculator, whereas with the second way you don't need a calculator.

I once took a technical studio that had, as it's goal, construction details. It was called "concepts of construction"--the idea was that the abstract concept or metaphor would inform the construction detail and in turn the construction detail would inform the concept. it wasn't about the two existing separately, it was showing that they can exist together and benefit one another.

offices have a responsibility to train interns. that's why it is called an internship. the best offices will work closely with interns fresh out of school. a project architect will work side-by-side with an intern explaining details and construction and the intern will create the drawings from mark-ups and redlines before eventually learning to reproduce the details him or herself. if this relationship is maintained an intern fresh out of school who has any sort of initiative whatsoever will be productive and profitable within a month. i've seen it many times.

when an intern is thrown to the wolves without any sort of guidance or supervision, yes, a year of internship before profitability seems about right. i have seen this as well. the inability to create productive and profitable interns is in my opinion a problem of the organization of the office. it has very little to do with education.

rehiggins, my school's studio courses change every single year, becase it's up to the profs to decide what and how they're going to teach. This year there's a design-build studio, a la Sam Mockbee, where the students are recording, tearing down, and rebuilding an old church (possibly into something else) using the reclaimed materials.... This is located a few hours away from the city, too. So it's not practical during the day and theory at night, but a mixture of both throughout the semester/year. That particular prof is/was a practicing architect with an undergrad in engineering (he teaches one of our structures courses) so there's always the conversation of 'how' everything's going to be built, in practical terms. There are real clients, so this is a real project that will hopefully add something to the character of the small community which surrounds it.

I wasn't able to take his studio, but if he offers something like that next year, I'm all over it. I think the interplay between theory and pragmatics is important to at least consider and discuss..... though neither should be taught exclusively.

- all you say about a firm's responsibility during internship is true - some firm's do it well and many don't.

but, there's another dimension to consider. many of the recent grads we interview have disdain for the idealized process you describe. school has conditioned many to feel such a slow and detailed process is beneath their talent and dignity.

and, they often have economic expectations totally disconnected from reality. earlier this week, I interviewed a recent grad from a good school - strong portfolio, no meaningful office experience - he asked for compensation twice the going rate in our market.

we work really hard at our firm to deliver the internship experience you recommend. often, it works well. when it doesn't, it's typically because the individual won't engage actively in the process, preferring to hide at his/her desk, plugged into headphones and surfing the net.

if there's any room for compromise in this debate, i think it comes at the level of the relationship of academia and practice. academia has no place teaching a disdain for professional practice through perpetuating the image of the lone architect genius, but at the same time, i don't think it's the place of schools to be teaching students how to put together cds; that falls on the office during the internship process.

so what does this mean for schools? one solution i see is more accurately recreating the professional design process in a school setting - more teamwork, a greater emphasis on constraints rather than endless possibilities, etc. it's a very fine line between teaching innovative design process and training people to be capable professionals, but i don't think they are mutually exclusive.

i think metamechanic just made a nice point about "intern loans". although finished with school, the education hardly stops upon graduation and in terms of preparation for workforce this does leave a bit of a financial bind. firms can't afford the rookies good salaries because of their low value...yet at the same time the young intern is placed in something of a financial bind. student loans are now coming due. the educational discounts on everything from movie tickets to the fancy apple powerbooks have dried up. money probably needs to be spent on a proper workplace wardrobe because the office that only pays $15/hour is business casual. additionally, you have nasty legal restraints on your ability to practiece small jobs on-the-side for extra dollars. and even the most supportive parents are annoyed by the idea that after 7 years of undergrad & grad school you're still looking for handouts.

unfortunately the transition from student to professional is something of a twilight zone that is difficult to define & understand...even for ourselves, and almost impossible to relate to others.

usually the disdain for practice is taught in professional practice by some bitter old professor who has run his office for forty years. you get all the skinny on every freaking lawsuit the guy has ever been involved with, oh and the reiteration that you will not be the next mies or renzo!

yeah, great point vado, usually cynicism is taught and passed down to students by some guy who's been there done that and knows all the nasty things that architecture really boils down to.

it's not the license and experience that makes a good teacher but things like : imagination, generosity (time and willingness to share their experience), flexibility and most of it, enthusiasm.

vado ... my experience was entirely different ... it was the studio critics who took a dim view of us poor smucks who "have" to practice architecture in a firm week-in / week-out. our practice management guy was great ... really interested in both the art and the science of architecture and business management.

"Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."

Jeff Goldblum's character from Jurassic Park

In the question of 'detailing', 'con docs', 'business of architecture', I am reminded of the above quote from Goldblum's fictional mathematician. While technical expertise is obviously an important aspect of the profession, some of the initial questions should relate to larger issues, often theoretical. Architecture, from Plato's point of view, was not one of the 'plastic arts' but was more of the mind. Architecture has such a strong proximity on so many other disciplines and direct effect on people that to not discuss the 'why should we do this?' question would not be advantageous to anyone's education. The built environment changes the way people live and react to the world around them. The sustainability and off-gassing of materials change peoples health at work and at home. Focusing too much on the 'professional ARE requirements' of architecture creates designers who lack overall social concerns and more advanced thinking on broader world issues.

Also, I am a current undergraduate second year design studio professor who also happens to be going through IDP and the ARE in what I consider to be the best local office in the small city in which I live, and when I am doing details for actual projects in which I assisted strongly in the design, I and everyone else I know, don't 'invent' each detail. We research it through studying our previous details and how these might change for the specifics of this project or this material or this theoretical idea.

Part of education, something I try to impart to my students, is the ability to research and find the information themselves. Teaching them in a sense how to learn.

yes, plato. but what did socrates have to say about it? oh yeah he said "like goodness, beauty is to be defined with reference to the end a thing serves, the purpose it fulfills. Something is properly called beautiful and good, or ugly and bad, to the extent to which it performs, or fails to perform, the function for which it was designed." ie Beautiful is basically the useful. Art on the other hand is useless.

Said like a die hard modernist that can't get away from old dogma. 'form follows function' so hyper functionalist... so passe...

Reminds me of Phillip Johnson's 'Machine Art' exhibit at MOMA years ago and the updated version done by Jeff Kipnis at the Wexner Center called 'Mood River'. In the catalogue Kipnis talks about one of the pieces in the exhibit, an Oral-B toothbrush, a very biomorphic hip design using hard and soft plastic and is two-toned. He notes that in tests the new design does not actually only improves the usefullness or quality of the toothbrush slightly, but because of the interest in the design people brushed more often thus increasing their oral hygiene.

So maybe we should get out of our antiquated modernist thinking and begin to redefine terms like 'use' and 'function'.

1. get power tools
2. get builders license
3. find some materials
4. build some shit
5. take pics
7. build more
8. do a few pro bono's for the little people
9. take pics
10. then buy a scarf and some hott shoes and glasses then become a teacher



i forgot what 6 was

a builder's licence is very hard to get in japan ar least, equivalent to an architectural licence. it makes it possible to build large-ish buildings and involves a great deal of knowledge that takes years of experience and lots of studying to get. why would an architect go through that process cryzco? maybe it is easy in north america and does not mean so much?

i don't know what to make of all that meta. what exactly is your point? some clients won't pay for design, some will. there is a role for high quality architecture. the medici's certainly got that.

anyway...my favorite prof back in canada grad school was a student of hedjuk. he is wildly intelligent and creative...mostly he experiments with efficient and "sustainable" concrete structures using unorthodox methods, and is in general a good designer. he does not have a licence to my knowledge and seldom builds entire buildings (not interested in that). but he is doing very interesting things in his research lab (the cdn govt decided to fund construction of a research building for him)...i don't think he pretends to be anything more than he is, nor expects any more than he deserves...but your insistence that he is somehow a priori less valuable or capable a teacher cuz he didn't work for 10 years before becoming educator simply flies in the face of experience. your definition is not true for him, nor for many others.

I don't feel like reading a lot of this, because it seems very cynical, but I will add this:

my mother is a teacher, my grandfather is a teacher, and i have had employers that are also teachers and employers that are completely uninterested in teaching and vice versa. All I can say is that what qualifies someone to be a teacher is a completely different skill set than that which is tested by the ARE, and by the profession of architecture. Some people have both skill sets, some have one and not the other, some have neither. And there aren't really any true aptitude tests that measure EITHER skill set.

This discussion seems as if it's more about the relevance of Architecture in general, rather than teachers who are qualified or not based on their real-world experience.

If Architects are only trained in real-world construction techniques/methodologies, then what would differentiate them from Engineers? What value would an Architect bring to a project that the Engineer can not?

If Architects are only trained in "theory"; what value (to anyone other than Architects) would they bring to a project? Is Beauty enough to justify the Architect's existence?

Seems like we're either redundant or unnecessary fluff; wasting a client's money either way.

What is the Architect's role? What is and how do we become what we are supposed to be?

beauty is enough to justify the architects existence. yes. i absolutley believe that.

perversely, i do not aspire to making beautiful architecture.

today i met with a planner for a project i am working on. he is very knowedgeable in his field and very very smart. he "gets" architecture...but in many ways is not interested in it. i learned a LOT talking to him today as we worked through a challenging design where planning and architecture are mixed together very thoroughly...

I think that architects are the same. we bring some skills to the table that make buildings and places work or look good...skills that others do not have, ranging from management to tech to design.

technical skills are necessary to realisation of a project...but such things do not define us. if they did then architects really would be redundant (cuz lets face it, REAL tech people know more than we ever will). i think to be honest that any effort to place ourselves in the market as technical experts is a good way to ensure our status will slip in society, and with that our fees and all the rest.