welcome to the profession. don't think it gets better after school, in fact, if anything it gets worse.....so if you're frustrated now it won't stop once you leave.
not saying its right, but alas as much as the profession postures intellectualism it does really come down to marketing and salesmanship.

true, but more geared towards the professional world i'd say. in architecture school, it seems to be more about craft or craftsmanship than intellectualism, hence the "prettiest" projects receiving the highest praise. i also had a problem with this in school. i thought it was unfair, but being a few years out of grad school, i can understand why craft is so privileged in academia. craft is really an essential design quality. it is about attention to detail, and that's what our profession is largely about. i wish schools would give greater credit to work that has a high level of thought behind it, and i've also found that while such projects do not receive as much larger credit (i.e. they are not the award winning projects), certain professors will praise and encourage such work. it is your responsibility to find these professors and adopt them as mentors. it will make your experience far more rewarding and suited to what you want to get out of your education.

architecture school is a bunch of washed up hacks trying to make themsleves feel important....

architecture profession is those hacks before they become washed up trying to make themselves feel important....

and true jafidler. craft is truly the basis of the profession, in the end. it should not be underestimated. really in the end a well crafted proposal trumps. one thing that i have realized in my years since school is that what typically passes for thought in school is actually not relevant to the question at hand. not to say that exploring new ways to think about things isn't important, but just that there is a lot of irrelevant intellectualism in academia that easily obscures some of the true relevant problem-solving aspects of the profession...which funnily enough dwell typically with the concept of "craft".
just a thought that might find a slightly different angle to the argument.

makes me glad i never had to go to school

Does anybody else find the process of decoding studio syllabi completely excruciating? Legs aching as you stand in the hallway pondering each sentence of an excessively lengthy document/bulletin board for professor’s posturing, wondering to yourself, "Am I really this dumb? Why doesn't any of this mean anything?" Only to find out in time that 90% of them mean "We're gonna use x (quite simple process) to make manipulations in y (modeling software or other similar media) to make unusual shapes which will challenge existing cultural condition z"

I understand (and completely love) that complex ideas often times require precise language, but lately I’m running out of patience for simple ideas presented with language intended to feign complexity. Ultimately it only hinders the exploration and our educational experience (not to mention patronizes everyone involved).

It is not just in architecture... Academia is all about big phrases for small/simple ideas...

It was one of the first things i had to learn to accept in Graduate school.

If anything i think it allows people who are good at synthesizing or reducing ideas to basic components to easily distinquish themselves.

As they can cut to the quick.

i wouldnt transfer to another school Angry Arch, because i imagine you will find that anywhere you go.

its a shame architecture school doesnt really prepare you for what the actual working world will be like. or at least attempt to.

i had a professor say that there shouldnt be any design studios in architecture school, as you dont learn anything there. i see what he is saying, though dont necessarily agree with it to that extreme


but another way to look at it is, that you need that background as a basis for your career before you enter the workplace. because once you begin working full time, you wont really have the time to learn everything about the history of architecture and get that general base of knowledge.

I think decoding and playing with the language is fun. When we're talking about ideas, it sometimes helps to be as precise as possible. And also, sometimes using a new or unusual word for an old thing will help you see it in a new way. Have fun with it and babble back!

Arch School was the worst time of my life. I came from a construction background and found it to be the biggest crock of shit I ever saw. Heres my advice - dont mouth off or make your feelings known, just play their game and get the fuck out with a degree. Get a good job at a good firm, dont be affraid to job hop if you want to advance but remember its your responsibility to work saturdays and nights so they at least get their moneys worth from you, finally be intrested - its not enough to say"god is in the details" then do crappy details. You have to actually love the mundane aspects of detailing, shop drawing reviews, talking to clients and actualy being interested in them and what they have to say - that is what will make you successful as an architect.

As for school and the utterly complex projects - What I learned was this - if you follow or try to follow the project task, or ideas the prof spews, you'lll prob do an avg. project. If you show up with well crafted required documentation, say plans elevations sections perspective and model, and its done well, thats all that counts. Thats usually the best of class even when it strays from the task. Architects are suckers for fancy graphics.

Just think of it as practice in marketing and sales. It's unfortunate that they don't present things this way - that you are marketing and selling your project, using complex diagrams, text, quotes, etc.

It's just a sales tool. Keep that in mind and you can learn something that you can apply later in life. You will always need to sell your designs, both to clients, bosses and colleagues. Some of it is bs, some just words to express your ideas more clearly.

Sometimes you'll need to explain things with big bs words, other times its just simple ideas spoken clearly.

I think too many miss this fact. It's not just the content (although this is 75% or so), its how you present it.

The better you are at selling your design, the more you will get done.

I think the level of jargon is part of the culture of the school. On the whole, I felt that the school I went to had a relatively low bullshit factor.

Yeah, you could take a studio in "parametric urbanism" if you wanted to, but for every one of those there was a studio that tried in some way to simulate a "real project". It wasn't unusual to see developers or clients on reviews, and they would not let the discussion drift into fantasyland. And it was possible for the smart projects to win out against the pretty ones.

With that said, I think academia is one of the few places that you can do the kind of research that is not lucrative but moves the profession forward (think "Learning from Las Vegas"). School is a poor substitute for the real world, since it has none of its constraints (time, money, clients with real demands and real problems). So while I wouldn't to see schools championing meaningless jargon, I wouldn't want them to be bastions of practicality, either.

Definitely, why does this always have to be put in such a polarizing way? Why can't we have pure research and practicality at the same time?

I like the way trace is putting it, it's kind of a marketing thing. but i think it's bigger than that, it's politics, too. If you control the terms and the discourse, you control the consensus reality within which the studio and the project exist. It's a game, but it can be a really fun one. there's nothing more amazing than making up or repurposing a term out of whole cloth, just because it's useful to describe your ideas, and then hearing it come out of someone else's mouth. That's real power.

what is architecture anyway?? just shut up, do what they say, get the good gpa, cause it can only help you if you look good on paper..and find your own meaning architecture. explore, experiment, produce whats fresh.

based on my own experience i would say architects need to be able to explain ideas to enormously wide range of people, and need to be clear and fast when doing so. that requires learning to make pretty pictures and speak well.

the reason for this is because architecture is not an art where only the author needs to be satisfied. the archi-babble and the lovely pictures aspect of school is i believe a way to learn to do this, sometimes at the expense of content. but a good architect can do both, as can good students of architecture. i would not be inclined to belittle the communication skills profs are teaching by creating the atmosphere described in the first post. there is a method in that madness. it has nothing to do with drafting, and everything to do with getting works from clients. it is not the end and all of architecture but does have value.

but if it gets extreme call bullshit. profs in my experience like that sort of thing, as long as you gots the talent to get by without it yourself.

"if a really rich client is looking for a great designer, it's like looking for a religion, they want to here that babble, so yes it's bullshit, but if you want the client who throws cash at you for what you believe in, you need to fine tune that babble, i can write the babble but can't talk it."

Another way to look at that is that architecture school prepares you well for working with the wealthy (or at least a really small subset of society), but if you are interested in anything else, then it's not really all that useful. I actually do feel that way-that it trains you to do the same old same old-high end residential, corporate headquarters, museums and disregard the possibilities for architecture in the rest of the world. I really cant remember much from school that brought in and seriously contemplated issues of politics, sociology, etc. and in many cases there were studio critics who seemed to actively encourage students to disregard those issues-i.e., skip your seminars, you need to work on studio. And the excessive obsession with image-not built work or well thought out work, but have I made a strong enough image to get in the magazine this term

Add to that the cost of study, and it seems like architecture school is just rich people training rich people to serve other rich people and not question anything. No wonder architecture's importance and relevance is steadily declining IMHO.

Just my $.02

I can't remember the last rich folks I met who spoke, or could even stomach, archi-bullshit.

"... it seems like architecture school is just rich people training rich people to serve other rich people and not question anything."

... on the bad days, I think you're right, oldirty ...

Metamechanic

Thanks for the words of wisdom, quite helpful

I happen to agree with alot of whats being said here by everyone else as well

do i know you angryarch?

I teach and i practice and i find both fascinating and challenging.

Once i did a short workshop with the best professor i had, he used the simplest of words and phrases to get to the bone of my work, and he wanted to be clear so as to be understood. With only one simple question he will unwind the project in unexpected directions.
This is my standard when i teach.

What is being called "bullshit" here are just verbal armatures to cover mediocre thinking, and it is used and propagated by faculty and by students as well.

Keep it honest and keep it real, and it will be meaningful, for you and the others.

The only speak they should be speaking is the quantifiable langauge of Physics, the poetry of the natural world. All else is just air and fancy graphics.