Theme Editors: Peggy Deamer, Yale University and Tsz Yan Ng, University of Michigan

Architects have always been concerned with the effects of what their design produces: What do our buildings/environments look like? How are they experienced? How do they perform? Concerns for how architecture is produced, however, have been largely sidestepped until more recently when digital fabrication and various types of information delivery systems recast the nature of how we work and the types of skills necessary to perform various tasks related to the production of buildings.
 
Our social and ethical responsibility as designers in relation to labor does, however, have a legacy. Nineteenth and early twentieth century theorists’ attention to workers, be they builders (think John Ruskin) or designers (think Adolf Loos and Walter Gropius) addressed issues of labor in a period of industrial and economic transformation. Today, in a radically changed global context, can we similarly rethink work? With our work increasingly undervalued and often unrewarding, is it possible to reevaluate the nature of what we do, how we perform tasks, with whom we collaborate, and under what ethical directives? Within broader shifts in what constitutes labor for design professionals, how can architects lead, nudge, and recalibrate the labor of those in related fields and for ourselves? And furthermore, how can architectural education acknowledge, assist, and even innovate in this recalibration?
 
Without making an Arendtian distinction between work and labor, we make the assumption that work and labor are two sides of the same coin. Work is what an architect does in their daily life; labor is their role in the larger economic equation. But even here, historical and theoretical positions of this sort – as they pertain to architecture – need to be debated. Where should our labor be focused – in service, in making, or in the production of information? Are there constructive moments of intersections between these activities? If we still believe that architectural production operates in the midst of historical conditions of labor, management, and resources, is it now possible to survey where, in this digital and neoliberal era, architectural work is or is not singular, in the past and in the present, in order to theorize a more meaningful future? How might studio, history/theory, professional practice, and fabrication/structures courses all become arenas for this speculation?

Deadline: February 1, 2019 - 5:00pm

The Journal of Architectural Education Issue 73:2 seeks Scholarship of Design, Design as Scholarship, and Micro-Narratives that address educating architects for better empowerment and more adept participation in our contemporary society. Given the myriad types of work architects produce – from imaging representations that engender new worlds, to integrating advance technology for building, to theorizing “design” and “professionalism” – what is the academy’s role in preparing students to be smart, agile, and responsible professionals? What training should be reinforced to redirect hegemonic values to address inclusivity and diversity? How should we envision the labor of architects in the next 10, 20, 50 years? How can the academy model the ethos and aspirations we hope to produce as a society and be a model for collaborative work?

http://www.jaeonline.org/pages...

Every year ACSA looks at new metrics for the Atlas, an ongoing project examining changes and trends in architectural education. This year’s addition covers Classification of Instructional Programs (or CIP codes) from the National Center for Educational Statistics, the taxonomy of the fields of... View full entry

The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) is pleased to announce the 2017-2018 Architectural Education Award Winners. Each year, ACSA honors architectural educators for exemplary work in areas such as building design, community collaborations, scholarship, and service. Award... View full entry

During our Administrators Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, ACSA Distinguished Professor Roger Schluntz presented a motion opposing the construction of a border wall between Mexico and the United States. Similar resolutions have already been approved by AIA chapters in Texas, New Mexico, and... View full entry

Albuquerque, NM—November 3, 2017—At the 2017 ACSA Administrators Conference, the Board of Directors of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) recognized R. Wayne Drummond with a special Distinguished Service Award. Drummond’s career in architecture spans nearly fifty... View full entry

The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture is pleased to announce the reappointment of Marc J. Neveu as Executive Editor of the Journal of Architectural Education (JAE) for a four-year term. During his first term, he oversaw the redesign of the print journal by graphic design studio... View full entry

The 71:1 issue of the Journal of Architectural Education was recently published on the theme of Production.  Marc Neveu, Chair of the School of Architecture at Woodbury University in Los Angeles, serves as executive editor of the biannual peer-reviewed academic journal. Examining the role of the... View full entry

In response to the August 2015 open call for papers, content for volume 70 of the JAE is split. Issue 70:1, edited by Amy Kulper, features Design as Scholarship and introduces a new design framework: Discursive Images. Issue 70:2, edited by AnnMarie Brennan and Saundra Weddle, includes... View full entry

Much has been made of the rise of massive open online courses (MOOCs), which some see as being poised to take over higher education. So we wanted to know: how many MOOCs are teaching architecture-related topics?It turns out, not that many. In a recent search at mooc-list.com and elsewhere, we... View full entry

Is it bad news to work for a small firm? How much more do architecture firm workers earn if they have a license? How big is the salary gap between men and women?ACSA recently visualized nearly 5,000 responses from Archinect's Architecture Salary Poll through a searchable and browsable... View full entry

For a few years, Archinect has been collecting anonymous salary, satisfaction, and other juicy job-related data through its Architecture Salary Poll. It's a great resource--a Glassdoor for the architecture world--and Archinect has shared this dataset with ACSA in order for us to conduct some... View full entry

Fourteen years ago, The ACSA Sourcebook of Community Design Programs at Schools of Architecture in North America included just over seventy organizations. Since then, the landscape has changed. Today, we're releasing a new directory, which includes over two hundred organizations, covering... View full entry

At this year's ACSA Architecture College & Career Expo, students and their families will be able to do all of the things they would expect to do at an in-person event without having to travel. And it's free! Register now.Some Expo highlights include:- discovering how to select a program... View full entry

After a glorious lunch in the sun, looking out over the bay, we're back for the first afternoon session. (You can catch up on our morning session here.) (You can also view the full survey results from the Equity in Architecture Survey 2014  here.)Amber Evans, senior associate at GouldEvans, is... View full entry

There's a sold-out crowd for the big Missing 32% event today in San Francisco, at the gorgeous San Francisco Art Institute. We're in an intimate auditorium for introductions and recognition of sponsors who collectively shared $34k for the symposium.8:49 am: Rosa Sheng is explaining how she... View full entry

Lian Chikako ChangWith recent conversations on gender in architecture fueled by Julia Morgan being the first woman to receive an AIA Gold Medal, the controversy around the Pritzker Prize and Denise Scott Brown (shout out to Women in Design and to DSB who celebrates her birthday today), and of... View full entry

At the ACSA, we are most familiar with the 127 U.S. and 11 Canadian schools with accredited architecture programs, but prospective students and the public are seeing a much broader context. We wanted to learn more about all the institutions that offer programs in architecture and related fields... View full entry

ACSA recently held our biennial international conference in Seoul, South Korea, and we wanted to share some pictures from around the city, and of the event itself.The exquisite Korea Furniture Museum.Foundation detail at the Korea Furniture Museum.Lower plaza level at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza... View full entry

We are in Seoul, South Korea at the esteemed Ewha Womens University, the world’s largest female educational institute, for the ACSA’s International Conference, Open Cities, and it’s time for our closing keynote, delivered by none other than Toyo Ito. Ito-san’s website includes the... View full entry

Animated sectional diagram of Toyo Ito's Metropolitan Opera House in Taipei

If you’re lucky, you could live in a state that wants your school to be responsible for both the education and the training of architects!Expect cautious optimism over the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) endorsement of a path for students to earn an architectural... View full entry

On Friday, the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) announced their endorsement of a new path for architecture students —licensure upon graduation from an accredited program. Developed by the Licensure Task Force, a group comprised of leaders from NCARB, AIA, AIAS, NAAB... View full entry

The ACSA Atlas is an ongoing project examining architectural education in relationship to demographics, higher education, the profession, and the economy. We've just released a new set of graphics! This is a simple count of architects per state compared with population per state. (See in full... View full entry

Since 1947, the Journal of Architectural Education (JAE) has been the primary venue for research and commentary on architectural education. The flagship publication of the Association of Collegiate School of Architecture (ACSA), published through Taylor and Francis, has been through many... View full entry

ACSA conducted its fourth annual budget and enrollment survey of member schools this fall, asking programs about changes to their budgets, enrollment and applications, and hiring patterns. The results from 60 schools in the United States and Canada showed architecture programs facing slight... View full entry

Architecture school design/build programs, in which students both design and construct a project at full scale, can provide a tremendous learning experience. This is why over 70% of accredited architecture programs in North America have them (data here). Fast Company Design recently highlighted a... View full entry

Hello Archinect, I've been organizing spreadsheets, crunching numbers, and attending meetings, but this is the first graphic I've produced at the ACSA, so I wanted to share it here.   This one counts deans, directors, heads, and chairs in candidate and accredited architecture schools in... View full entry

Hello! Just wanted to share a few pictures from the BSA's Architecture/Design College Fair, held at Wentworth Institute of Technology. There was a good turnout of prospective graduate and (mostly) undergraduate students to talk with representatives from fifty schools from around the USA... View full entry

The University of Pennsylvania School of Design hosted the editorial board of the Journal of Architectural Education this weekend. New executive editor Marc Neveu and the editorial board reviewed more than 40 proposals for themes of future issues. Writers from around the world responded to the... View full entry

Hello Archinect, Just sharing a press release from our friends across the pond. Lian *** Launch of the ARENA research network September 2013 The Architectural Research European Network Association, known as ARENA, has been launched as an open, inclusive and comprehensive network for architectural... View full entry

By Lian Chang, ACSA Director of Research and Information How well did your architecture school prepare you for professional practice—or for careers outside of architecture firms? Is the gender imbalance that we see in the profession’s upper echelons beginning to change in the... View full entry