Liyuan Library by Li Xiaodong/Atelier

The Information Age has produced a generation capable of extraordinary feats not before possible. In such a dynamic professional setting, learning new skills is an attribute many must develop. Like an operative in the Matrix, downloading the skills to fly a helicopter or defend oneself with an ancient martial art, humans have an extraordinary capacity for learning. But the idea that a school or a college degree is the only path to take to embrace a new field or skill is becoming outdated. How does one acquire new skills and abilities? There are many ways. In architecture, with the onset of a new project, sometimes the need for new knowledge could not come faster. So much so, some may desperately wish they could indeed download a new subject into their brain. We don’t live in the Matrix, but the human mind is still capable of the miraculous. Let’s dive into some ways how.

The MIT Challenge

Scott H Young is a writer, programmer, and autodidact who has some pretty impressive achievements. His work is dedicated to exploring the question: what is the best way to learn? Young addresses this question through rigorous research, blogging, and ambitious learning challenges. 

On October 1st, 2011, Young began the MIT Challenge, where he sought to learn the entire MIT 4-year computer science curriculum in just under a year without taking any classes. He completed the challenge on September 26, 2012, successfully achieving his goal. 

“I’m embarking on this experiment because I want to show that learning doesn’t require acceptance boards and SAT tests, thousands of dollars in debt, or even the 4-year pace most students assume is necessary to learn a subject,” Young said on his website. At the beginning of the experiment, Young spent about 60 hours a week on learning the new subject and eventually moved to around 35 hours. He focused on the programming projects and exams that a typical MIT student had to complete, as these were the means by which he evaluated his progress and proficiency. Because of this ambitious challenge, Scott has now acquired a skill he always wished he had — being able to code.

The Year Without English

Another one of Scott’s challenges was The Year Without English. Along with his friend, and then-recent architecture graduate, Vat Jaiswal, the goal was to travel to four countries over the span of one year. The pair would spend three months in each country (Spain, Brazil, China, and South Korea), aiming to become conversational in each of the respective native languages. The rules of the challenge were simple, absolutely no English (apart from some extreme exceptions) for the whole year and they could only communicate in the language of the country they were in, even with each other. 

This approach forced the pair to experiment with the language, make mistakes, and truly commit to embracing the discomfort associated with learning a new language. Here’s what Young had to say about the undertaking on his website:

“Together, we want to show an honest record of what the process of full immersion is like. Excitement and burnout, triumphs and embarrassing slip-ups, we want to share the experience of what it is like to abandon speaking the language you’re most comfortable with and attempt to learn something strange and new.” Young has a good point here, sometimes tackling something new is scary, one must often put aside what they are used to and adopt different ways of thinking. But in the end, as we see with these two gentlemen, the rewards are totally worth it. 

They completed the project in just over a year and came away speaking at an intermediate level in all languages (Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, and Korean).

The Psychology of Autodidacticism 

Duke University researcher, Jonathan Wai, Ph.D., explained in a Psychology Today interview that "standout autodidacts tend to have high IQs... A lot of research shows that smarter people are more likely to [engage in] self-directed learning. If smarter people really focus on a topic, they're going to advance more quickly. But across IQ levels, passion makes up for a lot. There are lazy smart people. There is individual variability in every part of the distribution of intelligence." The foundational quality according to Wai is an eagerness to learn, something all autodidacts possess. But above all else, passion introduces itself as the foundational driving force behind any endeavor.

The interview also covers Blake Boles, the founder of Unschool Adventures and author of The Art of Self-Directed Learning. He has observed many young self-directed learners as “blessed with a genetic predisposition for independent thought, pattern recognition, and creative problem-solving.” That’s a definition that sounds awfully close to how an architect would describe herself.

What Are You Really Capable Of? 

Billionaire, Peter Thiel, has a famous line where he suggests that most people should consider their 10-year life plan and ask themselves why it couldn’t be done in 6 months. According to Thiel, some will still have to go through the complex 10-year process, but oftentimes many of us will find that the long trajectory is just a story we’ve told ourselves. This was the essence of Scott Young’s approach, he chose a ridiculously ambitious goal, went all in, and got crazy results. 

We’ve also seen this accelerated model in architecture. Back in 2015, Charlie Klecha, then the National President of the AIAS commenced his 7-in-7 Challenge where he decided to study for all 7 of the ARE exams for only 7 weeks and then take the tests in 7 consecutive days. Oh, and Charlie had no prior experience. In the end, he passed all of the exams on the first try! You can listen to him talk about how he achieved this on the Architect Exam Prep Podcast. One key factor was that he did nothing else but study for those 7 weeks prior, he completely immersed himself in the material, finding connections between different topics, and learning how they related to each other.

Topic Threading

There is a similar approach jazz musicians use called topic threading. To be a capable jazz musician one needs to understand a plethora of different musical and harmonic concepts. For example, a good practice session might look like this:

• Major scale - 20 minutes

• Major 7 arpeggio - 20 minutes

• Minor 7 arpeggio - 20 minutes

• Dominant 7 arpeggio - 20 minutes

• II-V-I vocabulary - 20 minutes

Essentially, these are all separate musical ideas practiced in isolation from one another. While this is still a good thing to do the vital thing missing from this practice log is a jazz standard (or song) that encompasses all of these concepts. A song will provide a way for the musician to internalize what he is learning, solidifying his understanding of how to apply the material to future compositions. This approach is why many self-guided learners are able to make such large leaps. While everyone else is bogged down with a lengthy course schedule, they are approaching the topic more holistically, seeing it as one whole. It echoes Da Vinci’s famous maxim: realize that everything connects to everything else.

The Self-Guided Learner 

The funny thing about autodidacticism is that no one really “teaches” themselves something. Of course, there are exceptions (people in the sciences for example; they make discoveries which were, by definition, not known by anyone beforehand). Autodidacticism is defined as the process or practice of learning a subject without a teacher or formal education. But one must still access the knowledge of others to teach himself. The beauty is in detaching oneself from the regulated path and tackling a subject unconventionally, as Young did with MIT’s computer science curriculum. 

We also find model examples in people like Da Vinci and the Wright Brothers, who both learned through studying those who came before them as well as through their own trial and error. Or take a modern example like Elon Musk, who initially learned about rocket science from textbooks but still hired the smartest people in the field who also taught him. The common theme with most who come out successful through this self-guided model is rigor and passion, something we saw recently in the story of Alán Manning and his path in learning to draw. 

With a plethora of online courses through companies like Masterclass, Udemy, and Skillshare, the modern learner has a sea of resources waiting to be accessed. Whether books, online courses, experts, whatever, the self-educator benefits from the inevitable uniqueness that comes from self-guidance. 

The Authentic Thinker 

“It comes about that if anyone spends almost the whole day in reading, and by way of relaxation devotes the intervals to some thoughtless pastime, he gradually loses the capacity for thinking, just as the man who always rides forgets how to walk. This is the case with many learned persons; they have read themselves stupid.” 

- Arthur Schopenhauer

There is a famous scene in the 1997 film, Good Will Hunting, where Will Hunting, a poor juvenile, who is also a genius, confronts a Harvard student at a bar. The student is trying to embarrass Will’s friend Chuckie, who has told some girls at the bar that he goes to Harvard. You have to watch the scene if you haven’t seen it, but essentially, this guy starts to spout off some academic mumbo jumbo to try and make Chuckie look like a fool in front of the girls. 

Then Will steps in to defend his friend, basically putting the guy in his place and ending the altercation with, “...you dropped a hundred and fifty thousand on a fuckin’ education you coulda got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the Public Library.” The student comes back with, “Yeah, but I will have a degree, and you’ll be serving my kids fries at a drive-thru on our way to a skiing trip.” And Will concludes, “Yeah, maybe, but at least I won’t be unoriginal.”

Will’s main point is that we should think for ourselves. Self-learning produces that, as the person does not have someone telling them what should be deduced from what they’re studying, but rather the individual must mine out their own conclusions. 

“Nothing is Impossible”

“It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.”

- Walt Disney

If there is a common characteristic among many in architecture it is the belief that almost any problem has some kind of solution, it just needs to be found. It was Renzo Piano who said that “architects spend an entire life with this unreasonable idea that you can fight against gravity.” There is satisfaction in tackling a difficult problem. If a project requires a new kind of construction, unfamiliar to the architect, she embraces the challenge. Maybe one acquires a commission in a new typology, say, a theater. With the help of consultants, the architect enthusiastically embodies this new trade. Architecture is a profession that requires the ability to learn new things quickly and efficiently. As the world evolves, the next generation of architects is sure to evolve along with it, learning and growing along the way.