well, i do regret attending an expensive school. i regret not getting a specialized bachelors and then competing for a 3-year m.arch with the hopes of getting scholarships or attending cheaper schools. it is a regret i live with because i am optimistic and certain i want to pursue architecture in some manner. whether that is praxis, meaning a long internship period and time spent in the corporate world - so be it, it will pay back the loans quicker and provide necessary insight to start my own firm in the future.
or maybe i'll get another terminal degree and try to find a teaching position - this is a bigger dream and something i would work with life-long. it also pays the loan off but provides a more immediate ROH - return on happiness.
i already live well below my means and i can handle this for another few years so i can pay off my loans quickly. my hobbies really help me save money - long distance biking, veganism and playing music all day.
Burningman: "The only way to make students worth more when they graduate is to make them relevant to the work environment."
elinor: [i]"i think the problem is with the profession and with the way architecture is practiced, rather than with the education. most people agree that their education was the highlight of their arch. career."[/i}\]
Burningman: "The only way to make students worth more when they graduate is to make them relevant to the work environment."
elinor: "i think the problem is with the profession and with the way architecture is practiced, rather than with the education. most people agree that their education was the highlight of their arch. career."
Burningman: "The only way to make students worth more when they graduate is to make them relevant to the work environment."
elinor: "i think the problem is with the profession and with the way architecture is practiced, rather than with the education. most people agree that their education was the highlight of their arch. career."
Burningman: "The only way to make students worth more when they graduate is to make them relevant to the work environment."
elinor: "i think the problem is with the profession and with the way architecture is practiced, rather than with the education. most people agree that their education was the highlight of their arch. career."
Burningman: "The only way to make students worth more when they graduate is to make them relevant to the work environment."
elinor: [i]"i think the problem is with the profession and with the way architecture is practiced, rather than with the education. most people agree that their education was the highlight of their arch. career."[/i}\]
: "The only way to make students worth more when they graduate is to make them relevant to the work environment."
elinor: "i think the problem is with the profession and with the way architecture is practiced, rather than with the education. most people agree that their education was the highlight of their arch. career."
: "The only way to make students worth more when they graduate is to make them relevant to the work environment."
elinor: "i think the problem is with the profession and with the way architecture is practiced, rather than with the education. most people agree that their education was the highlight of their arch. career."
Obviously, you both cannot be right.
On balance, my 40+ years of exposure to the profession causes me to lean more towards Burningman's point of view. To be sure, the profession could benefit by an overhaul. But, taking the long view, I feel the academy has lost touch with the actual requirements of practice in the 21st century.
elinor - based on my broad exposure to many firms, and many practitioners, across the country, I believe that most mid-career and senior professionals share similar architectural aspirations to those carried by recent graduates. However - and this is the main difference - is that those responsible for running firms must do so in the reality they experience every day in the business world. Most don't have the luxury of managing their practice in a theoretical way - work must be found, services must be delivered, employees must be managed and paid.
: "The only way to make students worth more when they graduate is to make them relevant to the work environment."
elinor: "i think the problem is with the profession and with the way architecture is practiced, rather than with the education. most people agree that their education was the highlight of their arch. career."
Obviously, you both cannot be right.
On balance, my 40+ years of immersion in the profession causes me to lean more towards Burningman's point of view. To be sure, the profession could benefit by an overhaul. But, taking the long view, I feel the academy has lost touch with the actual requirements of practice in the 21st century.
elinor - based on my broad exposure to many firms, and many practitioners, across the country, I believe that most mid-career and senior professionals share similar architectural aspirations to those carried by recent graduates. However - and this is the main difference - is that those responsible for running firms must do so in the reality they experience every day in the business world. Most don't have the luxury of managing their practice in a theoretical way - work must be found, services must be delivered, employees must be managed and paid.
: "The only way to make students worth more when they graduate is to make them relevant to the work environment."
elinor: "i think the problem is with the profession and with the way architecture is practiced, rather than with the education. most people agree that their education was the highlight of their arch. career."
Obviously, you both cannot be right.
On balance, my 40+ years of immersion in the profession causes me to lean more towards Burningman's point of view. To be sure, the profession could benefit by an overhaul. But, taking the long view, I feel the academy has lost touch with the actual requirements of practice in the 21st century. This not only serves the profession poorly but it leaves graduates in dire straits.
elinor - based on my broad exposure to many firms, and many practitioners, across the country, I believe that most mid-career and senior professionals share similar architectural aspirations to those carried by recent graduates. The vast majority want to have fun at work, earn a great living and spend most of their time doing design.
However - and this is the main difference - is that those responsible for running firms must do so in the reality they experience every day in the business world. Most don't have the luxury of managing their practice in a theoretical way - work must be found, services must be delivered, employees must be managed and paid.
: "The only way to make students worth more when they graduate is to make them relevant to the work environment."
elinor: "i think the problem is with the profession and with the way architecture is practiced, rather than with the education. most people agree that their education was the highlight of their arch. career."
Obviously, it's hard to see how you both could be right.
On balance, my 40+ years of immersion in the profession causes me to lean more towards Burningman's point of view. To be sure, the profession could benefit from an overhaul. But, taking the long view, I feel the academy has lost touch with the actual requirements of practice in the 21st century. This not only serves the profession poorly but it leaves graduates in dire straits.
elinor - based on my broad exposure to many firms, and many practitioners, across the country, I believe that most mid-career and senior professionals have similar professional aspirations to those carried by recent graduates. The vast majority want to enjoy their work, earn a great living, spend most of their time doing design, and earn the respect, if not admiration, of their peers.
However - and this is the main difference - those responsible for running firms must do so in the reality they find every day in the business world. Most don't have the luxury of managing their practice in a theoretical way - work must be found, services must be delivered, employees must be managed and paid.
Professional practice is hard - it's very hard. The academy probably does a good job of training its graduates to be good designers. It doesn't necessarily provide its graduates with the full set of skills needed to be successful - and happy - practitioners.
yes, quizzical, but it's too easy to blame economics or the reality of the world for why so many of those practitioners put out a mediocre product. having worked at professional firms for a long time (though not 40 years...), i came away thinking that they were run inefficiently, top-heavy, and reluctant to change, to the detriment of their own business not to mention their body of work. when the recession hit, a lot of these places that had rationalized their bad work in this way for years found themselves unable to compete effectively.
let's face it, effective business practice in architecture often means reproducing similar building types over and over again, without wasting money on change or innovation. that's the reality of the business world. what mid-level practitioners call 'design' usually isn't, because any sort of real design would take away from the bottom line. it's usually some sort of superficial flourish or variation executed as minimally as possible.
i'm not in any way arguing for a purely theoretical approach. i'm interested in new modes of practice that are more flexible and more open to new talent AS WELL as experience and expertise. most practicing architects have given away their role in innovating or inventing. they are happy to either copy and paste from the very stars and academics they like to put down, or to go very easily with existing construction techniques.
...not to mention that techniques evolve. i remember taking a graphic design course where we laid out mechanicals manually with non-repro-blue pancils. if you teach this stuff in school, what happens 5 years down the line when some forward-thinking person in europe or wherever turns the whole world on its head?
This ultimate MArch flies highest and carries the most risk. Architectural design is understood as something provocative, speculative, and never as a problem requiring a solution.”
“Never as a problem requiring a solution” ???
job job,
No!!! You are wrong.
Architecture design, based on contemporary philosophies, is “always about Problems (with no solution)”.
And unlike what you say, Problems don’t come from vanity but from reality or the Real (for more accurate understanding you may have to distinguish Reality from Actuality).
Only the foolish looks for problems in vanity or illusion and so problems are involved with illusory solutions.
Why does every one in architecture theory have the same misunderstanding like this?
Is it because of their Vanity?
If the schools have wrong understandings about the contemporary philosophy like this, I think, they should stop teaching and misleading their students about that.
it saddens me to have anyone say that schooling was the highlight of their career. That in itself says enough about whatever field you may be in. It tells me that person never made it as an architect/lawyer/engineer/doctor, etc. or ever had much of a career at all, or perhaps they were misguided by some fantasy of being one in a million, that maybe their training was totally way out of left field. The statement just reaffirms the disparity between schooling and reality.
Other respectable professions are taught more in line with what they are expected to do after they graduate. Why is it so much to ask to teach someone something that they will actually come across? Now why does this sound like such a strange concept? The vast majority of architecture graduates were not taught to become "architects," just look into NCARB's passing rates for the highest ranks schools. This is a strong indicator that most of these schools aren't teaching the country's supposedly strongest talent pools even the slightest level of competence. Arch schools are not producing architects, they are producing future architecture professors!!! That's the same kind of thinking that justifies why so many kids come out and aren't treated with any respect in the real world.
Welcome to the most expensive schools in the country! Yes, you, that's right YOU can be the next Koolhaus, as well as everyone else in your graduating class! For your 250k, you can be whatever your heart desires, your work will be published and you will be celebrated from here to Europe! Let's forget about gravity, building codes, financing, market research, developers, and common sense altogether. Let's put everything in Rhino and script the shit out of it until the next cool software comes out, we can still regurgitate the same theories over and over again, and then go into the world and teach those clueless practitioners how we do things!............ (and that's when they come on here and asks: "Is 27k a year too low?" Hahaha)
because the demands of the market are NOT ALWAYS CORRECT. there are a million examples of this that we can now see in retrospect and that i shouldn't have to explain here.
the job of an educational program is to take a longer ranging view.
if i'd had an education like you described, in the 90s, i would have learned the dregs of postmodernism, some CAD14, and maybe a little of that newfangled ADA.
maybe i would have gotten a higher salary from swanke hayden connell or davis brody. and now i could be head of educational development or some such something at perkins and will.
The idea that other coursework can't effectively contribute to the education of an architect because they teach expectancies, skills and standards (as compared to teaching creative genius processes like arch school) is hurtful. Does anyone else think it is ironic that architects belittle other areas of study, while it is clear we are suffering from lacking the very lessons taught in not so sexy discliplines like business, psychology, law, finance, etc? Um...
Architecture does need both, it doesn't have to be one or the other (tech school OR design studio). Why when we teach non-design courses do the instructors make it about design anyways? I signed up for a CAD class (a necessary evil, IMO) through arch school. Since it was summer, we only had a few weeks for the entire course. I dropped it after the first week when it became clear the professor wanted to make it into a design course that happened to be done on CAD, not a CAD course. I'm sure he had good reason, like CAD bored the shit out of him and he got stuck teaching it when he wanted to teach studio. :) But design studio is not what I signed up for.
And to think that students in other fields of study don't learn critical thinking is frankly insulting to the populace we serve. Why do we teach that we must insult others in order to feel worthy?
elinor, you can use your critical thinking skills to know when and how to upgrade your foundation of technical skills when they become obsolete! Problem solved.
just my opinion, and it's a bit scary to put it here in writing where it will live forever, but i think the architects who survive the massive reorganization of this recession will be at the two extremes--either the 'artists' or the 'doers'. i think it's going to be harder and harder to do both (though very large companies will probably have their 'doer' and 'designer' departments.) not many people will continue to be able to straddle the two or do both.
the problem i have with young people taking the 'doer' path is that you can do it more effectively and profitably in other fields. facade engineer instead of curtain wall detailer, for example. or construction management, or real estate. it's not that i donn't think these are acceptable career paths, just that doing these things within architecture seems like a waste of time.
I think the new version of archinect should let discussions fall off (disappear) after a while so we could be more honest and candid without the fear that it will come back to bite us later. We recycle most discussions naturally anyways.
This doesn't necessarily belong in this thread, more of a general thought on collective problem solving, but here goes: On the Colbert Report a few weeks ago, a young lady was on talking about how gamers can collectively solve problems, even cure cancer, by putting many, many heads together and using computers to simulate and study scenarios to a capacity never seen before. I thought she was crazy at first but the more I think about it, the more I see how it can work. I wonder if solutions like big messy paradigm shifting ones like the one we are discussing in this thread can be explored using the gamer girl's problem solving model. Did anyone else see this?
elinor says "ha! if only it were that easy!" Why can't it be?
it should be. but have you ever tried proposing something new to a bunch of middle-aged guys in an office? like--'let's do an interesting landscape form here...i know just the script to produce it.' they'll stare at each other uncomfortably, laugh kindly in your direction, and continue sketching squares on yellow trace.
and you can learn all the skills you want, but if you have no place to implement them, they're useless and you'll just forget them.
elinor: "if i'd had an education like you described, in the 90s, i would have learned the dregs of postmodernism, some CAD14, and maybe a little of that newfangled ADA."
Nice!
But for realz. It wouldn't hurt the graduates to have a basic grasp of how to keep a building waterproof. Or understanding the basics of construction materials: from aluminum to stone. What are the benefits, what are the limitations, etc...
Even established architects struggle with this. Renderings show smooth, complex forms, but the execution doesn't really account for materials that end up being used.
I wish 'Avatar' the movie didn't use the term unobtanium. That used to be go to joke term for executing uninformed design.
Interesting, elinor. Perhaps I had the opposite problem, I could actually design anything I envisioned as long as I made it work, but I didn't always have all the skills to make what I could imagine actually work. When I proposed design ideas, the middle-aged guys you speak of usually told me to go for it, but I had skill and experience limitations in actually executing the designs within the realities of the project and often had to give it up and do something more boilerplate.
Therefore, you can come up with all the ideas you want, but if you have no skills or experience to implement them, they're useless and you'll just forget them.
my old place had excellent consultants...the best. and lots of great tech people on staff. the only thing standing in their way was their own conservative prejudice.
i remember knowing it was over when we had one of those lunch presentations where an engineering firm was pitching their services and told us they would be able to help us transition seamlessly between our design work (meaning 3d models--grasshopper, maya, rhino, 3dmax) and workable bim models. then they showed how they had done this for som, adrian smith, and other large firms. it was laughable. that office hadn't done anything non-boxy in decades and no one knew what the hell grasshopper was....
But, what about the 99.9% of buildings around us instead of such spectacle buildings for which we need a special consultant?
Aren't they architecture, too, in our contemporary society?
Or do you think only 0.1% of buildings is Architecture just like before modern time?
In the case that you insist on, it seems that we architects, except 0.01% of "star architect", should be hired in an engineer firm or a development firm instead of being an independent profession.
all public buildings already have specialized consultants. so do all healthcare buildings, office buildings, and multifamily housing projects. so it's a lot more than 0.1 %. in nyc, even apartment renovations have a full set of consultants...
the engineering firm i was talking about was a regular engineering firm, who offered these additional services because they thought that was what architects wanted/needed...see, they're thinking ahead to how they can expand their business through new technology.
i'm not saying everything has to be dramatic, but i do think architects should be designers rather than stamping out cookie-cutter buildings.
but this thread was about education, so my original point was that for people ENTERING the profession, if they are interested in a technical or managerial career, it makes more sense to go into engineering or construction mgmt. they'll make more money and get more respect than they will doing the same work in architecture.
syp, I am wrong, but for many, many reasons. But I don't teach, I don't practice theory, and I don't disparage my high-cost education.
My choice of movie quotes was to expose the institutions for what they are. For this whole thing to work, something valuable MUST be expensive, right?
And what is valuable? Learning to waterproof, as Rustystuds mentions (and with hich I totally agree)? Yes it is, but it doesn't require more than a few field lessons.
My point is that when burningvirgin rips on his instructors for looking beyond the material necessities of professional practice, he is really wishing that DeVry or University of Phoenix was accredited so that he could get a cheap MArch, have applicable experience for gainful employment in Acme Architects so that he can drive his used Jetta, and where Dockers. That is one long sentence I just wrote.
I remember back when Cranbrook and Cooper Union were titans. I mean just f*cking gorgeous.
I also have heard "a facade consultant", but they are not common in most of projects.
Also, I think, coordinating with all consultants, architects should know basic concepts and knowledge about constructions, financing, and other practical aspects.
If architects are just a designer, I wouldn't go to architecture school, but rather go to fine arts or design schools.
In my opinion, practical aspects are as much important as conceptual and design aspects are in architecture.
Yes we folded. We weren't a bunch of middle-aged dudes, we were a small branch office of interns with a prinicpal who frankly didn't have much going for him. We designed more stuff that didn't work than worked and it didn't take long to catch up to us (we did mostly schematic design.)
I will be calling my therapist now, thank you very much for reviving my PTSD symptoms. :)
I don't talk about that firm much any more, much to some archinectors dismay (Donna) but in hindsight, that principal used the branch office to launch his own firm, so he had little interest in making that firm work. That is just my opinion. But it is relevant to this thread because if I, as the unofficially elected surrogate leader, had the skills and experience at the age of 28 to run a thirteen person firm in the shadow of that principal and his barstool, we might still around. But I failed too.
Instead, I learned a lot about business, finance, law, psychology, management, etc and that is what got me my next job (not arch) and has much to do with the success I am experiencing now.
straw, i guess we're all shaped by our individual experiences...
job job, those 'titans' put out the unemployables in droves!! we all knew we were going to have a hard time on the job market...my first job was at a restoration firm...haha. but, tellingly, here i am, 10-15 years later, defending it all. wouldn't trade it for the world!
At no point did I dismiss design from the education system. When did we as a society become stupid enough to spend 5, 6, or 7 years at what is now 50K a year, so up to $350-400K to ask "is 27k enough?" " How about 35K?" Seriously, you don't have to go school get make that awesome salary! A kid in junior high can tell you how stupid that kind of investment sounds, but here we are, defending a system that puts out the most pathetic, least unemployable, underpaid, and irrelevant products.
You can continue to defend the Sorkin/Koolhaus theoretical crap until the next Ramen noodle dinner.
Being trained by people who have no understanding of the practice/law/business that are dealt with in putting a project together, it will become harder and harder for incoming graduates to gain any traction in the market place. These kids are then forced back into their parents' home with more debt than they can afford to pay, but it's okay because that Tafuri or Frampton is someday going to get them a great paying job when the economy recovers...Maybe by that time, their parents supported them returning to school in the pursuit of fine arts - another really applicable education.
"They teach students how to think for themselves." - Elinor
Again, I just find the mother of all irony in this statement. So if you can't think for yourself by the time you are 18/19, another 7 years in some institution along with a small fortune will TEACH you think for yourself.
Look ballsonfire, you're the one hating your past design instructors. And for stating that only the technical courses had any relevance to what you do now. And that overly expensive places like 'SoCal film school and UPENN' (wtf?) push product that has no currency.
The answer is simply - why did you choose to go to such an institution? Especially for a bewildering '5, 6, or 7' years? Did you not research what work was being done at the school; Why didn't you find a local, cheap state school that teaches design that you find pleasing? One that doesn't have Tafuri or Frampton on the curriculum?
Ramen noodle dinner sounds great. Anyway take it easy, and don't think so badly on your studio instructors. They worked hard for you.
i feel your story, optimistic strawbeary...i do believe that not giving a person technical skills to match conceptual skills more often than not sets them up to have to just step in line when the get to the profession because they don't know how to bring to fruition their design concepts. in a way, it does seem like setting someone up to fail.
in fact, in my experience, if you are going to advance an ambitious design idea as a junior-level designer, you have to be especially grounded technically to be taken seriously.
if you do have that blend, whether learned through a curriculum or through self-education, then you can be a true design ninja
The architects that survive will be the ones who make it about people, not buildings. A personable relationship cannot be offshored or computed and is the best thing I can think of that will hold value and provide enployment security far into the forseeable future.
Okay Jobby Job, I would have absolutely no interests into going to UPENN where rumors still float around that egos are so competitive that models were being burned or SCI-ARC, a pretentious third rate film school masquerading as architecture. And no, I didn't go to Devry. Not to toot my own horn, but I had scholarships to bring my education to half price (probably cheaper than paying for no name state schools) at institutions that have been consistently ranked in the top 3. Without those scholarships, I wouldn't have never wasted my time. This was only the the past decade when it cost half as much to go to school, and it makes no sense that the salary for entering architecture students these days have gone down despite the paying double the dough. The research was done prior to going to school but who the hell knows ahead of time you would be required to learn the shit that your professors' buddies at xzy university wrote as part of the curriculum.
But even at half price, I don't think it was worth the time and money. I had respect for some professors more others but I bet most of them couldn't get a client or a real architecture job if their lives depended on it. So it's laughable when I hear that being in this la-la fantasy setting is the highlight of their careers.
Reforming Architecture School
well, i do regret attending an expensive school. i regret not getting a specialized bachelors and then competing for a 3-year m.arch with the hopes of getting scholarships or attending cheaper schools. it is a regret i live with because i am optimistic and certain i want to pursue architecture in some manner. whether that is praxis, meaning a long internship period and time spent in the corporate world - so be it, it will pay back the loans quicker and provide necessary insight to start my own firm in the future.
or maybe i'll get another terminal degree and try to find a teaching position - this is a bigger dream and something i would work with life-long. it also pays the loan off but provides a more immediate ROH - return on happiness.
i already live well below my means and i can handle this for another few years so i can pay off my loans quickly. my hobbies really help me save money - long distance biking, veganism and playing music all day.
Burningman: "The only way to make students worth more when they graduate is to make them relevant to the work environment."
elinor: [i]"i think the problem is with the profession and with the way architecture is practiced, rather than with the education. most people agree that their education was the highlight of their arch. career."[/i}\]
Burningman: "The only way to make students worth more when they graduate is to make them relevant to the work environment."
elinor: "i think the problem is with the profession and with the way architecture is practiced, rather than with the education. most people agree that their education was the highlight of their arch. career."
Burningman: "The only way to make students worth more when they graduate is to make them relevant to the work environment."
elinor: "i think the problem is with the profession and with the way architecture is practiced, rather than with the education. most people agree that their education was the highlight of their arch. career."
Burningman: "The only way to make students worth more when they graduate is to make them relevant to the work environment."
elinor: "i think the problem is with the profession and with the way architecture is practiced, rather than with the education. most people agree that their education was the highlight of their arch. career."
Burningman: "The only way to make students worth more when they graduate is to make them relevant to the work environment."
elinor: [i]"i think the problem is with the profession and with the way architecture is practiced, rather than with the education. most people agree that their education was the highlight of their arch. career."[/i}\]
: "The only way to make students worth more when they graduate is to make them relevant to the work environment."
elinor: "i think the problem is with the profession and with the way architecture is practiced, rather than with the education. most people agree that their education was the highlight of their arch. career."
: "The only way to make students worth more when they graduate is to make them relevant to the work environment."
elinor: "i think the problem is with the profession and with the way architecture is practiced, rather than with the education. most people agree that their education was the highlight of their arch. career."
Obviously, you both cannot be right.
On balance, my 40+ years of exposure to the profession causes me to lean more towards Burningman's point of view. To be sure, the profession could benefit by an overhaul. But, taking the long view, I feel the academy has lost touch with the actual requirements of practice in the 21st century.
elinor - based on my broad exposure to many firms, and many practitioners, across the country, I believe that most mid-career and senior professionals share similar architectural aspirations to those carried by recent graduates. However - and this is the main difference - is that those responsible for running firms must do so in the reality they experience every day in the business world. Most don't have the luxury of managing their practice in a theoretical way - work must be found, services must be delivered, employees must be managed and paid.
: "The only way to make students worth more when they graduate is to make them relevant to the work environment."
elinor: "i think the problem is with the profession and with the way architecture is practiced, rather than with the education. most people agree that their education was the highlight of their arch. career."
Obviously, you both cannot be right.
On balance, my 40+ years of immersion in the profession causes me to lean more towards Burningman's point of view. To be sure, the profession could benefit by an overhaul. But, taking the long view, I feel the academy has lost touch with the actual requirements of practice in the 21st century.
elinor - based on my broad exposure to many firms, and many practitioners, across the country, I believe that most mid-career and senior professionals share similar architectural aspirations to those carried by recent graduates. However - and this is the main difference - is that those responsible for running firms must do so in the reality they experience every day in the business world. Most don't have the luxury of managing their practice in a theoretical way - work must be found, services must be delivered, employees must be managed and paid.
: "The only way to make students worth more when they graduate is to make them relevant to the work environment."
elinor: "i think the problem is with the profession and with the way architecture is practiced, rather than with the education. most people agree that their education was the highlight of their arch. career."
Obviously, you both cannot be right.
On balance, my 40+ years of immersion in the profession causes me to lean more towards Burningman's point of view. To be sure, the profession could benefit by an overhaul. But, taking the long view, I feel the academy has lost touch with the actual requirements of practice in the 21st century. This not only serves the profession poorly but it leaves graduates in dire straits.
elinor - based on my broad exposure to many firms, and many practitioners, across the country, I believe that most mid-career and senior professionals share similar architectural aspirations to those carried by recent graduates. The vast majority want to have fun at work, earn a great living and spend most of their time doing design.
However - and this is the main difference - is that those responsible for running firms must do so in the reality they experience every day in the business world. Most don't have the luxury of managing their practice in a theoretical way - work must be found, services must be delivered, employees must be managed and paid.
: "The only way to make students worth more when they graduate is to make them relevant to the work environment."
elinor: "i think the problem is with the profession and with the way architecture is practiced, rather than with the education. most people agree that their education was the highlight of their arch. career."
Obviously, it's hard to see how you both could be right.
On balance, my 40+ years of immersion in the profession causes me to lean more towards Burningman's point of view. To be sure, the profession could benefit from an overhaul. But, taking the long view, I feel the academy has lost touch with the actual requirements of practice in the 21st century. This not only serves the profession poorly but it leaves graduates in dire straits.
elinor - based on my broad exposure to many firms, and many practitioners, across the country, I believe that most mid-career and senior professionals have similar professional aspirations to those carried by recent graduates. The vast majority want to enjoy their work, earn a great living, spend most of their time doing design, and earn the respect, if not admiration, of their peers.
However - and this is the main difference - those responsible for running firms must do so in the reality they find every day in the business world. Most don't have the luxury of managing their practice in a theoretical way - work must be found, services must be delivered, employees must be managed and paid.
Professional practice is hard - it's very hard. The academy probably does a good job of training its graduates to be good designers. It doesn't necessarily provide its graduates with the full set of skills needed to be successful - and happy - practitioners.
yes, quizzical, but it's too easy to blame economics or the reality of the world for why so many of those practitioners put out a mediocre product. having worked at professional firms for a long time (though not 40 years...), i came away thinking that they were run inefficiently, top-heavy, and reluctant to change, to the detriment of their own business not to mention their body of work. when the recession hit, a lot of these places that had rationalized their bad work in this way for years found themselves unable to compete effectively.
let's face it, effective business practice in architecture often means reproducing similar building types over and over again, without wasting money on change or innovation. that's the reality of the business world. what mid-level practitioners call 'design' usually isn't, because any sort of real design would take away from the bottom line. it's usually some sort of superficial flourish or variation executed as minimally as possible.
i'm not in any way arguing for a purely theoretical approach. i'm interested in new modes of practice that are more flexible and more open to new talent AS WELL as experience and expertise. most practicing architects have given away their role in innovating or inventing. they are happy to either copy and paste from the very stars and academics they like to put down, or to go very easily with existing construction techniques.
...not to mention that techniques evolve. i remember taking a graphic design course where we laid out mechanicals manually with non-repro-blue pancils. if you teach this stuff in school, what happens 5 years down the line when some forward-thinking person in europe or wherever turns the whole world on its head?
“We also charge for vanity.
This ultimate MArch flies highest and carries the most risk. Architectural design is understood as something provocative, speculative, and never as a problem requiring a solution.”
“Never as a problem requiring a solution” ???
job job,
No!!! You are wrong.
Architecture design, based on contemporary philosophies, is “always about Problems (with no solution)”.
And unlike what you say, Problems don’t come from vanity but from reality or the Real (for more accurate understanding you may have to distinguish Reality from Actuality).
Only the foolish looks for problems in vanity or illusion and so problems are involved with illusory solutions.
Why does every one in architecture theory have the same misunderstanding like this?
Is it because of their Vanity?
If the schools have wrong understandings about the contemporary philosophy like this, I think, they should stop teaching and misleading their students about that.
Elinor,
it saddens me to have anyone say that schooling was the highlight of their career. That in itself says enough about whatever field you may be in. It tells me that person never made it as an architect/lawyer/engineer/doctor, etc. or ever had much of a career at all, or perhaps they were misguided by some fantasy of being one in a million, that maybe their training was totally way out of left field. The statement just reaffirms the disparity between schooling and reality.
Other respectable professions are taught more in line with what they are expected to do after they graduate. Why is it so much to ask to teach someone something that they will actually come across? Now why does this sound like such a strange concept? The vast majority of architecture graduates were not taught to become "architects," just look into NCARB's passing rates for the highest ranks schools. This is a strong indicator that most of these schools aren't teaching the country's supposedly strongest talent pools even the slightest level of competence. Arch schools are not producing architects, they are producing future architecture professors!!! That's the same kind of thinking that justifies why so many kids come out and aren't treated with any respect in the real world.
Welcome to the most expensive schools in the country! Yes, you, that's right YOU can be the next Koolhaus, as well as everyone else in your graduating class! For your 250k, you can be whatever your heart desires, your work will be published and you will be celebrated from here to Europe! Let's forget about gravity, building codes, financing, market research, developers, and common sense altogether. Let's put everything in Rhino and script the shit out of it until the next cool software comes out, we can still regurgitate the same theories over and over again, and then go into the world and teach those clueless practitioners how we do things!............ (and that's when they come on here and asks: "Is 27k a year too low?" Hahaha)
because the demands of the market are NOT ALWAYS CORRECT. there are a million examples of this that we can now see in retrospect and that i shouldn't have to explain here.
the job of an educational program is to take a longer ranging view.
if i'd had an education like you described, in the 90s, i would have learned the dregs of postmodernism, some CAD14, and maybe a little of that newfangled ADA.
maybe i would have gotten a higher salary from swanke hayden connell or davis brody. and now i could be head of educational development or some such something at perkins and will.
woo fucking hoo.
The idea that other coursework can't effectively contribute to the education of an architect because they teach expectancies, skills and standards (as compared to teaching creative genius processes like arch school) is hurtful. Does anyone else think it is ironic that architects belittle other areas of study, while it is clear we are suffering from lacking the very lessons taught in not so sexy discliplines like business, psychology, law, finance, etc? Um...
Architecture does need both, it doesn't have to be one or the other (tech school OR design studio). Why when we teach non-design courses do the instructors make it about design anyways? I signed up for a CAD class (a necessary evil, IMO) through arch school. Since it was summer, we only had a few weeks for the entire course. I dropped it after the first week when it became clear the professor wanted to make it into a design course that happened to be done on CAD, not a CAD course. I'm sure he had good reason, like CAD bored the shit out of him and he got stuck teaching it when he wanted to teach studio. :) But design studio is not what I signed up for.
And to think that students in other fields of study don't learn critical thinking is frankly insulting to the populace we serve. Why do we teach that we must insult others in order to feel worthy?
elinor, you can use your critical thinking skills to know when and how to upgrade your foundation of technical skills when they become obsolete! Problem solved.
ha! if only it were that easy!
i want to agree with your moderate position, straw, but haven't seen it play out well out there.
but yes, those tech courses masquerading as design are the ABSOLUTE WORST!!
just my opinion, and it's a bit scary to put it here in writing where it will live forever, but i think the architects who survive the massive reorganization of this recession will be at the two extremes--either the 'artists' or the 'doers'. i think it's going to be harder and harder to do both (though very large companies will probably have their 'doer' and 'designer' departments.) not many people will continue to be able to straddle the two or do both.
the problem i have with young people taking the 'doer' path is that you can do it more effectively and profitably in other fields. facade engineer instead of curtain wall detailer, for example. or construction management, or real estate. it's not that i donn't think these are acceptable career paths, just that doing these things within architecture seems like a waste of time.
I think the new version of archinect should let discussions fall off (disappear) after a while so we could be more honest and candid without the fear that it will come back to bite us later. We recycle most discussions naturally anyways.
This doesn't necessarily belong in this thread, more of a general thought on collective problem solving, but here goes: On the Colbert Report a few weeks ago, a young lady was on talking about how gamers can collectively solve problems, even cure cancer, by putting many, many heads together and using computers to simulate and study scenarios to a capacity never seen before. I thought she was crazy at first but the more I think about it, the more I see how it can work. I wonder if solutions like big messy paradigm shifting ones like the one we are discussing in this thread can be explored using the gamer girl's problem solving model. Did anyone else see this?
elinor says "ha! if only it were that easy!" Why can't it be?
it should be. but have you ever tried proposing something new to a bunch of middle-aged guys in an office? like--'let's do an interesting landscape form here...i know just the script to produce it.' they'll stare at each other uncomfortably, laugh kindly in your direction, and continue sketching squares on yellow trace.
and you can learn all the skills you want, but if you have no place to implement them, they're useless and you'll just forget them.
elinor: "if i'd had an education like you described, in the 90s, i would have learned the dregs of postmodernism, some CAD14, and maybe a little of that newfangled ADA."
Nice!
But for realz. It wouldn't hurt the graduates to have a basic grasp of how to keep a building waterproof. Or understanding the basics of construction materials: from aluminum to stone. What are the benefits, what are the limitations, etc...
Even established architects struggle with this. Renderings show smooth, complex forms, but the execution doesn't really account for materials that end up being used.
I wish 'Avatar' the movie didn't use the term unobtanium. That used to be go to joke term for executing uninformed design.
Interesting, elinor. Perhaps I had the opposite problem, I could actually design anything I envisioned as long as I made it work, but I didn't always have all the skills to make what I could imagine actually work. When I proposed design ideas, the middle-aged guys you speak of usually told me to go for it, but I had skill and experience limitations in actually executing the designs within the realities of the project and often had to give it up and do something more boilerplate.
Therefore, you can come up with all the ideas you want, but if you have no skills or experience to implement them, they're useless and you'll just forget them.
why didn't they apply their expertise to your ideas?
...or set you up with good consultants?
i know nothing about this place, but didn't they fold? do you think a little flexibility would have helped?
my old place had excellent consultants...the best. and lots of great tech people on staff. the only thing standing in their way was their own conservative prejudice.
i remember knowing it was over when we had one of those lunch presentations where an engineering firm was pitching their services and told us they would be able to help us transition seamlessly between our design work (meaning 3d models--grasshopper, maya, rhino, 3dmax) and workable bim models. then they showed how they had done this for som, adrian smith, and other large firms. it was laughable. that office hadn't done anything non-boxy in decades and no one knew what the hell grasshopper was....
Elinor,
What you are saying, in a way, makes sense.
But, what about the 99.9% of buildings around us instead of such spectacle buildings for which we need a special consultant?
Aren't they architecture, too, in our contemporary society?
Or do you think only 0.1% of buildings is Architecture just like before modern time?
In the case that you insist on, it seems that we architects, except 0.01% of "star architect", should be hired in an engineer firm or a development firm instead of being an independent profession.
all public buildings already have specialized consultants. so do all healthcare buildings, office buildings, and multifamily housing projects. so it's a lot more than 0.1 %. in nyc, even apartment renovations have a full set of consultants...
the engineering firm i was talking about was a regular engineering firm, who offered these additional services because they thought that was what architects wanted/needed...see, they're thinking ahead to how they can expand their business through new technology.
i'm not saying everything has to be dramatic, but i do think architects should be designers rather than stamping out cookie-cutter buildings.
but this thread was about education, so my original point was that for people ENTERING the profession, if they are interested in a technical or managerial career, it makes more sense to go into engineering or construction mgmt. they'll make more money and get more respect than they will doing the same work in architecture.
..and, i wouldn't EVER call SOM starchitects. :)
syp, I am wrong, but for many, many reasons. But I don't teach, I don't practice theory, and I don't disparage my high-cost education.
My choice of movie quotes was to expose the institutions for what they are. For this whole thing to work, something valuable MUST be expensive, right?
And what is valuable? Learning to waterproof, as Rustystuds mentions (and with hich I totally agree)? Yes it is, but it doesn't require more than a few field lessons.
My point is that when burningvirgin rips on his instructors for looking beyond the material necessities of professional practice, he is really wishing that DeVry or University of Phoenix was accredited so that he could get a cheap MArch, have applicable experience for gainful employment in Acme Architects so that he can drive his used Jetta, and where Dockers. That is one long sentence I just wrote.
I remember back when Cranbrook and Cooper Union were titans. I mean just f*cking gorgeous.
I also have heard "a facade consultant", but they are not common in most of projects.
Also, I think, coordinating with all consultants, architects should know basic concepts and knowledge about constructions, financing, and other practical aspects.
If architects are just a designer, I wouldn't go to architecture school, but rather go to fine arts or design schools.
In my opinion, practical aspects are as much important as conceptual and design aspects are in architecture.
a typo and more than a few grammar problems - written too fast, too furious
Job Job,
Yes, I understand and respect what you are saying.
Yes we folded. We weren't a bunch of middle-aged dudes, we were a small branch office of interns with a prinicpal who frankly didn't have much going for him. We designed more stuff that didn't work than worked and it didn't take long to catch up to us (we did mostly schematic design.)
I will be calling my therapist now, thank you very much for reviving my PTSD symptoms. :)
well, those basics are also included in my definition of 'design'. but we don't have to go the devry route....
I don't talk about that firm much any more, much to some archinectors dismay (Donna) but in hindsight, that principal used the branch office to launch his own firm, so he had little interest in making that firm work. That is just my opinion. But it is relevant to this thread because if I, as the unofficially elected surrogate leader, had the skills and experience at the age of 28 to run a thirteen person firm in the shadow of that principal and his barstool, we might still around. But I failed too.
Instead, I learned a lot about business, finance, law, psychology, management, etc and that is what got me my next job (not arch) and has much to do with the success I am experiencing now.
straw, i guess we're all shaped by our individual experiences...
job job, those 'titans' put out the unemployables in droves!! we all knew we were going to have a hard time on the job market...my first job was at a restoration firm...haha. but, tellingly, here i am, 10-15 years later, defending it all. wouldn't trade it for the world!
Hejduk, Dan Graham, Raoul Bunschoten, Libeskind with his reading writing memory machines...
Wait, how old ARE you? How old am I??
Jobby Job,
At no point did I dismiss design from the education system. When did we as a society become stupid enough to spend 5, 6, or 7 years at what is now 50K a year, so up to $350-400K to ask "is 27k enough?" " How about 35K?" Seriously, you don't have to go school get make that awesome salary! A kid in junior high can tell you how stupid that kind of investment sounds, but here we are, defending a system that puts out the most pathetic, least unemployable, underpaid, and irrelevant products.
You can continue to defend the Sorkin/Koolhaus theoretical crap until the next Ramen noodle dinner.
Being trained by people who have no understanding of the practice/law/business that are dealt with in putting a project together, it will become harder and harder for incoming graduates to gain any traction in the market place. These kids are then forced back into their parents' home with more debt than they can afford to pay, but it's okay because that Tafuri or Frampton is someday going to get them a great paying job when the economy recovers...Maybe by that time, their parents supported them returning to school in the pursuit of fine arts - another really applicable education.
"They teach students how to think for themselves." - Elinor
Again, I just find the mother of all irony in this statement. So if you can't think for yourself by the time you are 18/19, another 7 years in some institution along with a small fortune will TEACH you think for yourself.
35.
Look ballsonfire, you're the one hating your past design instructors. And for stating that only the technical courses had any relevance to what you do now. And that overly expensive places like 'SoCal film school and UPENN' (wtf?) push product that has no currency.
The answer is simply - why did you choose to go to such an institution? Especially for a bewildering '5, 6, or 7' years? Did you not research what work was being done at the school; Why didn't you find a local, cheap state school that teaches design that you find pleasing? One that doesn't have Tafuri or Frampton on the curriculum?
Ramen noodle dinner sounds great. Anyway take it easy, and don't think so badly on your studio instructors. They worked hard for you.
i feel your story, optimistic strawbeary...i do believe that not giving a person technical skills to match conceptual skills more often than not sets them up to have to just step in line when the get to the profession because they don't know how to bring to fruition their design concepts. in a way, it does seem like setting someone up to fail.
in fact, in my experience, if you are going to advance an ambitious design idea as a junior-level designer, you have to be especially grounded technically to be taken seriously.
if you do have that blend, whether learned through a curriculum or through self-education, then you can be a true design ninja
The architects that survive will be the ones who make it about people, not buildings. A personable relationship cannot be offshored or computed and is the best thing I can think of that will hold value and provide enployment security far into the forseeable future.
Rusty,
Put your muppet where your mouth is.
Can't reach my anything muppet with my mouth. Wanna help? :)
Okay Jobby Job, I would have absolutely no interests into going to UPENN where rumors still float around that egos are so competitive that models were being burned or SCI-ARC, a pretentious third rate film school masquerading as architecture. And no, I didn't go to Devry. Not to toot my own horn, but I had scholarships to bring my education to half price (probably cheaper than paying for no name state schools) at institutions that have been consistently ranked in the top 3. Without those scholarships, I wouldn't have never wasted my time. This was only the the past decade when it cost half as much to go to school, and it makes no sense that the salary for entering architecture students these days have gone down despite the paying double the dough. The research was done prior to going to school but who the hell knows ahead of time you would be required to learn the shit that your professors' buddies at xzy university wrote as part of the curriculum.
But even at half price, I don't think it was worth the time and money. I had respect for some professors more others but I bet most of them couldn't get a client or a real architecture job if their lives depended on it. So it's laughable when I hear that being in this la-la fantasy setting is the highlight of their careers.
Absolutely not.
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