You'll probably have better luck calling a local firm and trying to talk to a senior partner. You'll probably learn more too.

I am in high school, but this is for a college class I'm taking.

I'll see if I can't get with a local firm then. Thanks.

Also reach out to AIA chapter in your city they may recommend a senior practitioner who might be willing to give you some time.

My comments (in my opinion) are:

How has the characteristics of architecture changed in recent years?

Today's showcase architecture, is a product of postmodernism, generally concerned with the articulation of exterior form and rejecting the fundamentals of modernism: Form and function are one, and architecture is dictated from the space within, correlating all parts to the whole. The postmodernists attempted to elevate architecture to a philosophy, an existential statement. Architecture is not about architects, it's all about "architecture", the sensible, subtile, and judicious use of brick, concrete, glass, wood, and steel providing elegant shelter and sense of place, elevating the occupant and the end-user not the archtiect.

What are some major characteristics of today's architecture?                   Regarding again showcase or prominent architecture, generally: Architects, too often, see the site as a blank canvas to set down their sculpture with little correlation to the existing fabric of a built environment or to a native and natural setting, whichever may be the case. We see today, much too  often, an eclectic mix resultant of personality not principles. Many design their pieces as models, to relegate the model to associates whom fill in the inertior voids with program. All good and excellent architecture emirates from the plan. The hope for a principled architecture lay in sustainability. 

What caused the characteristics of today's architecture to become popular? in this age of computers and seeking of instant gratification, people today crave the sensational, the different for difference sake. The star-chiteccts cater to this trend. Clients, both institutional and individual, will pay a premium for the "brand" (the star-architect) as an investment, but will they stand the test of time? Whether the edifice is compatable and  competant as spaces to live and work in, is unfortunately secondary to many architects, and all too often a matter left to chance.

In your opinion, who was the most influential person in making architecture what it is today, and why?  Follow the trail:

Good and Principled Architecture: Frank Furness, Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, many modernists (now passed on) and the numerous unsung practioners throughout the profession today, unwilling to compromise their integrity, their principles. 

Thanks for asking!

Student 546,

To answer your specific question: What’s up with Postmodernism?

Postmodernism was a severely intellectual movement. I believe it was a philosophical response to the nihilism and inhuman destruction of World War II, Korean Wars, Vietnam Wars, and the fatalism of a subsequent Cold War, an era of stark pessimism and hypocrisy. Essentially, postmodernism took earlier skeptic philosophies to a new level claiming no valid objectivity exists, all is subjective, even speculative. For the Postmodernist, every viewpoint is valid, there is no unity, each person is entitled to believe whatever they wish, and every opinion valid for that person.

Postmodernism offered a new epistemology, divorced from rationality, distrusting establishment norms, ideals, and collected knowledge. Postmodernist used deconstructionism as a tool to dismantle established norms and concepts, citing incongruence as the new congruency. It first was applied to language and spread like a cancer to the arts (applied philosophy) and to architecture. Postmodernists used the pretense of deconstructivism to dismantle and dissemble any established semiotic and iconic constructs, they called remnants of the modern age, even as far back as to classical, only to reassemble them in ways "fresh and evocative". Deconstructivism touted conflict and contradiction as profound, citing tension as the new source of inspiration. In truth, in architecture, it was a movement founded by ivy league academicians whom, in failing to grasp the organic potential and originality of modernism, resorted to applying their new epistemology to the art of building. It opened the doors to all sorts eclectic mannerisms and eventually died without a sound, leaving its practitioners to return to modernism, but only as great hypocrites.

The grave error for the Postmodernist was to equate Modernist Architecture with post war institutional and corporate greed, corrupt intentional politics, the bloating dominance of the defense industries, mindless suburban sprawling, destruction of inner cities and anything else it could grab. If the academics had done their homework they would have learned that the true modernist architecture movement had much more humble roots. It was a response to the new capitalists’ penchant for historic styles of architecture and the rise of new construction means and materials that demanded new principles. It was not a movement from top down as was postmodernism but was a movement from bottom up, from the peoples’ demand for a new democratic architecture, an architecture of sensibility. Modernism’s grandchild is the architecture of sustainability, green architecture, organic architecture, an architecture woven into the fabric of a natural world, with eventually no waste of natural resources, a thing quite foreign to the postmodernist. To be blunt and quite politically incorrect (a postmodernist term) postmodernism is just one of many atheist doctrines, attempting to prove there is no unity, hence no Unifier.

Hope that helps!

the profession is quickly losing all credibility and necessity - less people can do more work because of the technology and fraud is rampant; every 12 year old with 6 hours of CAD training represents themselves as an architect on craigslist and will do your project for $750 without factoring size or complexity.  

Then you have somebody like dhgarchitect writing a paper for you on this forum because they can't keep their ego in check enough to realize that the knowledge they hold is valuable and shouldn't be given away for free.  

internal devaluation sums it up pretty well.

Having researched emerging architecture practices, the range of fields in which we operate has greatly expanded giving the architect a greater possibility to become relevant and learn from an evolving society.

But we live in a society of spectacle and most of what people see are architectural acrobatics for better or worse.