My design projects in school were very site-oriented. Take some restriction or boundary you see on the site - could be physical, ecological, socio-economic, cultural, etc. Then propose what you want to do with these site conditions: solve them? blur them? emphasize them?

Don't sweat it too much.  I didn't "get it" till I was 4.5 years into a 5-year degree.  The real secret is that it's all bullshit... there is no magic.  Chose to develop simple, strong concepts that are based on something tangible, for example context driven ideas or concepts based on the particular use of the building, and then apply that concept to every part your design.  Every design decision should support your concept.

A lot of students get lost trying to develop abstract concepts that have nothing to do with solving an architectural problem, for example trying to create a building that is based on a particular peice of music, or a building based on fractals, or the growth of a tree, etc.  And the list goes on (I'm selecting examples that I've seen students use).  That's not to say that a building can't be based on those things, it's just that you're likely to get very lost going down that path as a student.

This question indicates one of two things: either the program is bullshit, or the student would be better off in a less cognitively demanding field. 

Wow, a "less cognitively demanding field"? That wasn't at all condescending, Miles. I am interested to hear your explanation to the question I asked. Care to offer one?

Thanks to everyone for the constructive responses. I appreciate it.

"After a year of architectural education I'm not entirely sure I understand the concept of exploring an architectural idea or developing an architectural idea."

You are studying for a career in a creative profession and appear absolutely clueless of even the most basic creative techniques and processes. Thus, either your training is terribly deficient or you are unfit for the task at hand. Or both.

What part of "exploring an idea" don't you get? If you meant to say something else, please elaborate.

you sound like a jerk Miles...cut him some slack. If only I had a dime for every i heard some big-headed renovator try to belittle the inexperienced.

@Wrightspace
there was a thread, a while back, from a student who was having hard time dealing with the ideological indoctrination process at his school. I think that is where students usually get lost. Every professor is going to bring something different to the table. The ideas youre trying to find, revolve around what they can give you in the studio. Thats the best part of learning

Ideology on the other can take a long time to establish, even after school. For now, its best to be a sponge.

F.T.B. (first time buyer?), my name and info is posted for all to see. All you've got are a couple of anonymous initials and a line of BS about "ideological indoctrination" - which unless you are in the military (or maybe the Republican party) is the exact opposite of the kind of broadminded, creative educational experience necessary to produce competence in architecture and design.

Either Wrightspace is clueless or he didn't express himself very well. If he can't take a little heat now - on an internet forum, no less - how is he going to survive a 5 year program, let alone a career in architecture? Rise to the challenge or pack your bags.

I gave him a chance, let’s see what he does with it.

Yeah, Miles, I have to agree you're being quite harsh.  Wrightspace's last sentence actually asks to please not be condescending when s/he's asking an honest question, and after only one year of architecture school! 

Wrightspace, I'd say I didn't really get it until several years into my undergrad degree, and it wasn't some big "aha!" moment - just lots of observing how other students worked and listening to lecturing architects describe the ways their design process worked.  Eventually I realized, for me, it always related to a material/constructibility idea: I've never been able to separate architectural design from making, so trying to base a design on a poem or music or some ephemeral notion didn't make sense to me until I could draw a parallel between the idea and some aspect of construction.

Medusa's post above is good - decide on what you're going to base your decisions (the "concept"), then make sure every decision relates to that intent. It sounds like a very simple idea, but really the simplest things are often the hardest to achieve. 

Also, part of the problem might be the teachers you've had until now.  I can classify myself as a poor teacher when it comes to how to develop an architectural idea.  I'm good at all kinds of aspects of architectural education (my students will tell you so), but teaching someone how to develop an idea of their own is not one of my strong points - I can tell you how I  would do it, and I can critique how successful you've been when you're done, or how well that idea is communicated to me through your presentation choices, but I'm not good at leading students into their own discoveries.  Teaching someone how to learn is a pretty high challenge.

Now I'm going far afield, but there is an article in the latest issue of Discover about how the brain works subconsciously in ways that are very difficult to teach - the examples are given of WW2 British plane spotters and Japanese chicken sexers who are able to state with high accuracy whether a chick is male or female or a plane is British or German but absolutely failed at teaching others how to do the same.  So the way people learn from them is to work side by side with them for a long time, and eventually they too pick up the skill, but can't explain the mechanics of how they know what they know how to do.

Stick with it, and keep trying, and absorb as much info as you can from designers - both your teachers and practitioners.  And don't be afraid to push your teachers to do a better job making sure you are learning - ask as many questions as it takes, and ask them to recommend resources for you to look at to help.

I have very many serious ideas.

But are they any good?

Thanks again to everyone who has posted something constructive. While I agree that Miles sounds a bit like a jerk, and perhaps even a frustrated architect in these hard times, he may have touched on an important contributing factor. I am prior service military which is as about as far away from the type of thinking and learning that that architecture school requires. I will admit that this has been a difficult road block at times. Donna, I think you probably nailed a major problem with me also. My last professor was let go after his only semester because of what I can only assume is his horrible teaching style. So many of the students, myself included, were reamed in our final crit because we didn't have a clear enough "big idea" and we hadn't explored those ideas enough. This has bothered me for months and I don't want to fall behind any more than I feel i have after that horrible semester. Maybe I do have a grasp on this already and am just confused as to whether or not I am correct in my understanding. I have read a lot over the summer about projects and how the were some "real architectural ideas" being explored in those projects. I just want to stay on the right track so I can succeed as an architect someday. Thanks again everyone.

Now we're getting somewhere.

Your training may be an obstacle in some ways but beneficial in others. There is no roadmap here, you have to find your own way. That means thinking for yourself, probably not something you have been encouraged to do so far.

Maybe a good analogy for you is tactics and strategy. Strategy would be the goal or purpose of the project. Tactics are the tools you use to achieve the strategy.

What you are going to have to do is develop a set of creative tools. While there is no field manual, there are various techniques of ideation and analysis that you should try, many of which will no doubt work for you.

The tools I use include disassembly (reducing a problem into smaller parts), critical analysis (defining in detail what needs to be accomplished, thereby reducing the number of possible solutions), rotation and inversion (literally turning things around/over to see them in a different way) and especially drawing, which for me is a lifelong practice that seems to directly stimulate my creative functions.

You need to develop the ability to see clearly. I'd suggest figure drawing classes. There is nothing like it for really learning to see. You might think you do, but when you try to transfer the image on your eye to a sheet of paper in front of you, you really have to observe. As a side benefit, you might even learn to draw a little. Don’t get discouraged, it is extremely difficult. It has also been the basis for classical architectural training since the Renaissance.

Your professor may very well have been taking out his frustrations on the students. Then again, he may have been challenging you to rise above yourself, which is what good professors do.

Keep in mind that architecture serves a very specific function and purpose and that grand concepts and bold theories often fail spectacularly (Gehry, Koolhaus, Hadid, etc.). Yet this doesn't keep them from being the kinds of examples that professors want students to strive for.

See this list of techniques for creative thinking, it may be helpful.

no need to be an ass miles.  it's a legitimate question.  not everyone had the chance to grow up with an architect as father. 

not sure what the hate is for starchitects, but sure do hope you ain't a teacher.  it is kinda ironic cuz your own work (or your da's) is not so different from 80's starchitecture itself.  even looks a bit like Gehry's work from 30 years ago here and there.  nice stuff by the way, for the time.

to the OP, what donna says is good advice.  it takes years to learn how to design and school is mostly practice for just that.  the technical stuff you can learn anytime, but the why of design is not so easy.  don't sweat it if it takes awhile to work out the process.  maybe is useful to be aware that that is what you are doing.  the problems your teachers are giving you are just a series of excuses to work out your own process, and if you treat it that way perhaps something happens....

maybe you need a methodology more than an inspirational idea.  design isn't all about new ideas, but synthesizing existing ones in a new and hopefully useful way. the same goes for the methodology: study how other architects have come to their ideas; you can't expect to invent a method or an idea from thin air.  

Miles, Ideological indoctrination is a reality at some schools, its no BS. In studio, professors will specifically push for what they know best, and sometimes this translates into a broader agenda for the university. My point was to ask if that was the problem at hand.

i dont see it as indoctrination
but sometimes, some students will

That last one is a very helpful post, Miles.  Especially the life drawing class, then applying those life drawing lessons to drawing buildings in real life from sight, too.

@F.T.B. I'm not arguing that ideological indoctrination does not exist in some schools, rather that it can be counterproductive to the process of creating competent architects.

I can't even begin to tell you the things I've seen from ideological architects - square holes (with sharp corners, no less) in fixed glass shower panels, double cantilevers extending 16' with no provision for structure, a single floor material (tile!) spanning three different structural systems (concrete to wood to steel), I could go on but I think you get the point.

One more: At a project meeting (in a prominent local office), staffers argued, with various geometric pseudo-philosophical convolutions, about what angle to set an accessory building at in relationship to the principle structure. Should it be 15 degrees or 22.5 degrees? Not one person considered site conditions, views of and from the structure, etc.

Architectural is above all a practical profession. Or at least it is supposed to be.

@jump I’m insulted that you would find any relationship between the Jaffe school of romantic modernism and Gehry’s empty deconstructivist philosophy. Gehry’ work from the 80’s is for the most part just plain bad architecture, though not on the scale of his recent atrocities.

565 Fifth Avenue, NYC, Norman Jaffe FAIA

Right, because thinking you're part of an elite with its own jargon and ideals is not a sign of indoctrination into that group. 

warning, this may sound a bit haphazardly put together as i am typing this in an open office situation.

what i usually do is.. i look at and mentally compile precedents, then i forget about them. say my studio brief is to design a dance & music center, i'd browse dance & music centers both built and unbuilt. see how the architects explore their ideas by looking at their diagrams. at that point, i would start dissecting and mentally thinking what they would have done better, and sometimes i start from there. not only this opens up your mind of design possibilities, your critique of others' work could be a starting point of design.

my (other) advice is to keep your eyes open on your contemporaries, contemporary architects through design blogs (dezeen, designboom, bustler..). this helps to sharpen your sense, and however it is you choose to approach or tackle a design problem later on, you'd do it with the sophistication of a designer..

Don't give up.  As other's have mentioned, I too didn't "get it" until the end of my second year.

Advice:  persevere, stay late, walk around and ask questions of upper level students, go sit down with a professor, go talk to people.  

Design is a very personal thing, but there are basic steps your professors should be helping you with (I agree is a strange question after an entire year).  It doesn't matter how you do it you just need to start to develop a process, a simple set of a steps you take to get from 1 to 2 to 3, etc.  

@Ryan002, you've missed the point.

Architectural is above all a practical profession. Where ideology conflicts with necessary functions (human, social, economic, technological, etc.), that ideology is a failure.

i.e., Gehry, whose Disney Concert Hall roasted nearby apartment housing and blinded both drivers and pedestrians with focused solar rays reflected off polished parabolic surfaces, is being sued for $300 million over systemic failures at MIT's Stata Center.

Despite that, he is a corporate starchitect, sought after for branding purposes, with the latest project being an $800 million pile of trash (literally) for the Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi.

"Architectural is above all a practical profession. Where ideology conflicts with necessary functions (human, social, economic, technological, etc.), that ideology is a failure."

An example of a successful, clearly executed ideology in built form is...?

"An example of a successful, clearly executed ideology in built form is...?"

basketism.

HAHA.

Interesting thread.  I too was a late bloomer, I didn't really start getting it until second semester fourth year, then I really didn't do anything really good and un-contrived until second semester fifth year. 

It took me a long time to realize that I was trying to speak without learning the language.  I  could not deploy architectural ideas of my own because I had not learned the language of the ideas that had come before mine.  Once I figured that out I settled down and started really seeing what I was doing, not just looking at what I was doing.  I realized I was trying to develop many concepts at once when what I really needed to do was find a single really simple idea and elaborate on it.  When I settled on that as a strategy all of a sudden things became clear and I started moving through projects with confidence instead of questioning everything I did.  The ideas started coming easier, because I had a benchmark idea to compare them to.  The best ideas began to build in a complementary way, making the whole of the composition stronger.  Kind of like making an argument, reinforcing a position if you will, using language, or like making music, where the harmonies reinforce each other in perhaps a really complex way, over a really simple basic musical idea. 

The other thing that was interesting was when I started seeing the projects develop in ways that were unexpected.  I hadn't counted on seeing things that were unfamiliar and unknown to me develop as I worked on them - I always thought I'd have the complete answer in the beginning.  When young architects finally grasp that idea I think that's the moment when a layperson, or a student, starts to become an architect.  That acceptance of surprise, of being able to tell the good ideas that strengthen the whole from the ones that don't, that ability to critique your own work, is maybe the most valuable thing you'll get out of an architectural education, IMHO.  For me it's also a skill that helps me play the chess game of life, the skill of looking a multiple alternatives and being able to pick the right one out of the group - at least most of the time.  :-)

I don't disagree with you on practicality Miles. I'm just saying there's always some degree of indoctrination, in any educational process. To think like an architect, as opposed to a military man, is simply indoctrination into another kind of...paradigm? Praxis? 

I don't see creativity as something free of indoctrination; rather, creativity is funneled through channels developed by indoctrination. A military strategist like Guderian or Patton is just as creative as any architect. It's just that their training limits them to different manifestations of it.

In short, I think that someone who can't explore an idea isn't necessarily uncreative. More that he may not have the right frames of reference. If I dumped you in command of a battalion under fire, right this second, how likely is it that your tactical creativity will shine? 

 jaffe1970s?

Stirling1970s

1978

Jaffe
Jaffe

Gehry, You should see the inside too

Jaffe 80s?

Koolhaas 2005ish

Im seeing some similarities, especially in the 70s/80s

miles why be offended that there are recognizable trends in your family's work? 

no one works in a vacuum and all the architects in the 80's, including your da, were all influenced by the same sort of things.  your father did some nice work.  it won't be looked on any better by saying that others are shit in comparison.

anyway....basketism seems to have covered it all.  what more can an architect do after that?  it's the ideology that makes all others fall to their collective knees.

An ideological challenger appears...

@Louis: What you see as similarities I largely see as differences. Your first comparison depends on a single feature (a faceted glass wall). Your second seemingly on the fact that both are buildings (Gehry's preliminary deconstructivist exercise and Jaffe's Wrightian one). The last pair compares a 1982 form exploration with Koolhaas' 21st century interpretation of the Star Wars Sandcrawler. Honestly, I'm not sure what Norman was thinking when he did that angled red tile roof ... (or a number of other projects as well). 

@Ryan002: The purpose of education is (supposedly) so that you don't get dumped into a position without the tools necessary to succeed.

@jump: I'm sorry if it sounded like I was trying to trumpet my father's work. As far as I am concerned, he had a few moments of utter brilliance in a long career largely spent kissing the asses of the rich (many of whom never bothered to pay). If Norman was a master of anything, it was of creating the opportunity to do the things he did (both good and bad). I am astoundingly lucky to have had the experiences that I have.

I detest Gehry’s philosophy and work, and see no connection between him and my father at all. As my father had done over 100 buildings before Gehry had done 20, the direction of influence, if there is one, should be clear.
 

hm, i don't think you know gehry's work, miles.  personally i find flw not so great a starting part for design, but even gehry did a few knock-offs in the c 1960 (check out his complete works).  he also did a lot of white boxes and total rubbish developer drivel.  i wasn't aware he had a philosophy.  As for similarities i was thinking spatial not particular the looks of things.

if we bring this back to OP, gehry is the kind of guy for whom process is entirely personal and concept is not something talked about.  It is pretty hard to work that way, much easier to be hard-liner like miles.  i find something in between a good way to work, but it is in the end something we all need to find for ourselves.  finding a way to work while in school is a great leg up but probably comes later. 

if it makes you feel any better le corbusier was filled with doubt well into his 30's.  so much so that instead of being an architect he ran a brick factory for years and talked about painting not design.

@jump: You don’t know Gehry’s philosophy? His house in Santa Monica is widely recognized as the first deconstructivist building. It sparked a movement in architecture towards exposure and abstraction of structure, incompleteness, and the defiling of logic.

If I’m “hard-line” (critical?), it is to developing the knowledge and experience necessary to be a good architect. By “good” I mean responsible and competent: able to put together sensitive designs that respond to the needs of client, program, budget, and environment. Aesthetics are but one part of a project. Which is one of the reason I have no patience for absurdist philosophies and pie-in-the-sky architects (a category into which my father fell on more than one occasion).
 

eew - you need a hell of a lot more thought into something for it to be a "thesis".  Just deciding a program is not what it is about, you could do that in any semester.  Can't really offer any thoughts beyond you really need to put some effort into it (for my thesis, we spent an entire semester writing papers, studying ideas, etc., to create that "thesis statement").

Gehry's process is, imho, not really advisable for the average person.  It is largely based on intuition and ideas of space and experience (if you haven't been inside a few of his buildings, you can't really state an opinion that isn't superficial), but the process as jump notes is highly personal.  Most people will just go in circles if they go that route.

Process is an essential part of any design/creative venture.  School should be giving you the building blocks to form your own process, if they aren't, then I'd talk to a prof about that.  I also don't think you should be designing buildings until a at least the second year, just too many limiting factors.

Miles, Gehry didnt sparked the decon movement. 
It happened simultaneously across the globe. thru individuals with shared interests, who were then brought together for the formal exhibition. Each one of them had a different approach. Deconstructivst philosophy was something Tschumi and Eisenman threw in after the fact.

there is a shared modernist sentiment in the work of Norman Jaffe and some of Gehry's work. I think thats about as deep as it gets, but the similarities are still there.

You need to read more. No need to have our feathers ruffled over funny shapes, only to then preach about sentimental approaches to architecture. Nobody cares about Gehry now anyway

agree.  nobody cares about archtiecture anymore, really.

don't think gehry sparked much of anything except his own career.  i certainly don't begrudge him that, and the buildings i have been in by him were all pretty good on all kinds of levels.  it would be a shame if more people like him did not emerge to take his place.  the world needs michelangelo's and brunneleschi's and Gehry's.

hard to say any one way of design gets to good architecture as far as i can tell.  ad-hoc self built or high-end fashion designer mansion can all be good, and intuition is as good as a complicated theory as long as it gets somewhere useful.  but shutting it all out on principal makes about as much sense as not raising the debt ceiling because some doctrine says its a no-no. 

Clearly there is no one way to design, we all have very different creative processes.

For me, being successful doesn't mean creating a pretty sculptural building or getting recognized for doing something outrageous. A successful architect can go back to a project 10 or 20 years later and find the building sound and functional and the clients happy and comfortable. Successfully combining the two - aesthetics and practicality - is what takes it to another level. Both aspects remain highly subjective.

Fashion is an interesting analogy for architecture. Styles come and go, and what was once recognized hip is soon passé, torn down and replaced by the latest fad. For the risk adverse, this may be a branded name (quite likely doomed to the same fate as the last fad) or the safety of neoclassicism.

Architectural idea = design concept + planning consideration

Done.

Where's my GSD diploma now?

#pleaseharvardineedadegree @Mohsen_Mostafavi

it would be cool if you can actually do that like in fb.. that way maybe you actually get a shot getting that degree. that is if mohsen mostafavi is an archinect member