go to school

an architectural education doesnt teach you much about the business of architecture, but it does force you to think.. you could very well design without an education and make some money, but you would most certainly suck.

You'd suck, talent wise, without a good education. Period.
There's a few that have made it without one, but it's rockstar odds, or worse.

Think of it like playing a piano, you can teach yourself a few things here and there, practice a few hours a year, but you can't expect to play Mozart or write a beautiful piece. You could get lucky, but what do you think the odds are?

That's pretty much what a good school does for you. It encourages and guides your creative talent, and in the end, you'll have years of practice under you and a solid foundation to build upon in the real world. You most likely won't be a Mozart (or Thom Mayne), but you will be able to confidently play in the 'orchestra'.

:-)

I have to disagree. Yes school certainly helps but I found it an insulting waste of time compared to the classes I could not take bec ause of the rediculous studio environment ( 4hrs 3 times a week?)

At one time architects learned through an apprentice arrangement. Not IDP. The business policed itself and for some reason it worked.

The fact is sashimi, you have to have prof. degree to get licensed so its all a mute point.

i do think school is very important, but i agree with evilplatypus on one part. i really wish i could take some more humanities electives and stuff like that rather than, say, structures. i don't know about you guys, but the way my structures class was taught made it a huge waste of time. just the same..

be cool. stay in school.

the reason the studio hours are excessive is because architectural education is popular and in demand, and school faculties need to cope with many mediocre students at a time and hope that a few turn out to be great. i dont think all architecture students in the world are as smart as you are, and are capable of choosing which classes would suit them better. i may be wrong, but this is certainly the case in india and other populous, developing countries.

and to get back on topic: either get an education and then practice, or design and covertly build sucky stuff and convince yourself that you are 'self-taught' for the rest of your life. if all you want is a profession and to make money, then do something else, seriously.

moot point, platypus, not mute point.

competence is a huge issue, and having 8 studios for an undergrad degree goes a long way illuminating who can hack it, and who's just a hack.

I agree, FLM - in a perfect world/curriculum, there would be more time for electives. My way around it? I spent 2 years undeclared taking what I wanted to - 4 humanites courses, a fine arts drawing studio, a programming language course in the college of computer science, intro courses to just about everything...finally, I began architecture school without the burden of gen-ed etc. I ended up having enough free credit hours to get a minor.

many points on this site should be mute.

Whenever I hear "moot," I think of the pina colada song.

i wanna tell her that i love her, but the point is prolly moot. you know i wish i that i had jessie's girl.

education is always important. school may not be.

...said twain to ando.

School is verrrrrrrrrry important for architects, but that doesn't mean it's done perfectly. I could have done with less structures and more art. Several internships helped me as far as the practice-oriented issues that people complain about so often, but I can see where those who didn't do internships would be at a loss. Those are the people who think they wasted their time in school...

to wander a little.....
what are your thoughts on taking some 'business' electives while doing my MArch? I think I get a couple electives throughout the 3.5 yrs and my current boss suggested something along the lines of small business operation since there is usually very little course content on actual professional practice.
Good idea?

hey justin, whats this, 10 days before starting school? if you are not going to be an architect, school is not that important. but even if you are not gonna be an architect, study it anyway. it is much more educational and useful than most arts and etc out there. plus its way more heroic as a study than home decoration and political science.

your architectural education hopefully will be the core of your foundation as an architect. make no mistake about it.

also, tado ando told me in 1988, he would definetly go to architecture school given the conditions. he was visiting morphosis who were my landlord and next door neighbors.

By all means, go to a school who's primary concern is NAAB compliance. These are very good schools because they will first teach you how to pass the professional exam. Second, they will teach you how to construct a building, and third how to put together an airtight set of construction drawings.
Don't worry about theories or design fads in school, these will be taught to you by the President or Owner of your next employ. These pillars of industry have been around long enough to now good architecture from bad and their designs show it.
Good luck on your new path!!!

haha thanks guys. yeah i don't want to give the impression that i'm against an architectural education because I'm all for it. I just hear a lot of people talking about how architecture is a "lesser" field than say engineering or medicine because anyone with enough practical experience can do it without an architecture degree. But with your comments I can now understand why it is really important. I cant wait to start my architecture education in 3 days! thanks guys

While still in school, one of my past employers went to see a lecture by FLW at the Univ of Oklahoma. After the lecture, he went to a nearby restaurant and there he was seated alone at a table- FLW. My past employer introduced himself and thanked FLW for the lecture. Of all things, FLW invited him to join him for dinner. About ten minutes into the dinner, the Univ of Oklahoma president of the Student AIA interupted their meal. FLW asked the president if he wanted to be an architect. The president said of course. FLW asked him "what the h#ll are you doing in school then".

Yes, today has different standards and you know why.

One of my professors, at the beginning of my 3.5 year grad program, kept emphasizing to our incoming class that there is SO MUCH to learn in only 3.5 years. At that time 3.5 years felt like an eternity. Looking back now I can’t agree more with that statement.

The truth of the matter is architecture schools can only teach us a fraction of what we need to know in the amount of time we spend in school, whether its 3.5 or 5 or 6 years.

Unlike many professionals today, who continue to move into more segmented and specialized roles, the architect is expected to have a good working knowledge of most aspects of design, construction and management. Architects are, in many ways, one of the few remaining “Renaissance” professionals.

Are schools wrong to focus most of their energy training students to become talented and thoughtful designers, leaving the “business” part of the equation to the time that follows graduation? I don’t think so. The value of an architectural education can be found in its ability to train students to become creative and thoughtful designers. Design is the foundation of this profession.

Ok archievil:
Design is the foundation.
When you look out your window and see those buildings that are designed by architects, have "your" professors (education in general) been successful?
Maybe it is my limited education, but it looks to me like 90% of all buildings could easily have been designed by an engineer.

the problem, imho, is that schools teach too much theory and other useless classes. I don't believe studios should be cut back at all. They are where you learn to think, to solve problems, and most importantly, combine all your skills while learning to design. If anything, I wish more schools would have a harsher program studio wise and weed out those that don't care.

Schools should encourge diversity in the education. Do we need 3+ structure classes? Nope. Only to take the test. Do we need 4+ theory classes? Nope.

Do we need professional practice classes and business management classes? Yup.


Oh, and to those starting:

You can get a minor at most schools and the classes that go to the minor will take care of GEd requirements. So this means you can get a minor in business (as I did) and those classes will take care of the million useless classes. I did this, although I learned of it late in the game.

Look into it. It's the best way to take advantage of the diversity of classes offered at a univ without killing yourself. Most schools should offer this - ask about!

college is a racket.

depends on which college though. vado.

Stay tuned for the upcoming thread:

No ONE Can Save Architecture Education

My architectural education was very important - for all of us.

one thing(hopefully not the only) i have realised about architecture so far is that most architects values are in total reaction (for or against) their education and educators. everything seems to be a reaction to the weaknesses in what or the way they were taught.

mhollenstein is onto something, though i don't know that i'd state it quite as definitively. if you were only exposed to architecture-in-practice, you would have no chance to develop a system of values for yourself because you'd be caught up in the short-term needs of each project every day.

architecture school exposes you to a variety of ideas, influential people (educators, peers, visitors to the school, etc.), books, and images. during this time you get a chance to define for yourself what the touchstones for your career might be, what your interests are, what your values might be.

not that you won't do this continually and that your interests won't shift, but this is focused time for that purpose. it gets more difficult later. and if you haven't gotten in the habits of exploration and continual learning that you get in school, you won't even try it anyway.

i learned how to practice architecture at work. i learned how to be an architect in school.

"if all you want is a profession and to make money, then do something else, seriously"

I think this is just plain wrong. This is the undermining philosophy taught in studios by never been to the real world professors. The fact is that in studio, the good people are already good. Your talented or your not. You can synthesize huge amounts of graphic and spatial data or you cant. School is needed to develop and sharpen these skills but Architecture schools go way too far in the wasted time catagory - somehow I think this is because they want to pretend their akin to doctors and lawyers but nothing could be further from the truth.

I think a healthy dose of capitalistic greed would do much for clarity of thought and purpose. Would you rather be a bit of a slut or never been kissed?

Steve Ward - The spark of exploration is spot on....Im just at odds with the 5 years and countless hours they claim it takes to develop. Not to mention its hard to justify a curriculum that has no direct relationship to the leagal description and qualification to be Registered Architect.

the most lasting thing i got from architecture school was tendinitus!!!

i don't think i was talented going into school. i could draw. that's it. i learned what i needed in order to be a good architect by being dragged through kicking and screaming - and by not succeeding (won't say failing because that has grade connotations) on multiple occasions.

finally in my third year of undergrad i 'got it' and i started learning for myself where i wanted to go. happily, despite the fact that i went a different direction from what my instructors expected/favored, i was encouraged to see what i might learn.

"registered architect" is something cooked up by bureaucracy to address health and safety issues and only addresses a small percentage of what it takes to be an architect. notice that the ARE has very little to do with ethics.

"I just hear a lot of people talking about how architecture is a "lesser" field than say engineering or medicine because anyone with enough practical experience can do it without an architecture degree." sashimi46

I guess those people don't know what they're talking about. Really. That statement pisses me off.

I'd say that the business / technical side of the profession is more easily learned in practice than would be the artistic / conceptual side, because the latter requires space and time all to itself to allow the underpinning ideas to percolate: time you won't get in an office.

It's often said that architects are rather hopeless business people. In effect this is true but the description is not: a lack of dedication to the profit motive is not the same as an incompetency in it.

Having been in practice for around ten years now, I'd say that commercial practice, say, hits one with a jolt at first. One feels ill-equiped for the job in hand and one also feels that the conceptual skills and artistic motives one has acquired have no outlet. This double bind I personally found extremely distressing and I know I'm not alone in this. However, things eventually blend together again. If you keep sight of your loftier ambitions then eventually you'll have everything you need to fulfill them should the opportunity arise. This isn't true of the self-taught practitioners, who often develop a wide-ranging and effective set of skills but, ask them to design a building of any complexity and, generally, the results will be appaling to the extent that few reach completion. Generally (again) at some point down the line, the design-build operation involved gives up and hires an accredited architect to sort the mess out...

Devil's advocate response:

There's a huge vested interest in the university system that includes major corporations, big business universities, lending institutions, etc.

Their marketing strategy is subtle and extremely effective: Get em while they're young and impressionable, and use primary school educators to push the product. Nearly everyone believes wholeheartedly that college is the ticket to a good life... but tain't necessarily so.

Although I think all of the information and lessons available through a university environment are potentially valeuable, they are extended in a manner that usually keeps a person out of the working environment for far too long. Getting a masters degree on top of a separate-subject bachelors can keep you in school to 30! This extended time, often filled with ineffective busy work, is linked to debt (secured income for lenders) and is an example of pushing a product for all the market will bare.

I think we need a system that allows for entry into the real world at an earlier age. I applaud schools like rural studio, BAC, etc. that are pushing this envelope. It would be good to return to an apprenticeship culture that actually taught students in the office environment (rather than viewing them as workhorses) and was combined with a parallel, possibly university based, theory/technique compenent.

go into the marines

Gabe makes some good points that I agree with, although less cynically.

People say Universities are not the "real world" but they are. Those enrolled students will have to compete against a workforce that is already out there working. The debt they are taking on is real. All they are doing is delaying their entrance into the workplace in hopes that they'll start with an edge that workplace experience alone cannot provide.

Many companies require people to have "a college degree" even if it has nothing to do with the job they are offering. In that sense I do agree that business, banks, universities and gov't are all in bed together. Also remember that keeping the young out of the professional world a few years keeps wages higher and unemployment low.

Not so sure how the whole system got started. Agree that college education isn't a golden ticket to the good life. Think far too many people go to college. Don't like the stereotype it has become, but don't want to get rid of it either.

I found an architectural education personally very important and rewarding, being an opportunity to be immersed full-time in studies and encounter or be exposed to many different ways of thinking and design that I don't think I could hope to have done if I had gone straight into practice.

It laid the groundwork, at least, working in practice is at least as important and generally people learn more in a shorter amount of time in a working design office than they have at undergrad stage (or at least that's what I've found from talking to a few people at my stage - year in industry after the BA degree)

However it won't be for everyone - what was Wright's quote about college/uni? something like " it takes perfectly good grapes and turns them into prunes " In the current climate it seems a kosher/professionally recognised qualification is increasingly needed, though the chances of getting a FLW/T'Ando out of the average first-semester engineering school dropout is vanishingly slim - exceptions to the rule who happened to be lucky in finding what happened to be right for them.
Right, enough rambling, back to those as-builts...

Lots of good advice on this thread. I tend to agree with the "Be cool, stay in school" line of thought as put forward by trace and ManuG and others. And of course Steven's comments are right on, as usual.

I'm going to re-post Orhan's statement: your architectural education hopefully will be the core of your foundation as an architect. make no mistake about it. You could change the word "architect" to "person" and have the same effect.

This statement reminds me again of a conversation Steven and I had - and Steven I hope I'm not stepping over a line in revealing it - about growing up going to church and Sunday school vs. not getting exposure to any kind of Christian education (or whatever religion - I use Christianity because that's what I was raised in) as a youngster: religious education includes a lot of information that is simply cultural education: the story of the flood and Noah, a creation myth, the baby in a basket floating down the river, a boy with a slingshot bringing down a giant, not casting the first stone aka people who live in glass houses etc. Having knowledge of the existence of those types of stories, whether you take them as religious doctrine or not, is a shared cultural knowledge.

My point being: denying yourself a university education deprives you of a shared cultural experience that will be priceless in the professional world. Not just for the contacts you make while in school, which are critical, but for sharing stories of all-nighters with others in the architecture field and stories of beer bongs and falling asleep in boring lectures with those who might one day be your clients. And you will be exposed to so many different cultures just walking around campus, you can't help but graduate as a more well-rounded and knowledgeable and inquisitive person than when you entered school. This is a significant factor in the "college education" requirement so many employers have: they want to know that you can start something and finish it, and they want to know that you have a similar exposure to new ideas and experiences to which they can relate.

Since I strongly believe in buildings as the containers of cultural memory, I think it's important to spend some time in school learning where to place yourself and define your goals for improving that culture - improving the world being one of our tasks as architects.

diabase I also agree with your comment - we are all the better off for your education ;-)

It's an important point you make Liberty Bell. An all-round cultural education is something that a higher education in architecture is recognised as providing. Moreover, the benefits of such a start in life aren't just professional: they're personal.

everybody should have an architectural education. think how much more interesting all of our conversations would be if everybody had this as a baseline.

nobody would get bored by archibabble at parties (+), but everybody would also branch out to other topics in order to distinguish themselves (++).

and i hadn't made the connection to our 'cultural education' discussion yet, lb, but that's right on.

for my 2500th post, i'll buy a virtual bourbon for lb.

Fun discussion! So, here're some other thoughts and generalizations this makes me think about:

Devil's advocate response v.2:

When we consider the internal workings of architectural education, a dychotemy is worth identifying: technical nuts and bolts education vs. arts education. The former would include structures, machanics, materials, business, detailing, CAD, etc. The latter would include theory, aesthetics, arch history, etc.

I'd like to take issue with the arts education side, especially regarding the application of arts learning into creative act - and suggest that there are ongoing flaws in how we learn to be creative / artistic.

I absolutley value studies of what other people have said and done as a helpful background and as a generator of that "shared cultural experience", but most educational programs still veil and mystify the creative process and generate a culture of imitation w/ insufficient focus on how innovation or creative improvements can be achieved. How do we learn to be artistic?

For all of our discussions and investigations, I think many students come through school still being in the dark about their own creative spark, sense of aesthitics, etc. The creative leap is obscured, intentionally or not.

Here's an example from Howard Gardener:

“Actually, the best example of the unschooled mind in the arts comes out of the university of Cambridge in the UK. In the 1920s a literary critic and poet named IA Richards did a study of Cambridge undergraduates. He published it in a book titled Practical Criticism. He took Cambridge undergraduates who were the best and brightest literary students. He gave them twelve poems and he asked them two questions about the poems:

1. what do they mean?

2. are they any good?

He performed one manipulation on the poems. He removed the names of the poets. (It is like going to the Louvre without the labels, right?) What did he find?

He found that the students did not have a clue about which poems were good (according to the critics) and which were bad. They rejected John Donne. They rejected Gerald Manley Hopkins. They embraced a Sunday poet who couldn’t get into the “Cambridge Chronicle” and, when they were asked what accounted for the quality, they replied: if a poem rhymed, scanned, dealt with a pleasant subject, but was not too sentimental, it was good. But if it dealt with philosophy or anything tragic or anything abstract, it was bad.

So, here you have very, very good students who have studied literature, who, when the book clue is removed (namely this is by a good poet, this is by a bad poet or by a non poet), display the same kind of taste that someone with no education in literature would exhibit.”

Gardener suggests in "The Unschooled Mind" that arts education needs more focus on documentation of the creative process (using what he calls 'process-folios') over critique of the finished product - which I find pretty compelling.

I've only gone to one school, but we were most certainly process-oriented. many projects had no typical "finished product" to critique...only ways of approaching problems and articulating ideas.

design school taught me to be critical and rigorous, above all.

I think we need to put more teeth into the educational requirements and do away with the whole IDP/internship thing. Insisting that education can't provide us with the proper knowledge to be architects only serves to lessen the value of our degree. Leading to the fact that we even have this discussion. I know of no comparable profession, who would ask this question. Should an engineer go to school, a doctor, a lawyer, a high school adminstrator. It's ridiculous that we are constantly asked to accept a second rate education because we will learn it in the real world of internship.

doctors do the same thing joshcookie.

as for idp, more likely the formal education as route to licence would go the way of the european system. not to dis my non-brit colleagues back in London, but the guys i worked with were all licenced upon graduation in spain, germany, holland, etc. they had no experience, and not much of a clue, and had to learn on the job just like here in japan and back in north america. i t think it is unavaoidable.

part of my job was to teach these licenced professionals how to design and draft plans that were buildable. which was for me at the time rather annoying as i had enough work on my plate already, and these kids were after all top students, with awards and everything.

my view now is thank god those guys weren't trained at technical shools, cuz they would not have been much use to the office except as cad monkeys. in a small office a cad monkey is a waste of money and space. thinking is where its at...hopefully you can learn to do that at uni.

I understand what you are saying jump. But a doctor with less than a year of experience out of school delivered my first child and did a great job of it. What I am saying is that our education isn't demanding enough from us. A graduate from a professional program should be competent to perform in the profession. We all need to practice in the real world to become good architects. The formal process of IDP for experience relies on the acceptance that the schools are incapable of creating competent architects, which I think is a false assumption. The problem is that IDP, noble as its aims may be, doesn't create a learning atmosphere where we can learn to be good architects. The medical programs are good at what they do and produce competent doctors that can perform in the professional world immediately upon graduation, why can't architecture schools? Medical residencies are more paticipatory than architectural internships and therefore, more useful. I have yet to meet an intern that started out in a firm doing more than CAD and "red line" pick-ups. I think studying the medical model for education and trying to better emulate it would go a long way in improving the education (and practice) of future architects.
Please don't misconstrue my statements as an endorsement of "trade school" architecture programs. Cadmonkeys are Cadmonkeys. The knowledge to practice competently in professional practice does not rely on extensive CAD knowlede. It does require a lot more business and management skills than the schools seem to think is necessary.

unless you're doing research specifically, medicine is a reactive profession not a synthetic one.

we as architects need grounding in the creative process and in finding for ourselves what is WORTH creating before we learn technical skills - or at least along with them.

i'm not saying what we do is harder than medicine, just that it's fundamentally different. we're only the same in that we are both considered 'professions'.

I would disagree that medicine is a wholly reactive profession or that architecture is any more "synthetic" than medicine. I would say architecture would benifit from many methods of discovery in medicine. Architecture needs a good "gross anatomy" course, where you disect a building and discover through a more hands on exploration. I'm not argueing for more technical skills, heaven knows I have worked in many offices where successful PA's have little to no technical skills. I feel that the two architecture schools I attended did little to help future architects understand buildings and how they work and the architects role in how they are built. These are fundamental skills that help an architect determine the value of what is to be built, and as such necessary in determining what is worth creating. I see the constant bickering of "real life" architecture vs. "Ivory tower" architecture as a created condition that we insist on perpetuating, neither benifits from the segregation, and both would benefit from their integration.

I would say that in general architectural education is quite important, not by teaching you the nuts and bolts (more on that in a second) but by giving you the tools to inject Architecture into the building process. Otherwise, what we do could be as easily covered by a technical school. Having managed people from both universities and technical school, its a noticable difference of not only "skill sets" but also attitudes. I can also generally tell whether the person learned on paper or CAD, but that's a different thread.

Now, I think anyone outside of academia will tell you recent graduates don't know the first thing about getting a project completed (especially if they've ever had to manage the young pups) and that's what interning is for. Begrudgingly (It might take a few friday beers) they will probably admit they were about as clueless when they left the ivory tower. It would be good towards the end of one's education to get more thouroughly schooled in the technical (both use/code and structure/utilities) aspects of the building process. A great thing for all colleges and universities to impliment would be a program in the vein of the "Rural Studio" at Auburn. Its a good way to phase out of academia (process, theory) and into the real world (schedules, cost-benefit analysis...)

I've found by asking not only senior architects, but also carpenters, plumbers, masons, etc... I've not only become a better architect, I've better learned how to inject design and be able to stand my ground when the dreaded "how much is your little detail going to cost me?" question comes up.

And for god's sake, will everyone impliment a business course for architects, because I for sure could use it!

I agree. The problem goes right to the heart of the educational process. It starts as a design and theoretical investigation and ends the same way. It would be beneficial to phase out the theoretical process and push towards combining what was learned and create something closer to reality.

Unfortunately, the schools are essentially run by theorists. To radically change the system would require #1 putting many of them out of business and #2 recruiting professors that want to teach the practical side of things (and the best archs out there, I am guessing, would want no part in that).

One memorable class I had was with Randy Jefferson of Gehry's firm (his engineer). It was all about the 'real' process of getting crazy designs built. That's what schools need more of - problem solving through creativity.