Doctors are only taught theories of modern medicine. It's their residencies and internships where they learn to practice.

I understand why people are miffed by current architectural education— it is, like Duany-Urbanism, very much a soft science. Even though there are rigid technical aspects to both— such as what kind of road needs to be built to accommodate the regular traffic of 10-ton vehicles or how much contact surface area does a 5000-psi-concrete pillar need to hold up 200 tons— there isn't much science past that.

At that point, architecture [and planning] becomes highly sociological— it's up to surveys and testing to discover what kind of impression a piece of architecture leaves on its users or why a new development failed to garner regular traffic.

Likewise, many of the theoretical aspects can be book-learned. I would argue that book-learning theoretical knowledge is a far, far more complicated task. There are very few people who can pick up Derrida or Edmund Husserl and gain any specific or practical knowledge from them.

However, technical architecture is a no brainer. Even if you can't do the math on paper, Excel is never far out of reach. Looking past the formulas, though, technical architecture is simply memorizing what details vaguely look like. Even if one gets the chance to design a custom window detail or a Lamborghini-hinged office door, most of these things are taken care of by vendors and manufacturers. You're only simply informing the engineering company, the glazing company or the plumbing company where toilets, windows and posts go.

There's very little on both theoretical and technical fronts you can't learn from books or the internet. Possibly the most important thing you learn in school whether it is architecture or planning is how to take a project from start to finish.

Doing a project, by yourself, isn't possible within the timeline of school nor does any school have the resources to do this. However, despite not having a real or tangible exercise, almost all schools do teach a student how to go from site plan to ribbon cutting.

I also feel like there's an emotional aspect that confounds the problem talking about schools, education and comparing one another.

No one likes to be told they're worthless. I mean, there are some people who like to be told they are worthless... but those are the same people who generally like getting their balls stepped on by a high-heeled, leather-clad dominatrix.

It beings to frame a very rigid, tense and intellectually dishonest group-think revolving around "we" versus "we" versus everyone else. This confrontation of technical and theoretical serves no one any purpose other than a thinly-veiled attempt to discredit one another. And petty bickering such as that discredits everyone when viewed from the third-person.

And when planners, engineers or even clients state what they believe to be important or what they believe to be effective in architecture, the claws really come out. And this caustic and poisonous rhetoric then aims to pedestrianize and patronize all outsiders as worthless and insignificant to the rhetoric of architecture.

Mr. JJR, I'm going to disagree with you about technical architecture.  It is not just textbook, no brainer stuff.  The circumstances always change.  There are always complicating or mitigating factors.  There is a lot of creative problem solving on the fly.  I've found this to be true if building onto or renovating old, complex structures with strange discovered conditions, also in industrial work with more challenging, interesting conditions, and in hospital work.  The real world does not work out like textbook examples and cad libraries present it.

Obviously, I will concede that I am clearly wrong and that overview was a bit unfair as read. I should have prefaced that with "in nominal conditions using standard construction whether that construction is the always-looked-down-upon EIFS-on-CMU or fish-tank Miesian modernism."

But isn't health-care and industrial architecture as well as renovations a bit of a specialization? I was merely talking in generalizations that one can always, if not discretely, look up a rise-and-tread ratio, a deflection formula or beam calculations.

'However, technical architecture is a no brainer...Possibly the most important thing you learn in school whether it is architecture or planning is how to take a project from start to finish?'

Really? You telling us a 22 year old from Sci-Arc or any school is going to graduate and have most or all the tools he needs to put something like this together from start to finish.

This seems to be the attitude held by professors and people who have never put a building together. Someone else will always figure it out. Even in some of the offices I've worked in, I get a few people with this mentality that don't understand material properties and how things age.

It's fine to dream, but let the dreams come later, learn some of the basics first.

I'll be lucky if I could do something like that from start to finish by the end of my lifetime, but this is what 18-22 year old are taught to dream....

every industry should have a research arm...this is what leads to advancements and improvements in design, materials, techniques...that benefit us all.

there isn't much built into the construction industry in this country to encourage innovation...most advancements come second-hand, through the defense industries, the space program, from other countries, or through social/political imperatives toward environmental responsibility.

think about this in relation to the sciences, pharmaceuticals, electronics, all of which invest a great deal of private (not to mention government) funding into R&D.

academic architecture programs function as the de-facto research arm of the profession.  is this ideal?  no, for many reasons.  but i wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater, because we're only shooting ourselves in the foot if we decide research isn't necessary.

i wish academic programs would make it clear to students that this kind of work occupies only a small part of the profession, so that students can plan more effectively for the future.  i also wish (so much more) that practitioners would stop being such luddites and get excited about something new once in a while, and incorporate design and technical research into their professional operations.  then, maybe we'd all get somewhere...

in ten years, whatever you'll be working on will have incorporated aspects of thet steven ma project, no matter how crazy it looks to you now. 

just like the wonder that is chocolate and peanut butter together --- can't we have both a drive toward technical competency and the willingness and ability to dream?  must they be considered mutually exclusive?  no, a 22 year-old, or for that matter anyone, will not know how to realize the structure you've posted, burningman --- and yet, it is a worthhwile creative exercise to think about what is possible --- at the same time, understanding the beauty and power of the Real, of how things really go together and get done is essential and rewarding --- if you engage in both, the flavors mix over time

what she said

architectural research does have some rigor to it, but for the most part does not seem to rise to the level of a true soft science yet --- the soft sciences operate in a more rigorous way, whether conducting ethnographic studies or using formal survey and observational instruments and the consequent analysis --- we must aspire

perhaps true, since it mostly consists of individuals working on small-scale explorations...but imagine if it could somehow be combined with the resources/needs of a large firm.

arup may be a good example...all that 'real' work didn't keep them from encouraging balmond, et al to dream...

"in ten years, whatever you'll be working on will have incorporated aspects of thet steven ma project, no matter how crazy it looks to you now."

I don't think so...

That kind of architecture would always remain rich kid's hobby.

I love Hernan, anyone can easily say, 'oh thats not buildable' its 'artsy'. But jmanganelli and Elinor are right at the point. and this is what i find most troubling and misinformed when people criticize sci-arc or any art or research in Architecture for that matter. Its usually because they just havent been brainwashed by these very institutions, or are lost in the world of sealants and change orders.

In the avant-garde this is just how it works, its messy. Youre in school to experiment, to fuck up, some basics are learned along the way, but its not the hallmark of the education. There are advantages and disadvantages, like the opposite approach of focusing on 'basics' which is just as likely to go nowhere. But somehow things evolve, and nice old buildings are torn down.

i do agree with you burningman, on the aging process. i was in a Rem building, and it was nice, then I went to a zumthor building, and it was waaayy nicer. and it really had to do with craft. but at the same time, i think. why is this so nice? its just sitting here in the mountains, would it be nice outside the mountains? next to the lipstick building in NYC? I dont know. but its standing up for something missing in some contemporary architecture.

Yet it has a flat roof, a green one, and large openings, and then I think. Somewhere, someone said, hey lets make roofs flat and mess with proportions. So this means people experimented. i think those were experiments and risks worth taking. Even if they took a long time before they looked as good as what Zumthor put together.

Technology is ahead of architecture, yet behind what people can think of. Thinking of new architectures, to me at least, is the magical realm worth delving in, even if its a thankless job.

So meanwhile.... i cant sleep because in science, this is whats happening: 

http://www.ted.com/talks/anthony_atala_growing_organs_engineering_tissue.html

this is the better link:

http://www.ted.com/talks/anthony_atala_printing_a_human_kidney.html

That is an interesting science, but not an interesting architecture.

Trying to engage architecture with biological concepts is just because of their lack of architectural creativity.

That is Horizontal extenions of concept whose objects or subjects belong to one same "plain".

However, true Art is always "Vertical movement". 

Looking at that kind of architecture, I should admit contemporary architecture is conceptually so retarded.

Maybe, architecture, in this time, is the only field where there is no Genius who can show us "another world". 

Maybe, that is why contemporary architecture should die...

kpf, early 90s:

award winner!!

kpf, 2008:

http://www.kpf.com/project.asp?R=4&ID=128

just sayin'................

"think about this in relation to the sciences, pharmaceuticals, electronics, all of which invest a great deal of private (not to mention government) funding into R&D."

The big difference is, of course, that the R&D is directly related to profits down the road.  It isn't exploration for the sake of making something "new", there is a hypothesis and a result (as in results, profits, etc.).

This is something that should be at least a discussion.  Research in schools is largely formal, largely self serving (if not 100% self serving, as in "gotta make a career for myself").

There is some interesting things being done out there, but not in schools (that I've ever seen or been aware of).

When architecture students and/or professors get venture capital funding, then it'll be a real story worth talking about.  Until then, it'll be banter restricted to students, professors and very recent grads.

(I do love a good pretty image/for/sculpture, but architecture's "need" to over intellectualize things has not done the profession any service)