Architectural Education part 1

There has been plenty of negative commentary regarding the annual RIBA presidents Medals and the irrelevant, dystopian nature of all of the projects - essentially bemoaning the fact that architectural education is still churning out graduates only trained in making nice images. This is only hinting at the real problem here which is the direction of the universities, their staff and their curriculums and not the students who are a talented bunch just essentially doing as they are guided.

In my experience of teaching the uppermost concern of the staff is how their student's work reflects on the staff and not the student's actual developing skillsets. There is a terrible vanity at the heart of architectural education that is reflective of the rather towering vanity out in practice where we still marvel at archiporn images of totally empty buildings, agonise over detailing just because it’ll “look good in the journals” and generally sacrifice societal usefulness at the unforgiving altar of aesthetics…It seems somewhat hypocritical to criticize students for doing the same – i.e. sacrificing all in the pursuit rich imagery as the work must by definition remain theoretical.

I’m not actually sure what I learned in the interminable five years at university – because I know I learned 10 times as much in two years of practice with an inspiring mentor. Something most of my contemporaries readily agree to. Which is bad news for 100s of very well paid, low pressure architectural teaching jobs around the country.

However Turkeys don’t usually vote for Christmas and the architectural education establishment and the RIBA will keep on rearranging the chairs on the deck of the sinking ship RMS B-Arch. We have arrived at a perfect storm of a prolonged construction downturn, massive university fees and an increasingly devalued profession and the water is lapping over the bows…

My ten pence worth of a suggestion: Architectural education as we know it should be replaced wholesale with a 2 year, high intensity, theoretical, creative course followed by 3 years of internships, apprenticeships and learning how the industry works by first hand working. No debt, no time wasting and young architects being both creative AND useful…Plenty of issues to thrash out but it increasingly seems like the only workable solution.

I’ll not hold my breath for this to be adopted but trust me – it’ll be forced upon us at some point through necessity and admissions dropping off a cliff.

@linearchitect .