How to become an architect? As Covid-19 is well past, students and their parents have resumed visiting university campuses. To my delight, students are showing a growing interest in architecture programs. At the institution where I currently teach, administrators welcome this uptick in campus visits, and, like many of my colleagues, I enjoy giving tours of our facilities to prospective students. It is always a special time to showcase our strengths and encourage high school students to consider our program; all the while revisiting why we, as faculty, opted to join an institution of higher learning.

There is no official scripted presentation during these visits; content is up to the faculty to select. Nevertheless, it is de rigueur that emphasis is given to the multiple strengths of the architecture unit; covering the program’s basics, including degree nomenclature; curriculum sequencing; facility offerings; student population; student organizations; professional internships; off-campus opportunities; and our required 5^th year thesis. To assist in these tours, student ambassadors regularly join and are instrumental in answering questions.

Narrative about architecture education

While I have developed my own narrative that covers many of the important areas, I include a philosophical stance about the nature of the profession and stress the important social position of becoming an architect. During each tour, I highlight my message by promotion the identity of the program, although after decades of teaching in various institutions, my comments are mostly autobiographical and are my aspirations of what an architecture program should offer to future design students.

This, for the simple reason, that I believe the education of an architect to be a cut above any program’s self-proclaimed stance (i.e., the art of making), thus there is the need to balance the accuracy and strength of our program with a larger perspective on the state of the profession. Perhaps for the simple reason that the education of an architect is about gaining access to a professional degree.

Students and parents

Any content delivered to prospective students needs to be meaningful, inspiring, and memorable. It cannot simply be a generic description of the program. That is the worst way to advocate for the identity of an academic program. I want to convey the distinct identity that entices the student to project a memorable image onto the experience. In our case it is both product (degree) and experience (what they are becoming). I favor envisioning with the students what they might do in their future—both professionally and academically—rather than having them merely see themselves sit at one of the large design studio desks during the tour.

For me, this is particularly significant, as students tend to see their future education based on their own dreams, or at least what they think their dreams are at a particular moment in their lives. For parents, I have come to understand that their maturity allows them to read between the lines of my presentation, and to recognize that any message carries a positive and enticing vision for a contemporary education of their child. Not withholding that parents remains integral to the decision-making process when choosing an institution. Thus, for me, tours are tailored for both students and parents.

A personal narrative

Over the past years, I have shared with prospective students a personal narrative about what an architectural education is and decided to write a blog about these thoughts. During the tour visits I talk of my personal pedagogical vision and the renewed role architects are going to play within society. Thus, I realize that I am seeking to balance the strengths of the program while projecting an ideal program of architecture; one that partakes in the complex issues that alumni will face upon graduation.

Therefore, there is the imperative need to articulate innovative ideas surrounding an education based on the future of the profession. The following personal reflections are offered through five points, themes that I have countless times shared with prospective students and their parents. They are part of my aspirations that convey my enthusiasm to prospective students considering architecture as a profession.

1. Five-year degree: a liberal arts education

I graduated from a European architecture program as a registered architect with a master’s in architecture (a six-year 4+2 program). While this educational model is slowly gaining traction through US programs under the nomenclature Integrated Path to Architecture Licensure (IPAL)—known commonly as registration upon graduation—I regret that it is not widespread in the United States. However it does exist.

For IPAL to be widely accepted across schools of architecture, there needs to be a fundamental cultural change among both academia and the profession, but particularly with practicing architects who tend to favor a traditional approach to becoming a registered architect. Many alumni have told me this is because they cannot envision a new generation engaged in another path than theirs. This means that most students in architecture will continue to gain their degree in architecture after five years (B. Arch.), followed by a three year Architecture Experience Program (AXP), previously called Intern Development Program (IDP)—which is required by NCARB, the American Licensure regulatory body for architects. This path allows students to become registered and call themselves architects. On my tours I explain the various degree nomenclatures and find relief as we clarify the available architecture degrees.

Within this context, I find that a five-year degree (Bachelor of Architecture, B.Arch.) remains a strong educational path to gain a first professional architecture degree, versus other paths (Bachelor of Arts (B.A) + M.Arch.) offered to students to sit for registration. As faculty, we know that five years is an extremely short amount of time to learn how to be an architect, to develop critical thinking, communication, and problem-solving skills. Thus, I encourage incoming students to not simply think that architecture schools will teach you how to design, but let them know that they will be asked to delve into architecture as part of the history and theory of its discipline, while honing their skills in a culture of construction that deals with real sites, real constraints, and real people.

2. Current Undergraduate curriculum

I have always defined the academic sequence of the five-year B.Arch. along three major segments.

• First and second year can be defined as foundational learning years, the first one about design issues while the second introduces basic disciplinary techniques and skills.
• Third and fourth years are about consolidating the fundamentals by learning the hard-core stuff of how buildings work; structure and issues of life, health and safety. Fourth year is both an extension of third year in our institution as we have opted to enroll students in a required integrative design studio, while other options allow students to travel and experience their own Grand Tour through a variety of signature programs.
• Finally, after two years of fundamentals, and two years of consolidation, the student’s fifth year is dedicated to a year of independence, typically conducted as a self-directed architecture thesis with a mentor.

3. Teaching and learning

The above curricular sequence is typical in most architecture programs nationwide. However, it is in the way that curricula and learning are manifest that make a difference in the role of teaching (faculty) and learning (students) among programs. In my institution, one favors an autodidactic approach to how students learn, letting them experience and formulate questions so that faculty can respond appropriately.

This Socratic method of having students ask questions and faculty answer—often with other questions—is designed to stimulate critical thinking. With all of its strengths, this method at times tends to subsume a more directive approach where basic knowledge and techniques are imparted for students to take a stand on precedence. The richness in our institution is that students can find a balance between pedagogies, thus an ability to choose faculty and creating their own path of inquiry.

For me, the responsibility of educating architects that has been entrusted to faculty by both students and parents can be summarized as follows: In any design field, translating ideas into space is paramount and shall always be accompanied by a sense and desire of creating an atmosphere of wellbeing for its users.

Academia is legitimately concerned by process, intellectual acuity and most importantly, having students learn about Architecture with a capital A. Sadly, this pursuit can be at the expense of ideas that are more mundane and human centric such as conviviality, empathy, happiness and accommodating users with disabilities. Intellectual rigor is a technique that any designer must eventually master, but without a larger sense of purpose, any strengths forgo the importance of the human condition, a sine qua non for design excellence.

4.Democratization of design issues

If one believes that design issues are not at the forefront of a major segment of society, think twice. Browse through any magazine at your nearby bookstore, grocery, airport newsstand and you will encounter journals of all sorts that are content rich in design excellence, where each page is meticulously curated and designed with tact and sensitivity.

When visiting IKEA, The Home Depot, or Lowe’s Home Improvement on any busy weekend, you will find hordes of neophyte customers shopping and dreaming of building something; or wanting to rearrange their domestic spaces as if they were architects or interior designers. If design issues are part of their desire to shop, I always ask myself why their creative needs do not—for larger and more important projects—include design professionals such as those that we are training.

Regardless of the complex answers one may bring to this question, the democratization of design issues has increased exponentially—especially during Covid—thus, during each of my campus tours, I share with prospective students that there is no better time to enroll in an architecture school in order to gain the necessary expertise to respond to this ever-growing phenomenon.

5. The new role of architecture

The design professions have an amazing chance to contribute to the greater good. I remember both the Greatest Generation (that of my parents) being defined as working within an established framework. That ‘assigned’ box characterized many careers and must have been stifling given what I know about today’s opportunities for my students. My generation—a late Baby Boomer—was asked to challenge the box, the status quo, and, with this newly acquired freedom, be more daring in how we thought of our careers. In my case, an architecture career that merged into academia and included several administrative positions.

The generation that I currently teach no longer has any box as a stable reference. Thus, they are often confused and at a loss for how they should proceed professionally. In fact, this is great news. I tell my students and prospective students that they should embrace this temporary incertitude as they will, for the first time, be able to practice as they wish and make contributions never seen prior to their generation. As long as one can dream, I believe that opportunities are endless.

Conclusion

There is no better time to enroll in an architecture program. The challenges are immense, new, provocative, and require intellectual daring and professional insight. To end this blog, I am reminded of a conclusion I wrote previously about the future of architecture:

I am comforted by its abundant use [architecture]: i.e., the architecture of the brain; the architecture of the electrical car; a strategic architecture of warfare; the architecture of healthcare; a new security architecture for East Asia; the architecture of the Kyoto Protocol (on climate change); … architect of mass human rights abuses at the border; and, “America led the world in constructing an architecture to keep the peace” (President Obama’s 2009 Nobel Peace Acceptance Remarks).

These examples no longer suggest the architect’s métier is solely providing buildings, or more correctly a work of architecture. But as a verb, in those daily uses, architecture reflects back to its original meaning. Its Greek origins remind us that architecture is the combination of two leadership roles: ἀρχι- “chief” and τέκτων “creator”—a maker and not simply a building. The connection of those words legitimizes our art form, but perhaps most essentially, we can now envision a renewed interconnectivity of our social and public roles to provide a model of life, and through this to regain our role as architects beyond the mere making of art/buildings.

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What does it mean to provide LEADERSHIP in architecture in the second quarter of our 21^st century?

What does INNOVATION in architecture mean in the second quarter of our 21^st century?