Find a Balance Between Academic and Professional

Three years ago, I thought about this question when I was considering whether I am applying for grad school in my original country China or in the states.

My undergraduate school is like most architecture school in China, which provides five-year architecture program and students are required to have internship in the first semester on their fifth year before returning to graduation design and thesis. Most professors in my school are practising architect, they have their own design studio ,they teach,  practice and have real project under construction at the same time. They are the true responsible architects with many years of experience the always let us students aware that it is really important to establish the idea of regulation. Therefore, most of the critics that we got from the review or presentation are related to codes or the most economic and efficient way to design your layout, or whether your drawings are correct and readable not. Personally, I really appreciate the way that my previous professors taught us, since they help us lay a solid foundation on our basic design skills and prepare for the professional practice after graduation. Therefore, many of us didn't feel much difference in the design institute and have clear awareness of what/ how we are doing in the project after graduation and practice. However, in those five-year study, I feel that I was doing my design in a limited box,  we didn't spent enough time to develop our design concept but were pushed to next stage of develop detailed drawings rendering and construction detail.  In the end, the final project looks somehow lose its identity since most of us got more influence from design codes and existing prototype.

As for the grad school, most architecture school in China use tutor system, which means when you admitted to the architecture grad school, you're also going to work for the professor , who also could be recognized a practicing architect,  you have chosen in the next three year.  Therefore, some of my classmates in undergraduates school also call his/her tutor "my boss", since the work they did in grad school is almost the same work in the real professional setting. Many of them are called to work overtime from their tutor even before the grad school started and throughout all the vacations they have. And this type of work usually got little paid or even none, because you are "studying" under your tutor in grad school.  So what they learned in the grad school greatly depend on the tutor that they chose. A good tutor could provide you a very good start of your professional career, an irresponsible tutor will treat you as a cheap labor make you a drafting/drawing monkey to help him earn more money, and your design ability and strategies are still limited after three years.

My undergraduate school could train you to be a qualified architect in professional setting, however, I personally feel it lacks part that make you consider the design strategies, which I think it is the element make an architect competitive and distinctive. Considering all of these, I decided to make up that undeveloping part in my education in another path: choosing to continued my graduate study in the states, where I could have more opportunity to learn more design strategies and concept development systematically based on the basis of my undergraduate study, and prepare to be an architect equipped with both academic and professional knowledge.

The first project: Refugee Center in our first semester, I started to think about how should develop the whole program in the building, which in my previous college, the program is already been given and not gonna be changed, then we spent a month to develop concept and strategy of how to make the building more welcoming and respond to the climate, how the form co-exist to the  environment.  Like Harbraken mentioned: "Only by a return into every day environment can our professional establish a research agenda of its own." School is where you could have more freedom to discover strategies in everyday environment before going to practice, and I did feel I made a right choice to be here.