Time to Get Real

 

The traditional studio format in architecture school seems immune to scrutiny and resistant to change, and N John Habraken would call this a lingering symptom of a stale method of architectural education. Architecture schools need more and more to take a stance on the kind of architecture that students are to produce. If there is to be a higher emphasis placed on producing high-quality, well-designed “background” architecture, then studio curriculum should start to devalue or revalue the concepts of “Capital A Architecture” and the mythos of the Starchitect as anything but an outlying egoist, however talented, and focus instead on exceptional examples of everyday architecture in fresh and contemporary contexts. The end product may feature less high-profile programs and start to consider projects that are designed to blend in with the urban fabric, but this shift would represent a more present and applicable kind of architecture.