What does it mean to be an Architect?
Giancarlo De Carlo says, "it [the riots] was a question of rediscovering the reasons for being an architect in a world in which academics and power brokers, men of apparently opposing sides, had long accepted and which they, the students, for good reasons had refused" (4). If you ask an undergraduate student right when they get into school, what does it mean to be an architect, their opinion will be much different once they graduate. This is not because they don't understand architecture or architects, but because the academia of architecture school is much different than of the real world. Unfortunately, no one understands this until they actually work in a firm. Architecture is all visual. They say that architecture school is the one chance you get to design outrageous buildings with no budget or feasibility. I find this absolutely absurd. There is a difference between creativity and just plain nonsense. I think architecture school must change in a way that truly prepares us for the real world without sacrificing our creativity. There is no issues with learning Revit and Rhino at the same time so that you can be practical and creative. In reality, more often than none, firms barely even use Rhino. Did you know it was originally created to design jewelry...
Think about that.
So, what does it mean then to be an architect? Both. Designing with creativity and feasibility. Not all beautiful buildings are functional and vise versa. Architects are the merger between dreams and the real world.
What does it mean to you?
Kimani,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. I think that architecture school has not quite figured out how to successfully integrate people for the real world of architecture. I also think it prepares people for a life of sadness because usually the people who enjoy school get into the real world and dont ever get to design anything. Most professors say that if we taught school the way the real world works, everyone would drop out and we would have no graduating architects. The idea of architecture is problem solving and not every problem has a solution that is grand and beautiful. I hope that people who become architects in the real world have an appreciation for problem solving in the small minute details and they feel happiness not only when they make something "cool"
Kimani, totally agree. It is so rare that a firm actually uses Rhino or any high tech design software of the like for their process unless it is with some enormous experimental firm like Zaha Hadid Archtects. Realistically, many of us will not work for these kinds of firms and thus it could seem futile to learn to use these kinds of softwares. However, the intention is not to merely educate us on the programs as a way to produce drawings for somebody else but instead to allow us the familiarity of these programs as a tool to further our creative processes as designers. Many other schools lack in fostering this creativity and thus their students end up primarily being hired as draftsmen and not as designers like we are.
ReplyDelete