• Vocation - The Training of 'Architects': This represents the conventional wisdom regarding the purpose of architectural colleges – to graduate employable architects. There has been an increasing tendency to stop the search here, and focus education toward the practical training and skills necessary to ensure that students are immediately ‘usable’ by practice. However, even looking at it purely in vocational terms, this is a self-defeating proposition.
   
  An architectural practice can handle with relative ease a period of apprenticeship where fresh graduates can learn pragmatic issues on the job. This is possible since apprentices rarely work solo, and are usually assigned to work along with experienced colleagues. However, the practice is not organised to train apprentices in critical capabilities such as discursive thinking, analysis, and discerning judgment. This means that the practically trained ‘employable’ architectural graduate is useable largely on tasks that do not require much explanation or independent thinking. He/she is therefore usable mainly by the practice that stays strictly within the boundaries of convention. On the other hand, a practice that seeks to push design to the cutting edge will need architects who are trained to think critically and independently.
   
  A largely vocational orientation assumes that architectural practice is driven primarily by established convention. This is to a large extent the situation in India today, and it is therefore unlikely that the profession will exert any demands from education other than vocational skills. However, it is necessary to realize that a convention driven scenario leads to a lack of differentiation between individual practices, and this in turn leads to the market perceiving design as a pure commodity. A pure commodity is evaluated largely in terms of price, and therefore market driven competition begins to drive fees for design downwards. As many current practices will testify, we are seeing sufficient evidence of this happening.
   
  A vocational approach, while justifying itself by claiming the cause of serving the profession, is detrimental in the long run to the interests of the profession. It will assist in the continuing devaluation of design. This approach therefore defeats its own logic, and it is necessary to simultaneously connect to the philosophical purpose for colleges.

  AG Krishna Menon: This also means that the “ideas” are generated externally, and architects then tend to address an external “jury” for validation. In terms of the market for building products, this system establishes dependency on external sources for products and development.

• Philosophy: The College as a Site for Learning: Any discipline, in order to ensure its own vitality, must continuously seek renewal. It cannot be content with the current state of the art, and must always be seeking the re-evaluation and reconstruction of its own boundaries. In order to do this the discipline must construct sites for learning. The college, as a site that is relatively isolated from the distorting pressures that come along with the pragmatic exigencies of practice, is best positioned to be a primary site for renewal for the discipline.
   
  Colleges of architecture, in order to qualify as sites of learning would need to meet the following conditions:
  • Design as a propositional activity: While architecture, as a discipline, does require a core foundation of skills, those skills acquire value only when they serve a deeper set of propositions related to the human condition. Design must be seen as an activity that needs to rise above mere problem solving, and seeks to engage with such propositions in a critical manner. Design must be seen as a means of thinking, or else architecture must abandon its status as a discipline and become a mere trade.

    AG Krishna Menon: The need for research based pedagogy as a strategy for education instead of communicating known facts and skills.

  • Community of learners: A site of learning can only be constituted when all the members of its academic community are learners. In India we often operate under the fallacy that the only people coming to learn are the students. We must first construct colleges where the faculty members are learners, and student learning must follow from that.

    AG Krishna Menon: This means teacher-centred education instead of student centred education as it is practiced today.

  • Reification of learning: Learning cannot be left as an abstract goal – it must be made tangible through a process of reification by which drawings, models, documents, digital files and other tangible traces of learning are produced. The learning process must be reflected in such tangible signs, and all members of the learning community must participate in their production.
     
    Once the college is recognised as a specific site of learning, it must also become the unit of regulation. In India we often have situations where several colleges are attached to a single university. In such situations one cannot make the university the unit of regulation, for this would not recognise the individual characteristics of each learning community. While the university may place its own demands on each college within its domain, the regulatory process has to directly engage individual colleges, examining each as an individual site of learning with its own community and attendant practices.

    AG Krishna Menon: This is a tough one. The University can provide legitimacy in a world wide education network. The University system should however be made flexible to respect the principle enunciated above, instead of doing away with it a priori.

From unknown Sat Jan 17 14:32:22 +0500 2004 From: Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 14:32:22 +0500 Subject: self-regulation? Message-ID: <20040117140222+0500@www.architexturez.net>

However, I would intitally ask why architectural education could not regulate itself through its student research interests and master-guidance programs? Afterall, the university should be a place of teaching/learning and research, and it is not a place to practice architecture.

.H

From unknown Fri Apr 2 17:24:52 +0500 2004 From: Date: Fri, 02 Apr 2004 17:24:52 +0500 Subject: Vocation/Philosophy, Discipline/Profession Message-ID: <20040402165452+0500@www.architexturez.net>

[..Before we look at how regulation should take place, it is necessary to be clear regarding why colleges of architecture exist. Colleges can be said to exist for two primary purposes – vocational and philosophical:..]

I believe there are many candidates training to be architects, who prefer and endorse the vocational notion of architectural education. In the same spirit as professional education in India is perceived as a means to a secure, moneyed life, there are architects who want to be gainfully employed architects, and secure the practical training and skills necessary for the same. Sometime when I was in school, a few years age, I came across a one-page proposal doing the rounds. I talked about dividing the course into a 3+2 program, with a bachelor’s degree of some sort, and an exit option at the end of 3 years. Such an approach made some sense to me at that time, and still does, in fact, with certain variations. There are many students in architecture schools who do not really want to be in the profession. They are where they are because of some failed engineering or medical exams, or for lack of any other option. A senior-school graduate is often in much dilema about how to pursue one’s own life, and the least bit ‘creatively’ inclined often end up in architecture. An exit option at the end of three years, with the freedom to chase the MBA, the IAS, or the army, for that matter might be a happy for many. I once imagined a 3+1+x program, in which the ‘+1’ after 3 years of basic training, in case one opted for it, would impart the skill and training to create a profession-worthy work-machine, ready to be gainfully absorbed into ant architectural practice. The ‘x’ number of years subsequently, entry into which can be a continuum of 3+1, or a post-professional entry, could engage in disciplinary engagements, for the renewal and enrichment of the profession.

[..it is necessary to realize that a convention driven scenario leads to a lack of differentiation between individual practices, and this in turn leads to the market perceiving design as a pure commodity..]

[..The college, as a site that is relatively isolated from the distorting pressures that come along with the pragmatic exigencies of practice, is best positioned to be a primary site for renewal for the discipline..]

[..Design must be seen as a means of thinking, or else architecture must abandon its status as a discipline and become a mere trade..]

Agreed, that there is a shift towards the perception of design as a commodity, and a lack of differentiation between individual practices. However, isn’t this grouse based a lot on the notion of the Roark-like ideal, individual practice. Can we also account for the rising conglomerate firms all over the world, and on a tangent, the majority of architecture that is not built by architects? A section dealing with the purpose of Colleges of Architecture, might, as part of its philosophical/disciplinary discourse, address whether and how the realm of professional consultancy reaches the unlicensed domain. Marrying an institution to the pragmatism of practice could be one step to this.

From PremChandavarkar Fri Apr 2 17:54:21 +0500 2004 From: Prem Chandavarkar Date: Fri, 02 Apr 2004 17:54:21 +0500 Subject: Vocation/Philosophy, Discipline/Profession Message-ID: In-reply-to: <20040402165452+0500@www.architexturez.net>

>An exit option at >the end of three years, with the freedom to chase the MBA, the IAS, or >the army, for that matter might be a happy for many. I once imagined a >3+1+x program, in which the ‘+1’ after 3 years of basic training, in >case one opted for it, would impart the skill and training to create a >profession-worthy work-machine, ready to be gainfully absorbed into >ant architectural practice. The ‘x’ number of years subsequently, >entry into which can be a continuum of 3+1, or a post-professional >entry, could engage in disciplinary engagements, for the renewal and >enrichment of the profession.

Yes an exit option would be a good idea. Not only would it allow career changes it would also facilitate architecture related careers that do not require the level of design capability demanded of a licensed architect - such as architectural history, architectural journalism, facilities management. However, it is also possible that a specific college may wish to only offer the full five year professional programme, and we may not need to prohibit this option. Since this paper is not seeking to promote any specific version of curriculum design and is only aimed at articulating a regulatory regime this point did not receive detailed mention. I would imagine in the detailed design of the regulatory regime this would find mention as a possible option.

> >Agreed, that there is a shift towards the perception of design as a >commodity, and a lack of differentiation between individual practices. >However, isn’t this grouse based a lot on the notion of the Roark-like >ideal, individual practice. Can we also account for the rising >conglomerate firms all over the world, and on a tangent, the majority >of architecture that is not built by architects? A section dealing >with the purpose of Colleges of Architecture, might, as part of its >philosophical/disciplinary discourse, address whether and how the >realm of professional consultancy reaches the unlicensed domain. >Marrying an institution to the pragmatism of practice could be one >step to this. > Again - this is more a question of how the individual college constructs its curriculum. The regulatory regime must only recognise that colleges need to rise above mere vocationalism and should seek to deal with the philosophical and professional dimensions of the discipline. The regime should also give freedom to the individual college to design its programme as per its vision and goals. So this also seems related more to how an individual college makes its choices. I do not feel that the regulatory system should specify the mix of pragmatism and philosophy - the whole point is to get out of the top down control systems that currently prevail.

Prem