Technical Design for Building Performance Knowledge Community

Graduate preparedness after architecture school is one of the biggest challenges facing our profession.  The disconnect between the profession as defined by registration boards, standard contracts, case law, and underwriters and the profession that is celebrated through the media and the style movements couldn't't be much greater.  Schools still appear to be all over the map in either blending these stark contrasts of our profession or electing to focus on theory, style, and rendering while leaving most aspects of professional practice to be learned through internships and the following decade or so of junior positions.

It's not a stretch to say that most architectural practices are grounded in solid service to clients with high expectations and modest budgets.  The daily effort to win work, administer design contracts, create good design, avoid conflicts, leverage successes, keep talent, and keep the doors open leave little time to carefully steward each young graduate through the long road to mastering professional practice.  The ability of most firms to complete the education process is severely limited while the burden of carrying staff with limited skills through long gestations presents steep challenges to managing risk and operating in the black.      

One solution is that architecture schools could coalesce across the full spectrum of the curricula to create more rigorous programs to provide the profession with graduates who are far more prepared to meet the challenges most firms face.  The schools could start by selecting entry level students that are committed to mastering the full spectrum of what architecture means to 99% of the practitioners and their clients.  Once graduated, students need to understand more than good programming, good design theory, and great rendering skills.  They need to understand the basic mechanics of how common buildings work, what clients expect, the legal duties and ramifications of being a registered design professional, the basic challenges of avoiding claims, and a solid understanding of standard contracts.

It's also no stretch to say the demands on the profession have simply never been greater.  Constricting schedules and fees, expanding regulations and risk, a profusion of project delivery methods and challenges, and the complexity and cost of mastering building information models and the near continual rendering process leave most firms in a poor position to assess and train each young practitioner for years on end.  The leisurely days of principals personally instructing young architects year after year evaporated for most in the 1980s when CAD created the first of many firewalls between the generations.  In 2012 there's simply no better place to train young architects to be more complete than while in school.