Architectural Education

This subject is a big yawn. At least that's how it feels to me now a whole new generation of the high and mighty (Patrik Schumacher) are desperate to tell us once again how inadequate our architectural education is, while we simultaneously sell it as the best in the world all over the world, and mostly back to him as the staff to sit in his office wondering what to do.

I am only writing this because one of my more prepossessing students today expressed the situation to me thus:

' If I don't have a confirmed design by Easter, you'll probably be visiting me in The Priory'.

Indeed there is much thumb twiddling and nail biting going on, and not just amongst the students. I took a welcome break from it all by thumbing through some old editions of the AR from '67-'70, which look somewhat surprisingly just like the AR as relaunched a couple of months ago. What was refreshing however about the old editions was the sheer volume of bollocks drawings of Cumbernauld and potently picturesque heaps of Gateshead concrete filling the pages. Aaaaah! I sighed, working towards some godawful HKPA in Cambridge and welling with nostalgia, it was so simple back then.