Education Vs. Practice

It is interesting while working through this Live Project to note the comparisons and obvious discrepancies between what we are taught at University and what we do in practice.

The major concentration within education and learning at university today is primarily on the design modules; teaching students how to create fantastical environments and habitable spaces based around a magical world where seemingly economics and politics are warped and inconsistent with reality. Students are surprised when reality dawns on them in their fourth year, when they finally [hopefully] recieve a placement opportunity and discover that their once highly accredited "Nanocomposites with photosynthetic coatings capable of generating energy" are but a hope or a dream [at best]!

Design at university takes very little into account of todays actual architectural responsibilities. We were today asked to produce a 'feasability study document', after an air of silence an example was produced; it being quickly decided that even in practice we had never been asked to create such a document.

We are of course encouraged to push the bounds of architecture, to perhaps go "where no man has gone before" but where does reality begin, and the realms of futurism begin?

"Zero Carbon" - a buzz word thrown around by the government a lot today is discussed as meaning very little; but how much of this knowledge is passed up beyond university teaching? Do architects help their clients understand that "zero carbon" is an almost physical impossibility - is it even the architects responsibilty to head this discussion, amongst his or hers' other responsibilities?

Of course, amongst design, technical knowledge is critical, the architect must produce specifications, diagrams, feasabilities, letters and emails... the list goes on... All these things vastly out-weigh that of design, and yet, these documents rarely appear in design portfolios.

This is not all to say that design is not important - far from it! Design is crucial, however, students are wrapped up in a design bubble believing that they will be sat behind a drawing board or computer churning out magnificent and glorious monuments for society for generations to come; the reality being that they will in fact, most likely be slumped at a desk, orchestrating the many crucial cogs in the vast architectural machine attempting to appease and satisfy a forever developing brief in an ever developing [declining] economy.

It's been a while...

The last couple of weeks have been quite interesting to say the least!

After converstations with our supervisors we agreed it was the right time to start getting to grips with the process through which our project would have to go through to eventually get built. So we decided to arrange a meeting with a University employed Project Manager to discuss the process from start to finish and ti find out if/how they could assist us along the way to ensure that we met all of the minimum requirements to ensure that we did not hit any [proverbial] brick walls; which is why we felt it neccessary to have the meeting now rather than further down the line.


The general feeling at the time was that the meeting with the Project Manager was beneficial and was definately eye-opening for Gareth and myself. We already had an idea that the process would not be straightforward, however we were slightly surprised to learn just how complex it actually is! We came from the meeting with a long list of names from pretty much all of the maintenance and management departments within the University along with a couple of council boards who would also have a say. This itself was not a major problem,(partly as Gareth seemed to know most of them anyway) but mainly as it was the one of the reasons for having the meeting in the first place. The other reason was to get someone on board to assist us through the process, helping us produce the right drawings and documents.. We were kindly 'offered' the services of an external consultant, costing 7% of the overall budget.


Prior to the meeting we were both quite optimistic about our budget, believeing that we were actually being quite restrained in terms of what we were designing. However... The Project Manager, who had himself just completed a similar project within the University, was less than optimistic and started throwing ball-park figures at us rendering our 'conservative' design (at the time) majorly over budget. Whilst being pretty demoralising it was actually a valuable experience for us as future architects.

So...

Since the meeting two weeks ago, we have been extremely busy producing new documents (clarifying business structures and contacts) whilst pretty much having to go back to the drawing board, coming up with a more scrutinised proposal.

I'm glad we had the meeting when we did, and now we can proceed with the project with this knowledge in mind to hopefully minimise the possibility of any problems down the line... touch wood!