"This House Believes Schools of Architecture Should Be Dissolved"Project Context / SUAS Debate

Its hard to know exactly what Project Context stand for, if indeed they do have (or need) an overarching political motivation. Their manifesto is deliberately fuzzy or fluid, and their recent impressive efforts in reviewing graduate output are self-titled as both a 'research project' but also a 'mirror'. It is this second aspect that might be most interesting. By making a much bigger noise about what talented graduates of architecture end up doing (or not doing) post-part 2, hopefully some of those responsible at the top of architectural education (heads of school, course leaders and those in admissions) might begin to think more about why so many students feel unequipped for current practice, and why so many are unemployed.

Fluidity is a theme that cropped up again and again in the Project Context & SUAS-organised debate "This House Believes Schools of Architecture Should Be Dissolved". It was interesting that this debate was held at Sheffield, a school that has a reputation for challenging traditional models of architectural practice, though in reality is still part of a red-brick institution, and is still very much bound to conform to the requirements of the RIBA and ARB.

In the event, both sides on the debate began to meld into one, as it became quite apparent that the proposition team very well knew the value of the school of architecture and its graduates (especially in the sheffield mould); lateral thinking, spatially & socially aware, polymaths that developed a huge range of design skills and critical thinking over the 5 or so years they spent in architecture school. In terms of reshaping this model, the consensus was built around the idea that (especially given the construction crash) the route through architectural education needed to be more flexible and much less tunneled towards to become an employed 'architect'. Instead we should be offering different routes (and valuing those routes) to become writers, entrepreneurs, developers, planners, councilors etc. In order to achieve this clearly more work also needs to be done at the top (perhaps wholesale changes at the RIBA) to communicate the value of architectural skills and pull down the artificial barriers that are suffocating the profession. As put forward in the debate by the proposition panel: 'if we are so good at designing buildings, why are only 2% * of new constructions designed by architects?'

Alastair Parvin (Sheffield alumni now working for 00:/) robustly critiqued of the social disconnection in student projects, along with providing the evening with some typically memorable soundbites: 'we don't need active dissolution - if things carry on the way they are Schools of Architecture will dissolve themselves'.

Several other people picked up on the potential contradiction illustrated by this point, which to me became one of the most telling aspects of the evening. If there is a genuine feeling amongst graduates (such as those within Project Context) that the current pedagogy in schools of architecture and the relevance of the skills we acquire for todays market needs questioning - why is the celebration of the 'best' of the graduates (as demonstrated in the Project Context exhibition) still represented by a gallery of beautiful but abstracted representations, or to quote Alastair again; 'Trout farms on Mars'?

(*the source for this stat wasnt given)