Considering M Arch programs
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I'm guessing this is the place to find the architects.
I'm considering the possibility of pursuing a M Arch degree - any thoughts or suggestions?
some background info:
I have a BS in English from UW-Madison. Incidentally, I also studied mechanical engineering for a couple years there. I am the owner (and operator) of a 3D modeling and rendering business, currently located in Madison, WI. I'm 28, married, and will be moving to the St. Cloud, MN area next month.I know that I enjoy the creative process, and I've learned that I enjoy architecture, but I don't know if an M Arch program is the right place for me to take my next steps. I would like to get a better picture of what it looks like to study architecture, and ultimately what it looks like to be an architect (or something related). I would appreciate any information, references, or other suggestions you may have to help me with this.
peace!
Nick -
Nick, this is a topic that deserves a well-considered reply, and I'm unfortunately too busy getting ready for 3D Basecamp to carefully give you my thoughts on the matter. As someone who both went through an M.Arch. program in my late thirties and who currently teaches M.Arch. students, I like to hope I have a perspective on this that might be valuable to you.
I promise to get back to you at first opportunity.
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Lewis, I appreciate it! Looking forward to your reply. No rush, this isn't a tight deadline kind of consideration.
peace,
Nick -
@unknownuser said:
Lewis, I appreciate it! Looking forward to your reply. No rush, this isn't a tight deadline kind of consideration.
peace,
NickI came back from 3DBC to sort of a backlog of work, Nick, so give me another day or so and I'll hopefully have a chance to write something that isn't completely cynical from the stress of it all.
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ha! I'm not sure a cynical perspective would be such a bad thing to get a full spectrum view of the experience.
I've had opportunity to chat with a couple professionals in the field and also have appointments with two profs at different universities.
My understanding is that there are different ways you can go about pursuing a career as an architect - pursuing creativity, design, awards, etc. or pursuing money, clients, work, etc. Gross generalizations recognized, I want to be the former. It fits my personality and philosophy of life in general. I'm not going to live my life chasing money - God will provide for me and I'll see what good I can do in the meantime.
I'm also not clear on what it takes to get into a program. I imagine, like anything else, there are many variables among many different schools. My undergrad grades aren't fantastic, but I don't think they'll make it impossible either. I've heard that at least some schools place high value on creativity, interest in architecture, and artistic ability. Those are some things I can work on - those are the things I'm excited about
Hope you are doing well. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.
Peace!
Nick -
OK, let's talk about architecture schools and the Master of Architecture professional degree (typically a 3-year-long program...and I'm referring to the US degree and US procedures for licensing, because I am only familiar with those).
Keep in mind from the beginning that an M.Arch. qualifies you for nothing, other than allowing you to begin the increasingly difficult process of assembling enough intern architect "experience" (experience as criminally-overworked and illegally-underpaid "drudge-serf," in other words) which itself only qualifies you (after an average of 7 years, currently, no matter what the propaganda says) for sitting for the Registration Exam. (An aside--a major rule change passed yesterday, now making it more difficult to accumulate drudge-time since your "experience" expires. Expect the drudge-serf phase of your career to lengthen considerably.)
You legally (in the US) cannot leave a school and go practice architecture without completing your drudgery-serfdom stint (called an "Intern Development Program") and then passing the Exam (unless of course, you bribe someone, although no one really talks about that--which doesn't mean it doesn't happen). Most architecture programs do not provide anything in the way of useful skills that would help you through your internship drudgery-serfdom, or even help you to acquire a position as a drudge-serf. For that matter, most accredited US architecture programs with which I am familiar also will not provide any particularly useful skills for actually being an architect, assuming you (unlike, apparently, better than half of all architecture school graduates) survive drudgery-serfdom and the exam and still want to have anything to do with the profession of architecture.
(Another aside: the program where I teach currently, the Boston Architectural College, does provide technical training, and it is something of an exception in this. Its program demands concurrent degree study and internship, so it takes longer but in theory you finish school at the same time as you complete your drudgery-serfdom stint. So there is a greater emphasis on helping you get an internship position, and unlike with most schools you do get a certain amount of technical training. This is held against the BAC and its graduates by more typically-programmed schools and their graduates, who call it the "trade school" method and are very prejudiced towards it.)
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Lewis - You say that you must have caught Tom Kundig at a bad part in his life, but from your subsequent posts it looks pretty obvious that what he said was spot on.
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@johnsenior1973 said:
Lewis - You say that you must have caught Tom Kundig at a bad part in his life, but from your subsequent posts it looks pretty obvious that what he said was spot on.
Yes, it was. But I really wonder how he feels now that he is at the top. I did try to contact him a couple of years ago--I'm not sure why, perhaps to ask him for an internship position for myself--and he didn't return my call.
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This is totally outrageous and unacceptable. I say we rebel.
... so much for any fleeting thoughts of starting a second career in my mid-fifties.
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So then, does it really matter where you go to architecture school if you want an M.Arch?
Most architecture schools claim that their true business is teaching you, the student, how to Design-with-a-Capital-D. Design in fact plays a very small role in the real world of architecture, but in the academic (non-real) world it is everything. Many instructors (called "critics" in this arena) go into teaching just because of that...and perhaps they couldn't make it in the real world of getting architecture built, or they simply loathed all that sordid-but-necessary business of dealing with clients, contractors, costs, and so forth. And even though non-tenured faculty don't make much money, it is often a steadier income for an individual than real-world practice (talk to any residential architect right now about how steady work is, if you want understanding of that situation).
And architectural academia is also a route for getting ahead for some architects...the whole drudge-serf-associate-architect-principal continuum in the real non-academic world takes decades to cross for most people, and it wears you down. Therefore many capable (or depending on how you feel like looking at it, incapable) architects try for academic roles as critics: because then they get paid, and they get to talk about Design. And if they make a big enough name for themselves as a Talker or a Teacher, then someone outside academia might assume they know what they are talking about (even if they don't), and hire them to do a Real Project. Altruists aside (and I'm not sure I have met many altruists in architectural academia), teaching is often seen as a way to leap-frog the great tedious route from serfdom to Fountainhead.
So even if the critics in a program are in theory there to inculcate the abstruse principals of oh-so-noble Design in you, the student, many (but not all, we must hope) of them are just going through the motions and deep down inside they're waiting for that moment when they magically get a building.
Does it matter then which group of likely-frauds you put up with? Well, certain schools manage to populate their faculty with up-and-rising academics, who are successfully taking that shortcut off the path of drudgery, or even with "Starchitects" who have actually made it big time. So you can learn by example how to make it big through the academic route, even if you learn nothing about Design from them (more on the teaching of Design, later). And plus...those up-and-comers need their own drudges now since they are getting real projects and don't know anything about how to run them, so you can associate yourself with them. It is easier to get an internship with someone who knows you, like your critic, than it is with someone who doesn't. And since the academic architects need a lot of help--and can't, obviously, be at the drawing board all the time because of those tedious academic duties--their offices offer the drudge-serf quicker routes to more responsibility for the little Design that actually occurs than you will find in a firm not run by academics.
If you must take the drudge-serf route, then, it is marginally preferable to do it for a Starchitect or wanna-be-Starchitect (unless you need money...I know, personally, of several Starchitects who never, ever pay their serfs. "Payment" is working for them, learning Important Stuff at the Master's knees, you see. My old instructor Peter Eisenman--the most successful academic architect I have met--even brags about not paying his interns in his interviews.)
It's still rough...the most imaginative person I knew from my own class at YSOA went to work for her critic, Frank Gehry. Despite that, she abandoned her internship and has now left the profession for some role in software development. Drudgery is drudgery, despite the possibilities or pedigree associated with any particular drudge-serf position.
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I'm sorry, Nick...this is coming across as very cynical, isn't it? I wonder if this is the sort of thing Tom Kundig felt when I asked him about architecture and schools, so long ago.
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Hi Nick.
Let me just begin by telling you that I let myself get talked out of architecture school when I was in mid-twenties, by this fellow named Tom Kundig. He was this young, clearly brilliant architect who lived next door to the house I bought in Seattle. In fact, he had renovated that house, prior to my purchase of it, for his former in-laws (when they weren't "former").
I was already considering architecture...I had an arts background (sculpture and drawing), and some computer skills (such as they were, in the early '90's), and I had renovated a house in Boston. So I asked my new neighbor for advice on the profession. He had us over for dinner in his pretty little house, and spent a considerable amount of time describing how negative and pointless so much of the profession was...how back-stabbing mean one's fellow practitioners could be, how out-of-touch academics (mean-spirited in their own way) were from the true grind of the profession, etc.
As I said, he talked me out of it. Tom moved to another part of the city in a few months, and I haven't spoken with him since then.
Almost a decade later, in 2000 (when I was 33) I decided to try again, went through the rigmarole, and got into Yale School of Architecture (more on that later). While I was there, I started noticing articles--and soon enough, whole books--about a certain Seattle architect:
Tom Kundig: Houses
The work of Seattle-based architect Tom Kundig has been called both raw and refined, as well as super-crafted and warm. Kundig's projects, especially his houses, uniquely combine these two seemingly disparate sets of characteristics to produce some of the most inventive structures found in the architecture world today. Kundig's internationally acclaimed work is inspired by both the industrial structures with which he grew up in the Pacific Northwest and the vibrant craft cultures that are fostered there. His buildings uniquely meld industrial sensibilities and materials such as Cor-ten steel and concrete with an intuitive understanding of scale. As Kundig states, "The idea is insaperable from the fabrication, inseparable from the materials used."Tom Kundig: Houses presents five projects in depth, from their early conceptual sketches to their final lovingly wrought, intimate details. Kundig's houses reflect a sustained and active collaborative process between designer, craftsmen, and owners, resulting in houses that bring to life the architect's intentions, the materials used, and lines of unforgettable beauty.
Google Books (books.google.com)
I must have caught Tom at a bad point in his life. Hardly a month goes by now where I don't see his name in a publication or listed with an awards ceremony.
This is why I want to be careful about giving advice about architecture.
I have to do some work now...I'll write more a little later.
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@fbartels said:
This is totally outrageous and unacceptable. I say we rebel.
... so much for any fleeting thoughts of starting a second career in my mid-fifties.
Many of the modernist architects idolized perpetually in architecture schools and in architecture generally did not go through the kind of soul-crunching processes now legally required to practice architecture in the US.
For instance, Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris) was a watchmaker, whose formal "architectural" education was a local art school...he pretty much declared himself an architect and his "internship" consisted of a few months working for Peter Behrens. Then he stormed off to be brilliant and controversial for another sixty years. The name he chose for himself, meaning "the crow-like one", reflects his idea that he had re-invented himself.
No one gets to reinvent themselves any more, at least in architecture, without a lot of interesting strings getting pulled for them. For instance, how is Daniel Liebskind (of increasing fame and new World Trade Center notoriety) allowed to practice architecture in the US? He quite famously walked off the job as an intern for Meier.
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@unknownuser said:
Many of the modernist architects idolized perpetually in architecture schools and in architecture generally did not go through the kind of soul-crunching processes now legally required to practice architecture in the US.
You can add Wright and Mies to this list. Wright had a few semesters of college, Mies none. So the three giants of 20th century architecture avoided the "soul-crunching". Interesting.
So Lewis, what about an online course for the rest of us... the ones who want to get our architecture training the old-fashioned way?
Fred
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Both Mies and Wright had formal apprenticeships in practicing architects' offices, a cognate to the current IDP "drudge-serf" method, except that formal apprenticeships had set terms generally and would come to an end, whereas the IDP is generally set up to make it ever more difficult for the intern to end his or her stint in serfdom. (Do you know that the same people who make up these rules, NCARB, collect a fee to keep track of your IDP status? That couldn't be a conflict of interest, could it?)
Apprenticeship began dying in the US around the turn of the last century, with the adoption of the Beaux Arts style of architectural education. For a while you could still get licensed if you showed that you had sufficient work experience under a registered architect, but fairly recently the last states that permitted that method dropped it.
Fred, that school where I teach has a distance learning program...take a look at the linked website above. However, learning about architecture, as rewarding as the topic might be, has little bearing, ultimately, on whether you can practice architecture in the US. The professional degree is just a requirement for officially starting your stint as a drudge-serf.
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nick and lewis,
just for you information, in south america all you have to do to be an architect is to go through architectural school for five years. at the end they give you your diploma AND your professional license. there is no internship or exam. the positive evaluation of a bunch of guys (the final juries) who are at best crummy academics is taken as proof of professional competence by the institute of architects and the society as a whole.
from day one after graduation you are able to commit any crazyness you may think of. most architects in brasil have no clue as to what the profession entails. no wonder we have such bad cities, populated by horrible and almost useless buildings.
regards.
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@edson said:
nick and lewis,
just for you information, in south america all you have to do to be an architect is to go through architectural school for five years. at the end they give you your diploma AND your professional license. there is no internship or exam. the positive evaluation of a bunch of guys (the final juries) who are at best crummy academics is taken as proof of professional competence by the institute of architects and the society as a whole.
from day one after graduation you are able to commit any crazyness you may think of. most architects in brasil have no clue as to what the profession entails. no wonder we have such bad cities, populated by horrible and almost useless buildings.
regards.
I have a client--an architect for whom I do production renderings--in Australia, and according to him this is also true there, Edson.
However, it would be hard to argue that the current arrangement for education and registration in the US has any result other than restricting potential competition for established practitioners. I'm being a cynic, of course--life-safety experience and professional standards and so forth, declare the regulating bodies--but I believe that the current arrangement evolved (not entirely consciously) as a way of deliberately heading off the kind of disruptive genius exemplified by Le Corbusier and Wright...and of course preventing those who know how to use newer technology or understand new materials from taking work away from those too lazy or mentally-ossified to learn new ways of doing things.
I also strongly suspect the system is also "designed" to prevent more women from entering the higher ranks of the profession here, as having children and taking maternity leave is very problematic with regard to completing one's drudgery-serfdom stint. I know three very intelligent architecture school graduates who abandoned their internships (and thus any hope of legally calling themselves "architects") after they became pregnant.
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Nick
A bit of background on me before I respond so that you can take my advice with a bit of the flavor of my past to go with it.
I started out in pre-engineering at a small college in my hometown (Fort Hays State University) I submitted my rudimentary drafted drawings from high school to the architecture department at the University of Kansas in 1985 and was accepted. At that time a Bachelors of Architecture was a 5 year degree. I Loved architecture school I was one of eight to do an internship in my first semester of my fith year for which I worked in New York and received full school credit. I learned more about architecture in the internship than I could have ever learned in school. There is academic architecture and real world architecture. After Graduation I moved back to New York. At that time New York had not adopted IDP and so I had to have 3 years of internship before taking the exams. I did pass the registration exams in 1995 and have been a licensed architect ever since.
SO how does this help you....
There were two camps those that went to graduate school after undergraduate degrees and those that went to work in architecture firms. So which one are you?
I've been in this industry long enough to have seen it's ups and down and to understand what are some of it's pitfalls.
Going to graduate school will be a benefit to you if you are already a talented designer. Having both the talent and the degree will translate into more opportunities in the real world practice. However if you lack talent a degree will not be of much use to you in the real world, it may open some doors but you will still need to perform once inside.
So the long and short of it is what do you hope to gain from a masters degree? I mean if it is purely to enhance your current design skills and learn some new ones or is it motivated to get a better job etc., etc. If ultimately you want to practice architecture and get your license as an architect then possibly entering the work force and getting your IDP credits and taking the exam would be more wise.
OK so after saying all that do I have any regrets for not going to a masters program, Yes.
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Two great schools that lead the tradition of architecture:
Notre Dame in Indiana and Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan.
Both schools have great programs in architecture and urbanism.
I got my masters degree from Notre Dame and am currently teaching at Andrews; our 5th year urban design studio won a Charter for New Urbanism award for their studio project.
Wherever you go, I hope they teach you that architecture is for people and really mean it. -
This is invaluable input. Sorry I've been MIA - just moved to MN and got over a week of sickness, still getting on my feet here.
Wow, Lewis, "likely-frauds", "drudge-serf", that is cynical - but real. I appreciate your candor, it's exactly what I was looking for (whether good or bad). You present two paths, professional and academic - neither is appealing from what you describe. Maybe I should just avoid it all and build my modeling business, keep my eyes open for the next business opportunity... patrol the fringe of the architectural world, pursuing and enjoying the parts of it that I love but not getting sucked into it. I've been pondering all along whether what I really want is "to be an architect" or if it just came across my path. I know that I must have significant motivation to make it through the gauntlet, so I want to be more sure than I am that it's what I want before I set out.
Bruce, thanks for the encouragement. To try to answer your question (where is your love? - you're so deep, I like it:) I love the creative process, I love the process of freely translating my ideas through my hands and into being, I love excessive detail and perfection, I love the beauty of profound simplicity in God's creation. What that leads me to do is what I'm trying to discover. I know that 3d modeling/rendering allowed me to channel more of my passions than anything I've done before - it brings together artistic and technical, creation, construction, photography, digital painting... I love it! This is what pointed me toward architecture, I would guess because much of the 3d modeling/rendering market is architectural.
I've learned to use the 'Subscribe Topic' feature now too, so I won't miss out on the convo.
peace!
Nick -
@unknownuser said:
There were two camps those that went to graduate school after undergraduate degrees and those that went to work in architecture firms. So which one are you?
I've been in this industry long enough to have seen it's ups and down and to understand what are some of it's pitfalls.
Going to graduate school will be a benefit to you if you are already a talented designer. Having both the talent and the degree will translate into more opportunities in the real world practice. However if you lack talent a degree will not be of much use to you in the real world, it may open some doors but you will still need to perform once inside.
So the long and short of it is what do you hope to gain from a masters degree? I mean if it is purely to enhance your current design skills and learn some new ones or is it motivated to get a better job etc., etc. If ultimately you want to practice architecture and get your license as an architect then possibly entering the work force and getting your IDP credits and taking the exam would be more wise.
OK so after saying all that do I have any regrets for not going to a masters program, Yes.
Again, I'm presented with two paths, get into the field or go to grad school. I'm not sure which one I am... I don't lack talent (at risk of pridefulness:), but I'm not sure if that alone tells me whether this is the right path. It's less about getting my license and practicing architecture, more about enhancing skills and learning new ones - that's it for sure.
Good questions, Phil. Thanks for helping me to process this, however indecisive I may be.
peace,
Nick
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