The importance of collaboration between architects and other professionals has been stressed repeatedly in educational curriculums recently. Despite a well-intended push, however, substantial change has been slow to pick up in this area, and the majority of today’s architecture students continue to receive the same relatively cloistered educational experience that has fed the profession for decades.
To counter this inertia, here’s a few do-it-yourself suggestions for architecture students looking to get a more fully formed education outside the confines of the studio. These bottom-up efforts can be made individually and are intended to expand awareness of how professions other than architecture function while increasing interactions with students from different disciplines. Whether you’re a graduate or undergraduate, consider these options before picking your next semester’s classes.
© Columbia University GSAPP, Avery Digital Fabrication Laboratory
Columbia University students complete an installation project in Tokyo.
1. Take Classes in Other Schools
The easiest of these suggestions is to take classes at your college or university from schools outside the architecture curriculum. In any given semester, there’s usually one or two slots in your schedule set aside for elective classes, to be chosen from a list of options offered by the architecture school. Something that tends to go unsaid here is that you can probably swap out an architecture elective with an elective from any other school on campus.
If your school doesn’t already encourage this, a quick email to the administration is likely all you need for permission to enroll. To bolster your case, the class you choose could cover a topic related to architecture. Think economics if you’d like to get a sense of how the practice of architecture fits into the free market or political science if you’re interested in seeing the big picture around large-scale public projects. As long as you choose a class with a manageable workload alongside studio projects, the perspective gained from exposure to topics and people you wouldn’t otherwise encounter will be significant.
2. Propose a Group Project
Consider teaming up with classmates from different professional schools in your university to propose a group project that ties in each person’s major. This could take a lot of convincing to win over a skeptical faculty, but doing so may be easier than you think.
The key is to have a well-considered proposal. A small-scale design project like an outdoor installation could give you an opportunity to team up with students from structural engineering and landscape architecture programs. Even a public-policy major could help gain the support needed to have the structure built in a local park.
Take the time to make a detailed plan outlining what you’ll produce and how it satisfies the requirements of a class you’d like to replace it with, and you may be surprised at the results.
3. Enroll in an Off-Site Program
If your architecture school is a pioneer in the cross-disciplinary movement, it may offer an offsite, specialty-oriented studio elsewhere on campus or in a nearby city. The University of Virginia’s architecture school, for example, runs an interdisciplinary studio that mingles architecture students with healthcare professionals. The Kansas City Design Center hosts an urban design program integrating architecture students from both the University of Kansas and Kansas State University, folding them into public service and community engagement in the process.
These sort of programs tend to be relatively new, so it’s worth it to do some research, as your school might already have one you’re unaware of. They may require a bit of confidence in career direction, but they can also be a great way to get off campus and mix with other disciplines, practices and perspectives.
4. Enroll in a Cross-Disciplinary Major
Most useful to younger students who are having doubts about becoming an architect but still like architecture, a dedicated interdisciplinary program may be an option worth considering. Also relatively new examples include The Bartlett School of Architecture, which offers a degree in “Architecture & Interdisciplinary Studies” that allows students to combine curriculums at will and has launched careers for graduates in a variety of design, planning, media and business fields. The University of Texas has a similar program.
In choosing one of these majors, you should be careful to read the fine print: Many of them do not meet the requirements needed to become a licensed architect if you later choose to do so. If you’ve already decided against the traditional strictures of architecture, though, this type of program may be a good fit for you.
Via Talkitect
5. Make Friends Beyond Architecture School
It’s so simple it’s almost laughable, but in truth, maintaining a circle of friends outside the studio may be one of the hardest things for architecture students to do. Project commitments ensure your consistent absence from the ever-progressing social lives of other students, and the free time you do have probably isn’t enough to keep up.
Under this sort of circumstance, a structured activity like a weekly recreational sport or special-interest club may offer a casual, no-strings-attached opportunity to hang out with students from other majors on a regular basis. If you live in a dorm, it might be best to request a randomly assigned roommate instead of living with other architecture students, despite the potential downside of moving in with a stranger. Who knows — maybe you’ll meet someone you’d like to take a class with (number one) or have an encounter that sparks a proposal for a group project (number two).
Whatever strategy you pursue, the theme between these suggestions is the same: If you consistently spend time with people who aren’t in architecture school, you will benefit from their perspective of the world — and they’ll benefit from yours.
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Top image via River Online