Ralph Liebing, RA, CSI, CDT
Senior Member
Username: rliebing
Post Number: 1215
Registered: 02-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 25, 2010 - 09:41 am: |    |
100825
WE AND THEM; THEN AND NOW; NOW AND WHENEVER
by Ralph Liebing, RA, CSI, CDT
Cincinnati, OH
All the issues will never be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction! We need to face that fact! But, at the same time we need to move toward resolution, in some reasonable compromise, and universally accepted understanding.
We offer no grand scheme for answers, but merely suggest where and what needs attention and some resolve.
ACADEMICS: We all agree that the architecture schools do not have the time available, with their curricula allocations, to teach “everything” that needs knowing. Neither do they hold a realistic perspective about the working profession! BUT there is a need to adapt and adjust to include a more reasonable array of technical information, instruction and courses to support those in design-- design STILL, and will forever, require technical know-how to get it built. Architects need to know how!
ACSA: Be more openly supportive of the schools and act as mediation force to assist schools in complying with governmental requirements; provide more understanding into academic and curricula needs.
NAAB: Needs to make definitive and much stronger requirements without couched language and with direct and requisite “demands” on the schools. Needs to stand more alone and detached from NCARB, and not merely cloning what that group sets out in its requirements.
NCARB: Needs technical orientation and more correct interpretation of state law and what is required to be a registered architect who truly protects “public health, safety and welfare”, Taking the meaning of those laws and translating them into a comprehensive examination and other requirements, directly.
IDP: Needs updating, adjustment, and a “realistic” orientation toward what truly is possible via the professional office and other resources; may involve creating formal resources to teach, classroom style, some of the required material, where the offices are incapable [given their restricted time and money] of doing so. Incorporate levels of required work commensurate and à propos [or maybe not' I'm not sure about this] to educational and experience levels of interns [don’t require work and accomplishments beyond their station, knowledge level and capability]
A.R.E.: Objectively review and adjust to be more accommodating [not easier] BUT more accessible, less costly [why make money off of it?] and tuned to every day experiences and practice. Provide openness, legal uniformity, and a true assessment of the intern, post-IDP [i.e., where they really are, professionally]
There are two basic needs that continually go untouched-- a resolve to make architectural education better and more appropriate to the times, and the need for all agencies involved to sit down, together!!, and work on a solution that touches and involves all of them, in a coordinated manner. Professional education cannot be free-lanced when graduates are expected to perform certain tasks and in certain ways. This is not to say identical instruction, but rather instruction formulated from the same base and with the same goal.
And this meeting must include the directed voice of the professional offices-- not any organizations, but the working office, large and small, which have distinct problems that need to be addressed. And this does include incorporating the offices into the educational system, so they know their obligation here, straight-up, and do not continue to be reluctant players.
Lastly, to produce better architects, we need to educate and train them in better ways, AND we need to stop the continued decline in both public and professional status, so the role of the architect is more widely and better known [in accurate terms] and supported by correct use of services and impact. |
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