Suggestions for an integration education

What we learn in architecture school has been a topic I have spent much time thinking about and discussing with other students and teachers.  I am the son of a local architect who has also been an architecture professor for many years. Coming into architecture school I had more knowledge of how a firm works than almost any new student coming into the field. After my first few weeks of architecture school I started to ask him and others questions about how it was taught. I knew that the architects in my father’s firm spent most of the day working with software that almost no one at any level used in school. I also knew that they did a whole lot more than just design. So at dinner one night I asked him why architecture programs didn’t teach us how to use more software. He told me that architecture school isn’t long enough to teach you everything you need to know; that they only have you for a short time and in that time they need to teach you as much design as they can.

            The tools we use as architects have also been simple tools. What you make with them can be far from simple. Someone who has never taken a drawing class could pick up a pencil and draw a house in detail. Odds are it will be a very bad-looking house but they are still able to use the pencil. Someone who has never been taught how to use BIM software has no shot at detailing a house in any BIM software. Programs like Revit are so complex they take large amounts of time to learn how to do even basic things. Without someone helping you it can seem impossible.

            How to teach students and architects how to use BIM is a problem that will take time to solve. It takes so much time to learn the software that it leaves little time to learn how to design with it. Many schools and teachers still see that school as a tool like the pencil. Something you use to record your ideas; not help you come up with them.

            Architects need to know everything. We only have a small time in school and it is already filled to the limit. Finding a place for more is going to be hard but if we don’t find a place for new classes we will be letting the students down.