→ Abstract

As practice-based doctoral research, Change Now Architecture Later (NOW) delivers a personal and situated insight into the productive/disruptive tension between university and practice through the experiences of a small group of recent graduates from Natural Building Lab at the Technical University Berlin (www.nbl.berlin). The notion of the practice-gap(s) is used to articulate how transformational agendas from the university make the transition into practice through the agency of graduates. Beyond this, the dissertation provides a vehicle for me to reflect critically on the lasting impact and meaning of my teaching practice at NBL over the past six years. The findings describe a new set of values and competencies that constitute the professional identity of these graduates, which will allow them to meet the ever-evolving demands of a world in constant crisis. Change Now, Architecture Later advocates for these new transformative identities, emphasising the need for university and practice to recalibrate the notion of the values and competencies we need to be “good” architects.

In six years at NBL, I increasingly observe driven and talented graduates leaving university with serious doubts about becoming architects. These students expect architecture to offer a platform for them to progress transformational agendas in the context of their life politics ⁠(Giddens 1991), which increasingly reflect collective and ecological goals and values rather than individualistic ones. Yet despite an emerging new generation of progressive educators, many students criticise overly hierarchical or reductive approaches and content deficits concerning the climate emergency and post-colonialism, as well as the prevalence of a toxic studio and presentation culture at many universities. Upon entering mainstream practice, many graduates become disillusioned with architecture’s ethical and environmental agendas and its poor track record on gender, diversity and working conditions. Understandably, many require some convincing that this profession can meet their expectations of a career where they can impact the most pressing issues of our time.

Nevertheless, many graduates feel a solid loyalty to architecture; after all, most have spent at least five years studying to be an architect, a programme of studies promising a stable career in an established and respected profession. For many graduates, early career experiences and decisions are entangled with building a stable narrative of the self that can integrate their transformative personal aspirations with the contradictions of navigating an increasingly diverse and often disillusioning professional landscape. However, with the signs pointing towards recession and slowdown, compounded by the trend towards dilution and disappearance of traditional job descriptions across all sectors⁠ (Susskind and Susskind 2022), these aims may need recalibration. The increasingly short-term nature of today’s job market means that instead of the solid identity promised by a career in an established profession or institution, many graduates’ working lives will be defined by constant change. This volatility can also bring opportunities to form new kinds of situative professionality, whereby practitioners learn to approach complex problems from different perspectives throughout their careers ⁠(Ziemer 2013). This perspective requires us all to reconsider what we should consider a “successful” career in architecture.

Indeed, for architecture graduates, these dynamics can also foster great optimism. Recent research underscores that architecture graduates are well-equipped with transferable skills that enable them to succeed in new professions or even totally unrelated sectors ⁠(Michela Barosio et. al 2024). Many soft skills, including communication, teamwork, problem-solving, organisation, and an openness to learning, provide architecture graduates with multi-sector mobility that will be valuable in a rapidly changing world. This diversification of traditional identities and skillsets means that while the traditional spatial and technical prowess will remain part of some architects’ key competency, an increased proficiency in other competencies like communication, moderation, empathy, listening, openness to learning and self-awareness, will allow the next generation of architects to initiate and succeed in structures and change processes that go well beyond the focus of their studies. Yet these competencies are seldom an explicit part of curricula, which are required to focus on the design and technical expertise required for professional accreditation as an architect. In the context of the current shortage of specialised workers, practice often blames universities for not providing “practice-ready” graduates, but considering the doubts outlined above, who is to say that many of the next generation will aspire to this title of architect at all?

The investigation moves between practice-based and practice-led approaches. In some places, research is conducted in the process of practice, while in others, research is conducted in theorising or contextualising this practice. By combining, developing and iterating visual methods such as portrait photography, film, mapping and exhibition with more conventional ethnographic methods such as biographic interview, inductive coding and photo-elicitation, I make claims to knowledge in the “language of my practice”⁠(Haseman 2006), generating media-specific challenges and insights. This is reflected in the thesis structure, which oscillates between theory-based chapters and practice elements. The outcome should make a research contribution in the form of an innovative mixed-methods approach and looks to answer a question that will be familiar to all those in architectural education—what does it mean to teach the way we do?

Full Abstract (PDF 60kb)
Stand: June 2024

KEY LITERATURE:
Anderson, Jane. ‘How Can Live Projects Stimulate Progress in Education, Research, and Practice? : The Establishment of Live Project/Design Build/Community Design Education as a Global and Rigorous Field of Activity and Inquiry’. Ph.D., Oxford Brookes University, 2021. https://doi.org/10.24384/29e4-h364.

Giddens, Anthony. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Reprint. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991.

Harriss, Harriet, Rory Hyde, and Roberta Marcaccio, eds. Architects after Architecture: Alternative Pathways for Practice. New York, NY: Routledge, 2020.

James, Sara. Making a Living, Making a Life: Work, Meaning and Self-Identity. London: Routledge, 2017. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315593241.

Langmann, Sten, and David Pick. Photography as a Social Research Method. Singapore: Springer Singapore, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7279-6.

Michela Barosio et. al. Architecture’s Afterlife: The Multisector Impact of an Architecture Degree. S.l.: ROUTLEDGE, 2024.

Smith, Hazel, and Roger Dean. Practice-Led Research, Research-Led Practice in the Creative Arts. Practice-Led Research, Research-Led Practice in the Creative Arts. Edinburgh University Press, 1999. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748636303.

Starker, Vera, and Jette Hoppe. New Work in der Architektur. Rossberg, 2024.

Susskind, Richard E., and Daniel Susskind. 2022. The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts. Updated edition. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

Ziemer, Gesa. Komplizenschaft: Neue Perspektiven Auf Kollektivität. X-Texte. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2013.

matt-crabbe Change Now Architecture Later!

matt-crabbe
Change Now Architecture Later!