Thresholds in Architectural Education

Nur Caglar, Irene G. Curulli, Isil Ruhi Sipahioglu, Lazaros Mavromatidis, Tayyibe Nur Caglar, Irene G. Curulli, Isil Ruhi-Sipahioglu, Lazaros Mavromatidis

• Publisher: Wiley-ISTE
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781119751410
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

The book explores, discusses, and considers new and innovative perspectives on the crossings, interactions, and transformations of non-formal, informal learning, and formal learning within or prior to FADS and Internship. The contributions provide a wider perspective on the alternating Final Architectural Design Studios and Internship programs as interfaces and interaction zones among different learning experiences that lead to professional and intellectual qualification.

PART 1
Practices in the Formal Institutions that Cope with the Rapid Pace of Change

1
Towards a New Interaction Between Educational Processes and Practices: Faculty of Architecture, Sapienza University of Rome

In the last 10 years, the careers involved in the building industry have undergone an in-depth and profound modification and a global redefinition of the methods of execution, organization and coordination of the design, construction and management of construction works. The evolution of the tools of parametric modeling and analysis of building behaviors and the development of the building processes and monitoring and management tools and know-how of the life cycle of the building itself are outlining a renewed framework of practices and specialized skills. These require a new interaction between architectural and engineering fields able to respond and drive the job market. The building sector needs nowadays more complex figures able to carry out an activity of coordination and integration of work groups in the different phases of design/construction, from the feasibility phase to the execution and implementation phase, to the construction, administrative management and management planning in operation. In this scenario, the Italian Schools of Architecture (affected by a general decrease in enrollment – from 5.7% in 2008/09 to 4.9% in 2014/15) are launching multiple actions with other European institutions and research institutes to enhance training in the area of design of the built environment, defining cultural projects closer to the demand through training activities that optimize resources and provide vocational training and qualifying activities (e.g. stages), within the training paths. Each new training course should come from a project based on a framework that provides an active participation by the subjects – primarily the representatives of professional associations – able to drive the educational choices in terms of coherence with training needs, job opportunities and labor market, through a process of constant and regular consultation with all the interested parties. In this regard, the Faculty of Architecture of Rome “Sapienza” has recently launched a new master’s degree course in “Project Management and Construction of Building Systems”, which started in Fall 2018, after a process of interaction with external institutions and with a new specific specialized training in the area of Architectural and Construction Engineering and management of building processes and systems.

1.1. Framework of reference: between crisis of the figure of the architect and the need for innovation

In recent decades, the professions involved in the construction sector have undergone a profound crisis, the consequence of the global economic situation. On the other hand, the acceleration of the development processes taking place in technological innovation in the information technology (IT) sector is also affecting the construction industry, resulting in a significant and profound change and redefinition in the modes of carrying out, organizing and coordinating the activity of designing, building and managing construction projects.

The evolution of the operative instruments of control, modeling and parametric management and of the analysis of the building’s behavior (in terms of energy, environment and structure), and the development of the processes for carrying out, monitoring and managing the building’s own life cycle, are outlining a renewed framework of professional figures and specialist skills required by the international market:

Over these years, the structural crisis that has impacted Italy and Europe has created the need for profound changes in the processes of transforming the territory, the city, and settlements. Consequently, in the architect’s training, and in the profession’s exercise, it has made it appropriate – if not necessary – to reconfigure the architecture system in accordance with new needs of Italian society and of the training of new generations of professionals, instructors, and researchers.

Although different, and although they operate on two levels, international and with different perspectives, the two areas of training in architecture and of the architect’s profession required developing a unitary strategy with actions that are specific and diversified, but coordinated in an overall vision of the architecture and project system (CRESME 2017).

Recent European directives emphasize the operative component in the architect’s training, by strengthening the activity of professional apprenticeship in order to refine the knowledge, skills and abilities acquired in training. For the architecture system in Italy, this implies a complex revision of the training system and its stronger link to the world of the profession which is not actually in good health. A meaningful figure demonstrating the crisis in the architect’s profession in Italy may be seen in the declining number of people enrolled for the national entrance exams in recent years. Every year, the Ministry announces a competition for a quota-based number of positions for new enrolments nationwide, with candidates taking an entrance test. This phenomenon has been seen in recent years in the case of positions for architecture faculties: the difference between the places put up for competition every year, and the candidates for the tests, has grown progressively smaller.¹ In parallel, the two contexts of training and profession in the field of architecture have yet to find fruitful dialogue in recent years, if we take into consideration that Italy has for years suffered from a redundancy in the number of architects in comparison to the population at large and that there are at the same time other professional figures (construction engineer, surveyor, construction expert) also qualified to perform the same role as a designer.² In Italy, in this intricate overlapping of roles, the figure of the architect, although recognized as a profession accorded social responsibility on a European level, has gradually declined in reputation and even economic prestige, while the role of designer has expanded the boundaries of architecture’s disciplinary sphere, the discipline of architecture where the issue of managing the construction process requires increasingly qualified and technical professional figures.

With a view to defining a strategy of a system for architecture and of relations between training, research and profession, a dialogue process was initiated in 2016, between the representatives of Italian architecture faculties (CUIA – Conferenza Universitaria Italiana di Architettura) and representatives of the professional categories and the ministries.

1.2. Newly integrated skills and knowledge for technical training in the field of architecture and of construction engineering

In this crisis scenario, university training in the technical/scientific area appears to offer more available professional opportunities than the humanities do. Architecture studies were traditionally placed in an intermediate area between technical/scientific knowledge and humanistic knowledge; alternatively, they have opted to guide training more towards a separation between the humanistic/artistic school with beaux arts background and institutions more polytechnical in nature.

This polyvalent condition places the studies in the field of architecture in a position that is, today, particularly critical and at the same time potentially interesting.

While many paths of study aim to define a generalist-integral training model (Frank and Pedretti 2013), they are pressured in the other direction, especially in systems based on the segmentation of training (bachelor + master). While, on the one hand, the project culture itself, thanks to the development of the school’s design-oriented training, opens new scenarios of strong disciplinary integration for training the figure of the designer that are also unbound by the rigidity of the systems of the professional orders (Ferrara 2015). On the other hand, it raises the issue of how to update ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Editors and Contributors
• PART 1: Practices in the Formal Institutions that Cope with the Rapid Pace of Change
• PART 2: Non-formal and Informal Learning Environments
• List of Authors
• Index
• End User License Agreement