The drawbacks of Architecture Education and how it impacts Architects, a conversation with Yale University's professor and architect Peggy Deamer.

Peggy Deamer is a Professor Emeritus of Architecture at Yale University and a Principal at Deamer Architects. She studied architecture at Cooper Union and received a PhD from Princeton University. Her articles have appeared in Assemblage, Praxis, Perspecta, Harvard Design Magazine, Log, and other journals and anthologies. She is the founding member of the Architecture Lobby, a group advocating for the value of architectural design and labor. Her theory works and research explores the relationship between subjectivity, design, and labor in the current economy.

Peggy is speaking at the upcoming Disrupt Symposium, get your tickets here: https://www.disruptsymposium.com/

She is the editor of Architecture and Capitalism: 1845 to the Present (Routledge), The Millennium House (Monacelli Press), The Architect as Worker: Immaterial Labor, the Creative Class, and the Politics of Design. She is also the co-editor of Re-Reading Perspecta, Building (in) the Future: Recasting Labor in Architecture (Princeton Architectural Press), and BIM in Academia (Yale School of Architecture).?

The Architectural Lobby, by Peggy and her colleagues, is an initiative and an international organization of architectural workers, planners, and designers advocating for the value of architecture in the general public and for architectural work within the discipline. It analyzes to see whether architecture can be more responsive to the workers and laborers and also relevant to society.

Architecture Beyond Capitalism (ABC) School

Architecture Beyond Capitalism (ABC) School originated from The Architecture Lobby and came from the general assessment that professional bad habits such as how we charge, bill, and pay fees and wages are developed in school. Its goal - was to change the mechanisms we needed by starting to change our education. It coalesced into many campaigns out of which ABC School became the academic campaign for the summer school.

The origin of our industry is based on old traditions. A tradition with a minuscule percentage of women involved and therefore the laws, structure of businesses and practices, rewards, and leadership are highly based on a male-dominated idea that we haven’t revisited in a long time. These ideas are strongly ingrained in how we perceive the industry. Throughout education and going into practice there is a slew of bad habits that have taken on and are hard to break. So how do we revisit those traditions and rules with women involved?

This year alone we saw a rise in the number of women going into the profession. In fact, we are at 50-50 at present. But it is certainly not the case with older staff members. Hence, for people in leadership roles, there is no 50-50 division between men and women. Women are still being paid less than men and very often in the industry there is a disparity. The industry was set on principles that are currently outdated and is in dire need of hypotheses, new ways of thinking, and inclusion of women in discussions that will restructure the system in the best interest of both men and women.

Peggy says “It’s absolutely based on old principles. I would say the cause was not it being a male-dominated profession because most professions are male-dominated.” She says it’s based on a class system where architects came from the upper class and were agents of the upper class where money was not an issue. The upper class is concerned with prestige, power, and being culturally refined hence aesthetics began to dominate and money in business became a dirt word. Whether we are talking about the original upper-class formation of the profession or about the male, some side of it goes hand in hand because those empowering the upper class were men.?

“Women enter into this as we try and experiment with different ways of paying people or giving responsibility. Women are like the canaries in the coal mine. They get it first- the wham. They get the negative feedback first and they get it the hardest. So I don’t think the maleness is the cause but I definitely think that it’s a significant symptom of a larger structural problem.” She adds.

Research

The Architecture Lobby research is also motivated by the same desire to rethink how architecture labour and architecture, in general, can be better valued. In her research, Peggy is looking at how the profession is organised. She says “It’s not incidental that the American Institute of Architects in all of its rules of behaviour doesn’t even mention the word employee. We’re all rising architects. They are not talking about the abusive labour conditions because they are not naming it.”

In another research, she studies the professional organisation of the countries. Even though other countries are better in some aspects like employment, involving employees in decision-making, managing working hours, or monitoring better pay, each nation’s professional organisation is still serving its country’s economy. Architects across different nations often don’t have the same idea about why they are getting educated to do what they do.?

Another Architecture Lobby (AL) research is focused on understanding unions. How unions in creative fields or professional fields function and understanding industries where one might think unions are not appropriate or historically have not had any presence, could, should and might without much manipulation have unions.?

The Green New Deal group work on ‘just transitions’ which is how we engage both the community and the construction industry in discussions about the Green New Deal. “No matter how politically correct architects are, if we do not get the construction industry to think as we do it’s not going to go anywhere” she adds.

Another group at AL works on affordable housing and researches how in different areas affordable housing is currently being managed by both the city govt and the regional and state governments and their relationship to find the acupuncture points where architects might enter into different fields.

Academia governing future practices and practice leaders?.

Peggy explains “The kind of mindset that says - money is a dirty word, it’s all about genius, sacrifice and talent, equates all-nighters with passion, passion with talent, talent with supposed success in the profession, which makes for a certain kind of architectural practitioner that is willing to take work for no pay, has no control over their hours, is available to call 24/7, feels that it is not just the unfortunate fate of architects but the positive sign of being committed to the calling. These are corollaries to the idea that aesthetics are the end all be all, that architecture education is about becoming an adept and versatile formalist as opposed to ideas like being adept with understanding policies to bring change to it and communicate it with the community or how you can source materials in different ways. There are many other things besides formal dexterity that I think architectural education doesn’t pay attention to. The emphasis on individuality as opposed to collaboration and the sense that architecture is above construction are all problems.”

Solutions

Advocating for a different approach to architecture education but also targeting studios, in particular, is the first step. Since we all know that our successful path through school is determined by good designers and the studio reviews we get. Design education must not just be about formal dexterity but also about understanding all the networks within which form, procurement and collaboration are. That is the design exercise and to do it elegantly requires a design mind that orchestrates various aspects not just efficiently but with long-term understanding.?

The idea of a value system within the practice of how we get paid is a hard shift that has to happen in the industry. An economic shift where not only do employees feel valued and have rights but also the payment and reward system and the belonging system in different practices gets shifted because otherwise, most entry-level architects would settle for a free internship at a famous office which is what the industry is built on presently and has to change.?

On the other hand, it’s also a personal shift where you realise your worth and value yourself as an expert. Calling yourself an expert can sometimes come very late in your career because you can’t put a measure on it.

Peggy responds “There's also a discourse that says expertise is not what we are striving for. One way of thinking is that experts know the right answer to a question, and professionals know the right questions to ask. So there is something about expertise that may not be the right criterion. And I say that partly for things that we know which is that aesthetic judgement is part of what we are trained to do and it’s hard to persuade and prove to people that that is expertise. We have to in some way admit that it is social and cultural sensibility which is equally valuable to there being a right answer. There are many answers in design and you want to indicate judgement as opposed to expertise.”

The Architecture Education System

Understand your history. It might not be deep history but certain projects that we value aesthetically and publish have longevity. They have longevity not just because everyone goes “wow!” or tourists take a picture of it but because they have increased the value of the neighbourhood. There’s an argument that students could learn to have about how something that we think is maybe not empirically given a monetary value may in the long term prove to have value in another way. Both, as an employee looking for work at a firm or a firm owner getting work from a client, can argue about the long-term benefits of thinking through things that have a lasting social, public and personal value that goes beyond just good looks or short-term gain.

Education doesn’t prepare us for the practical aspect of knowing how to sell ourselves and market ourselves. A lot of times in university we learn to design but do not know how to communicate that design. It’s a product, and our service is what we sell. We need to find the right client for it and the right person that will pay the right price, want to create with us or enable us to want to create. The lack of hard and soft skills to be able to step into entrepreneurship as architects creates a gap that we have to bridge out of our own experience.?

Peggy thinks back saying “I suffered in the same way. I would talk about design aesthetics and clients are concerned about appropriateness and money. I absolutely do think that in order to be persuasive about things that matter, we need to be able to talk about numbers. It’s not embarrassing at this point but stupid to not have that skill or learn that. That could be the type of thing that could enter the studio discussion and it never does. We’re always working with an ideal scenario but it would be very interesting for us to be called to task about what we think this means economically in a real-life scenario.”

Architects often struggle with hearing an objection be it ideas or while quoting their fee. In sales, one is taught about client objections and a salesperson prepares for any eventuality of objection that they encounter throughout the sales process and prepares an answer to it.?

To Peggy, it’s more than a lack of knowledge. “It came from a place of ‘I’m an expert and if you object you don’t get the concept of the form.’ The clients don’t get that it is incompatible with the idea. For me, it comes from a certain disdain for their lack of aesthetic awareness and I’m an expert. So I would also say besides knowledge about how to answer objections, it’s also the ability to listen and think their objections are 100% legitimate as opposed to they are fools and they don’t get it. I might be rejecting my own attitude moving forward” she adds. The key to success here is the ability to show that you are not against them and architects are not trained for it but we are only told about it.?

At school, we are chaperoned to be egoistic which may turn troublesome in practice when faced with real-life scenarios and the clients may have a different vision though they don’t know anything about design.? There is a lot to unpack from the psychological perspective as architecture is not just about being a good designer but also about being able to take criticism. As a result, we come into the world thinking slightly more of ourselves but also at the same time not feeling valuable enough to start our own businesses. For example, when you study apps or technology it's quite common to graduate from university and start a startup and work for an accelerator unlike architecture where we follow a traditional internship, work and promotion process which restricts innovation in the industry in the industry that gets lost in practices.

Peggy disagrees. She believes in the US, most students are assumed to be starting their own practice. Professional practice courses are not about being an employee but about being a firm owner and everyone is geared to do so. Nobody in the US goes into architecture school to be a good employee as the aim is to be self-employed and head their own firms. So students are educated that way. “And I actually think that's a problem. And part of the reason I think it's a problem is that it makes us competitive with all other firms. When a five-person firm is looking for a certain scale of work it must compete against other firms which results in them offering their services at 10% of the cost of construction. This is the reason many small firms remain small and are not in a position to be entrepreneurial, and innovative because they don't have the money and are barely hanging in there” She says.

Conversely, she thinks that there are small firms that are run by people who want to do a certain kind of work with new technology whether that is 3D printing or laser printing which makes them innovative in terms of tools and they produce work that shows off that expertise. In many cases, small firms are presenting work that is not yet architectural but nevertheless, their work produces interesting ideas.? The drawback here is that most small firms don't have the labour or the funding to do real, innovative work which is different from other industries.?

Don't miss Peggy speak about this at Disrupt Symposium, get your tickets here: https://www.disruptsymposium.com/

Working for prestigious firms

Working for starchitects and big-name firms doesn’t mean big money. Architects in the US must practice for 3 years as an employee at a firm before starting a practice of their own. Most architects choose to work in renowned firms recognising that they might have more influence in the built environment, by being a part of larger projects which is a rarity in small firms.?

Student loans also contribute to architects continuing to work for other firms. Right out of university, they repay their student loans which they can not afford to invest in their own practice and hence continue on as employees. Peggy says “And by the time you might be able to get out your individuality is gone. Your particular approach and talent have been squashed. You've become indoctrinated with that firm's protocols, which are, all the things that we probably don't respect”. Working in competitions for no money is one such case.

At the stage when you do want to get out, you have already been a part of the firm for years. But, when you start your own practice none of the projects you worked on previously can be included in your personal portfolio. Starting from scratch is also daunting at this age as client acquisition also poses a challenge.?

In Berlin, with the rise in the Tech movement, 3D printing for automotive solutions and large-scale objects gained popularity. Students graduating from design schools enter design incubators and are mentored to gain hefty scholarships from a young age. The concept of an incubator in architecture would pave an entrepreneurial pathway for many young practitioners.

Get your tickets for Peggy's talk at Disrupt Symposium, happening this upcoming weekend, here: https://www.disruptsymposium.com/