 Good afternoon, everyone. On behalf of the Friday lecture team, I'd like to thank everyone for coming. Today is the opening event of the Friday lecture series for 2014. The team for the next weeks, the next eight weeks, will be life after studio. Life after studio has many different meanings for people, but what we want to explore is the reality of leaving the architecture studio and moving into the professional, the architectural profession. So over the next eight weeks, we will have a range of speakers giving lectures at the school, each covering how they dealt with that transition. They've also been asked to reflect on three main factors that we believe have influenced their careers as architects. These are their educational experiences, the economic climates that they work in, and the professional networks that they've built for themselves. We hope this lecture will provide some insights and guidance into our lives after studio. So today we start at the beginning with a debate on architectural education. Architectural education is being currently refought in this country, primarily in terms of its relationship to practice and what is perceived as a disconnect between academic provision and professional needs. It is also being rethought in terms of its duration and the possible combination of years of study that are required to achieve qualification. Whilst these are undoubtedly relevant concerns, we fear vital aspects of this debate on education might be lost if it remains focused solely on these issues. So is education the opportunity for us to equip ourselves with the skills we need to be more entrepreneurial, to be adaptable to the challenge of this current economic climate and the changing profession? Maybe we're looking at an architectural education that equips us to deal with architecture for the 99% rather than the 1%. And also in this current climate where 44% of unqualified graduates, which is us when we finish our fifth year, and 22% of qualified architects are unemployed, we think it's clear that us as graduates need to become more flexible in order to respond and survive. So that's our opening. I'd like to thank ADS who are sponsoring the recording of this event. Their footage will be posted on the website for further and continued discussion. They see this as part of a bigger debate they're having at the moment on an exhibition called Reactivate. That's still on at the Lighthouse for the next two weeks. Just to note on this microphone, it doesn't amplify your voice, it just records, so speak up and speak into it. With that I'd like to introduce Robert Mantho, who's kindly agreed to chair the debate today. Robert is the stage five leader here at the Macintosh School of Architecture and the founder of Locust, the Collaborative Practice. So over to Robert. Thanks. Hello everybody. I just have been asked to make sure I explain the structure of the debate. What we've got is three questions and so we'll be doing with them in three sessions. Not every member of the panel will answer every question. I will read the question and ask the corresponding member of the panel to answer the question. Each member of the panel will have five minutes to discuss their response or to respond to the question and then we'll open up the question to the floor for 15 minutes. Again, I'd like to remind everybody that the microphone doesn't amplify your voice so you need to speak up and make sure you speak into it carefully. I'd like to introduce the members of the panel. I'll start with Stuart Falconer, who was a young architect who graduated from Strathclyde in 2006. He received the RIAS Silver Medal Commendation as a student. He is a founder of Grass Studio with Gunnar Groves Reigns, who's sitting right over here in Edinburgh, formed in 2006 as part of the Established Conservation Practice Groves Reigns Architects Limited. Lucy Mori is an independent consultant for architects focusing on marketing, PR, and business development. Lucy specializes in helping architects to become more business-like. She is a contributor to the RIBA CPD training in marketing and business planning and lectures at the London Metropolitan University, London South Bank University, the Bartlett School of Architecture at the University of Central London, and the University of Cambridge. Professor Chris Platt is the head of the Macintosh School of Architecture and founding director of a award-winning architectural practice studio CAP. Chris is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy and was made a fellow of the Royal Incorporation of Architects Scotland in 2009. He lectures widely and is an alumni of the Mac. Hanneke Scott Van Well is the director of Stone Opera, focusing on improving relationships between people and their built environment through interactive and playful architectural workshops. She's an architect registered both in the Netherlands and in the UK and is currently an architectural design tutor at Strathclyde University. David Goster has been the director of education at the Royal Institute of British Architecture since 2006. Prior to his current position, he was a principal lecturer and postgraduate course leader at the Department of Architecture and designed at London South Bank University. David is responsible for a variety of programs that support architectural schools, students, and academics. He oversees the RIBA program of validation as well. Ian Scott is founder of award-winning business, cognitive business therapy who are specialists in how people and organizations learn to be enterprising. He's an entrepreneur who helps people start their own businesses. Ian will provide a voice from outside of the discipline of architecture with an acute understanding of the challenges in today's commercial environment. So with those introductions, I'd like to ask the first question, which is, what is the purpose of architectural education today? What are we trying to achieve through that education? And the first person I'd like to answer that question is David Gloster. Thank you very much. I think the purpose of a long exposure to architecture education is actually that graduates come out of schools as versatile problem solvers who are able to survive in a variety of contexts, both in terms of the scale of enterprise that they work within, the geographical location they work within, and the nature of the problems which they're given to solve. And essentially, if you take design as being an holistic intellectual pursuit, which can involve seeing the design of a schedule for the delivery of a building to the design of a piece of iron mungery, then I think actually you're on the right track. What we need to do, I think, is to understand that this is a restless and curious profession, and it also has the capability to reinvent itself very, very quickly. This is probably a good thing because capitalism, which we are essentially a servant of, is also an amazingly versatile and quick-witted beast. And the marketization, I think, of practice and the increasingly corporate nature of globalized practice is something which we may all have a view on, but which we actually have to learn to live with and actually also need to learn to thrive within. So the purpose of an education in architecture, I think, certainly understanding what design in all its fullest ramifications means is critical to that. At the moment, we have, of course, a structure which essentially has its provenance, not even in the 1958 Oxford Conference on architecture, but actually in the 1929 Congress on architecture education. So the roots of the current system go back a very long way. And the purpose of architecture education should be fitness for purpose, actually. And it's a question of defining what that purpose is. Every school, I think, has a very good crack at doing it in their own particular way. But we don't have robust structures, necessarily, that allow us to compare and contrast those very, very different strategies towards architecture education. I'd like to ask Chris Platt. Okay, I want to read something just to sort of clarify a few of my own thoughts. I think contemporary practice is shifting further and further away from critical theory and academic preoccupations. And I think with the link between the academy and the profession is closer, the quality and the intelligence of the built environment and the discourse is generally higher, noticeably higher. I think the current student generation is more globally aware, more digitally switched on than any before it. And I think is interested in architecture as a social cultural activity, which makes people's lives better in a very fundamental way, be it here in the global north, or somewhere else in the global south. I think profound need can sometimes be the catalyst for innovative thinking and a redefinition of professional roles. I think the way the architecture students learn in the studio is a school's unique selling point. The lessons from the teaching ethos that comes from the studio is something that other university departments from other disciplines have long learned as innovative teaching. And in the Mac, we highly value this idea of the studio of both a way of working in a physical place. And for the digitally switched on generation with the world's libraries only a click away is always a question. Why do you go to a physical place? And the studio, in my view, is the answer to that. So I believe that architecture education should be unapologetically vocational in its ethos, not for training purposes and concerned with lifelong learning and the practice of the next generation of architects, those who envisage an architectural destination and can articulate built form to bear the imprint of human life and feeling deserve the title architect. And those who have it or wish it are urgently required. So an architect's job, I think is to create real quality where people come face to face with their built environment. And I think the purpose of architectural education is to inspire people to do that. Making I think it's a privilege and particularly in this mysterious digital age where we don't understand the tools we use and we throw them away and upgrade them as easy as we buy them. And so mastering them is never something that we do. So I want our agenda to redefine what the person of the architect is and what the relevance of architectural design is for the 21st century. And I think that agenda must address some major impact in issues impacting the built environment, healthy cities in the global south and north, place, quality and community, regeneration, design practice, energy and technological innovation. And I think a school of architecture should be a place for innovative practice in its widest sense. And I think its location should be chosen to try and collaborate with as many studio based disciplines as possible. The destination should be the gateway to an innovative and creative profession. So I want us to develop further a unique, as David says, holistic way of working, which is crucial to identify and resolve and address these growing environmental issues. Finally, I want the school to be actively seeking to influence four key areas, the construction industry, which is research and skills bereft almost, the architectural profession, which often speaks to itself and not to others, the makers and procurers who are often the employers of contemporary architects, and the general public to break down barriers of elitism and taste. And next I would like to ask Lucy Maury. The question what is the purpose of architecture education is really a response I feel to the fact that schools of architecture are failing to prepare students to practice as architects. This is not to say that schools of architecture are failing all students because not all architecture students want to become architects. However, there is a problem when architectural practices cannot recruit competent staff. And there is a problem when newly qualified architects do not have all the skills to deliver a construction project or run their own practice. I have always believed that architecture is an excellent general undergraduate degree in the same way as law. You can study law and not become a lawyer or economics or engineering. Many people in business and doing other activities have those undergraduate degrees. And a degree in architecture teaches a range of creative, technical and communication skills which are transferable and valuable to many careers. Therefore, I believe there is a case for separating the vocational and professional qualifications from the courses taught in higher education establishments. So in terms of the question, I think there are two purposes of architectural education today. One is a general education and the second professional. So I have opened the question to the floor. There are questions from everybody in the audience. Would you like to speak to the question to the audience? I'm interested in the relationship between the governing body of architectural education in the EU and in the UK, the RIBA and how those decisions are made and how possibly one might trump the other and how there might not be an equal marriage between the two. Would anybody like to comment on that? It's almost inevitable that it actually will produce uneven results because when the revised qualifications directive was passed by the European Parliament last October, they've actually adopted two possible frameworks for the delivery of a minimum framework in architectural education. One is four years full-time study with two years of practical training and the other is the five plus zero where the zero might be more than zero. It's five years full-time study with no practical training. Just to put this in context and without wishing to say five and four too many times, the current minimum standard across the EU is actually for four years full-time study only. In point of fact, there are very few countries who really do this. Denmark, the Netherlands and Greece nominally all adopt this minimal framework. You can see it differs significantly from what we used to in the UK where we've long recognized the proper synergies that should result from professional practice and architectural education. I think the time now actually is to make sure that we in the UK adopt a robust model. In terms of how that's generated, the RIBA is in an odd place. We're simply a charter body. A monarch of this country decided at one time that there would be a thing called the Royal Institute of British Architects, William IV, if I recall. And we've been around, I think, now for 180 years. So there's quite a lot of momentum behind being around for so long. Often when I walk around the building, I suspect it may be the same personnel as it was in 1834. And I think there's a general perception that we're slow to move. But ultimately, we're not the authority about this. We're simply somebody who has an established relationship with schools of architecture, both in the UK and worldwide. It is the statutory body, the Architects Registration Board, who ultimately have to sanction a model for architecture education. So all I can say is that we're pushing what we believe is going to be a flexible and better value model. But ultimately, we have to take the statutory body with us. So and various insignificant bodies like the Department of Communities and Local Government, the government body, who are ultimately responsible for architecture education. So the number of stakeholders, I hate the word, but I'll use it anyway, you know what I mean by that. The number of interested parties that we have to take with us include the schools, include the statutory body, include government departments, include all the future students of architecture. So the problem is a very complex problem and one that we have to solve quite quickly. Thanks. It was mentioned that the purpose of an architectural education is to prepare for practices and architect. In order to practice as an architect, you need to first practice as an architect's assistant. And I think the skills required are maybe slightly different. And I wonder if anybody on the panel feels that architecture schools adequately prepare people for practice as an architect's assistant in terms of the basic skills required to act in that role. Don't worry. Entrepreneurs are outsiders. And I've just been listening to what was being saying and reflecting. And actually at the end of the day, the issue of separation is really pointless if you don't have any work and you don't have any money coming in. And one of the things I was reflecting on on this first question is you can't actually answer that because architectural education is irrelevant unless you set it in the context of society and what's happening today. So a little quick point. I did history, which had all the attributes that you've just outlined from doing architecture except in my day, there were no fees and I got a grant and it was fantastic. And it was a great subject to study. But we spent a lot of time justifying what you got out of history and where you were going to be. And I sat my first final in 1979, the day Margaret Thatcher came to power. We went into the building and she won the election and everybody kind of went, the wind has changed direction. A year later, it was virtually impossible for people to get jobs and teaching. The whole thing was in disarray. And we are now back at that situation just now. We are in a completely different world. And the real question is why do you want to be an architect and what do you want to do after it? And you've got a choice. You can join the club and go and do the corporate work and take the shilling or you can do something different. But if you want to do something different, you have to recognise that you're going to have to be entrepreneurial about that and you're going to have to think differently and do different things. And there's also one final point. My course was paid for and I got a grant. It's a bloody expensive course now to have the luxury to say at the end, oh well, you can maybe have transferable skills. That's not really on and it's also a highly competitive market. So what I'm really going to say is, are you going to change the world? Because entrepreneurs do want to change the world and if so, you're going to have to start thinking about it and how you do that and how you deal with people and how you bring architecture back into society. Thank you. Actually, based on what you just said about history and what you've said about transferable skills and all of this, I'm curious as to your views on the role of history and theory in the future of architectural education. Is there a role for it and what should that be? I can maybe add something to that. I'm in a really lucky position where I work in an office which I'm surrounded with architects who are specialists in conservation, restoration and such like. So for me it's vital to understand how things used to be built and understand the fundamentals about that in order to design something of quality today that's going to last. I mean I think the average life expectancy of a house is something like 50 or 25, 50 years or something like that and for me that's just incredible because we should be designing things that are going to last 200 years rather than 20 years. I've learned so much from being in that environment which I don't think when I was at university I imagined I was going to be in because everybody thinks oh well I like contemporary design so that's all I'm going to do. But understanding that those fundamentals and the fact that you see building, I've always lived in a house that's been hundreds of years old just because I'm more comfortable there and I like that lifestyle and the way that building feels and the quality and you know I may have to repair it more often but I know it's going to last me longer. So for me it's that historical aspect is fundamental. I certainly think history should still be taught in architecture schools but I think there are many other subjects that should be taught. If you think about the role of the architect who's actually designing and delivering buildings in the current in the current society the process of procuring delivering buildings has changed enormously and if you're thinking about the kind of clients the professional clients the developers investors or contractors or local authorities who are commissioning buildings who are employing architects in fact they're not employing the architect first they often engage a quantity surveyor a project manager a letting agent or a surveyor before the architect and architects are often seen as expensive and out of touch with reality and they're brought in because they need to have get through planning there's a tricky planning site they're going to need something a bit clever something beautiful and the architects may create a beautiful image but it may be too expensive and unfortunately many architects do not understand the economics of property development and investment so I'd like to see an architectural education encompassing cost analysis project management finance business engineering the industrialization of producing elements BIM maintenance energy efficiency is a huge subject and probably too much and specialization will be necessary and I would take the lead from some other professional education where you have core subjects and electives that enable students to specialise in the bits that they're interested in so out of your architectural education you may be a more historical traditional conservation design architect or you may be a more project management architect who has a good understanding of the financing of development projects and can do the cost analysis and can make good decisions up front for the client because if you look back over time the architect traditionally had the leadership role on a construction project and that has been lost and I really think there is an opportunity in these changes to architectural education for the architect to reclaim that leadership but the way in doing that is really having to understand what is needed in order to design and deliver a building in today and in the future. Thanks several people have kind of talked about this idea of it being vocational and so say I went and did not architecture I was a dentist or a doctor I'd come out five years and that's what I would do I would go and be I would leave university been able to be a dentist or be a doctor do you see architecture as vocational in terms of it gets you the job the job of an architect or it gets you a job kind of when you talk about it being vocational. I'll say something because I've not said anything yet. I think that's really important and a valued question. When we start education whether it's architecture or becoming a dentist I don't think we're fully sure what we've committed ourselves to and so I think any educational process should prepare ourselves for life after that whether that is becoming a dentist or becoming an architect. When it comes to architecture though and I'm not I don't know much about the dentist profession so maybe I'm wrong here but when it comes to architecture I think it's such a wide variety of skills that are required they go beyond that line on the drawing. It goes you need to be able to communicate you need to be able to be vocal about it you need to have an opinion you need to be able to design but I think the most important thing is to understand what you want to do is to provide a sustainable environment eventually and that means you need to understand the brief you need to understand the people that use it so understanding social skills understanding the human psychology all that should also be part of architecture education and I think I don't think we can go back to the traditional of the architect but the architect is leading because we've I don't know there's so many other consultancies that all represent the original of the architect at the time we don't we cannot oversee all those elements in a delivery process anymore like construction engineering like quantity severe in the old days it was the architect that did that we cannot do all that anymore ourselves but we have to be aware of them we have to be confident in dealing with them in a delivery process and all that should be touched upon during education and whether that makes you a good architect in the end or potentially a good developer maybe why not become a developer after studying architect I think that that would be fantastic and so don't know whether that answers your question but I do think the architectural profession is so widely defined we should be prepared for that as students but we shall also should feel confident when we graduate before you Chris I think the thing is that well you get taught how to design and you can apply that process of design and making something to quite a lot of different things so the skill to design a building in some ways aren't that much different to designing a product you're still going through the same reiterative process so I don't think just because you do architecture you have to then be an architect and I think in some cases now students have had to think well I've done this five to seven year architectural education and there isn't a job for me so they've been forced to look elsewhere. I'd just quite like to get away from this idea implicit in some of these comments that the purpose of the School of Architecture is somehow to train for the profession it's not I'm of the view very much that town and gowns should come closer together but I'm not in favour of the school training for what you're going to do in the profession because you can look back through history and see that you know the discipline of architecture even though the profession is very young the topic creates a whole series of different models department in Hillhead Primary School my house you could all describe perhaps as architectural so the discipline doesn't really change that much throughout history what changes is all of the external influences on it that's where schools of architecture have to be nimble agile aware they're not necessarily there to cover all of the ground in this vastly changing profession because it changes all the time my experience a lot of the things that are being raised here are things that you can't really learn properly until you're in practice it presumes that we just learn here and somehow when you're in practice you're just doing it and you're not learning it but it's very much the opposite those huge leaps I remember very vividly and I left school went straight into an architect's office for four years before coming in as a full-time student here so I deliberately didn't want to be a student still actually don't deliberately wanted to be somebody who was working who was doing it I thought it's something practical it was only later that I realized the real luxury and the pleasure of studying it but it was something that I studied that had already started to do so all of these new and even in the last 10 years the new roles the new specialisms the new players in the industry the new responsibilities and leaderships and the changing role of the architect these are all things that the architect has to address but they don't necessarily change the values of the qualities because at the end of the day as I say there are people who have to set what I would call an architectural destination who lead by the vision and I don't mean that in a romantic way not because they're contractually the leader but the meeting doesn't take the meeting doesn't really get going until the architect's there regardless of whether the project manager or the client or the contractor is actually the employer that's what we're trying to help you guys take with you this versatility this range of skills to be adaptable in this changing circumstance if you don't have an idea of why you're doing it there's no point in coming up with all these skills and changing roles and whatever you want to call it you need to know why you're doing it the other thing I want to just say for a person to Chris I think about to say something is that it's very difficult to know what you want to do when you are choosing your subjects at school regardless of whether you're an architect or a doctor or whatever so you quite often find something more or a clarity about these things only when you've already made that commitment and in my case well after I became an architect in practice so I wouldn't be in a rush or in your particularly anxious to think you've got to gather all this stuff in your haversack before you go into practice you don't you need to be ready to learn and for me that meant a five year very consciously a five year learning process after my part three and that was me already with four years under development so it's an attitude more than a particular set of skills I'm sorry no no no no no no no no Hanne could just I thought made a really exciting suggestion be a developer entrepreneurs cannot do anything until they visualise they've got to and it takes a while to visualise and they love a bit of chaos and a bit of anarchy because that's the fun and changing the rules and otherwise that done that way we could do this and it is actually quite interesting because when you actually say become a developer it means that you can use your architectural skills and learning and apply it in practice in ways that actually fit what you would like to see happening but you learn to be an entrepreneur by doing it's not something that's taught it's not born it's not made it's by doing and the three key things are first of all you learn how to negotiate your resources and that really is quite an interesting one because your ability to interact with clients and people and confer and discuss and take people with you is vital the next thing is you learn by doing which I've said and the third thing is you do that by a can-do attitude and it's people going well that's rubbish and learning how to overcome that but in Woodlands in the corner in a day like I think it was a form of bomb site there's a new development that's going up it's the decaying area fascinating walk past it it's a corner site and they're putting in artist studios it's not bricks it's not cement it's wooden sheds and I walk past that and it's next to the community garden and there is this set of really interesting wooden sheds for artist studios and it gave me such a kick to see that and I think it must have given the architectural practice that designed that such a kick to do that but it's highly entrepreneurial it's low cost it's cheap you can see it and it can emerge it's not big it's not grand but it's a start and that's how you learn by doing and that's the kind of thing that really has to start coming across having a shot at something and learning how it goes I'm going to have to preclude the discussion and go on to the next question so the second question is how can architecture students be educated in a more flexible and economic means for them for the actual students and the first person I'd like to answer that question is Mr Scott Actually, I was really interested in comments I mean, I don't know if all architects can ever be entrepreneurs name an entrepreneur that was an architect any take or something Thank you very much Oh, we don't see them on the Apprentice Frank Geary was quite entrepreneurial and when he started off I would put him down as a highly successful businessman who makes a lot of money I'm not quite sure that that's the same as entrepreneurship He's done a business in the way he's developed his practice and he's done it in a non-conventional way which brings us to what do you want out of this whole thing and actually one of the things people talked about was a job actually other jobs out there and if you want that job you're going to have to do something an ex-architect friend of mine who now makes jewellery said Oh, I left and she said it's either run by psychopaths and you're a CAD monkey in front of them or there's another one that's pushing it on but she was actually making a point that's why she wanted out of it she didn't want to be part of that she wanted to do something different she's using all of our architectural skills now in making jewellery and actually it's not the making, it's the designing and she'll take it on to the next level I think what's coming out here is that has to be through something which is a bit nimble, flexible learning by doing and having a shot at things and actually can you offer your services as a student free of charge to people who want to do something? You can offer them for money as well You can offer them for the money as well and that's you already moving into I mean, actually that is an interesting point if on that basis you say we'll help you do all of this legally what does that actually mean? Are there implications from? You can, you don't need to call yourself an architect to practice architecture that's just a title that's protected whether you get commissions and architecture is another question but you don't need to be qualified you don't need to come through an architectural school and from the point of view of students working I'm not quite sure if your question is about working with an architect or just working generally working generally there's no limits to what students can do as far as I'm concerned well that was a tag team answer to the question which I think cleverly avoiding no, no, I'm going to answer the question oh well you, sorry, you'll have to wait till the comments I like to ask Stuart Falconer do you think it's your question going to be hard? the question was how can architecture students sorry how can architecture students be educated in a more flexible manner and a more economic manner for students? how can they be educated in a more economic manner? well I think one of the examples is across the road now actually that's the first time I've seen that building and actually one of the important things for me is that multi-circuit disciplinary because I think maybe sometimes certainly in my education we were in an architecture building and you did architecture and you didn't really want to talk to anyone else and I think there's a real merit in speaking to other people working with other people understanding what skills they have how you might apply them how you can work together collaborating I think is one of the most important things and the building across the road for me just the first time I've seen it today certainly internally you're walking around and you can see somebody doing something you might otherwise never have seen so for me that is a really really important aspect of being able to be more flexible because it opens your eyes up to seeing to other things if you work for yourself all the time I think you're just limited in what your own capabilities are as soon as there's somebody else in the room with a different attitude it opens up multiple possibilities I guess I I mean I'm sort of stepping outside my role as the chairman here just to try to clarify the question I think what the students are wondering is are there other modes of education such as you know part time we at the school have a part time mode and I think we're one of the only schools in Scotland I think there's a couple schools in the rest of the UK but are there other ways that the the model of education could be more flexible and not quite so expensive for students I think that was the gist of the question I'll ask the organizers to confirm that yeah look I mean the they have a little five minutes side it's not an agenda but we'll let we'll let David Glaster answer that question because he's involved intimately in that process the fact is that the UK of course does architecture education exceptionally well I can say that from first-hand observation of architecture education delivered globally whether it's Latin America, the Middle East, the Far East Russian Federation, we do do it very very well and the first thing we need to reassure ourselves is that we actually have a pretty good model here the big problem is that that model is subject to political pressures which we couldn't have anticipated Ian's points about being paid to be a student as indeed I was not very much I spent most of my grants on an electric guitar which I've never regretted either but the important thing is the circumstances under which you're studying the circumstances under which we studied are hugely different and the circumstance in which you practice your craft but the question about responsiveness and more economic models of course there can be I mean it's it's absurd really to suggest that you shouldn't be able to draw down the electronic learning module at 3 a.m. in the morning after you've just got back off a hard day's half half days work in the practice that's sustaining you or the bar that you're working as a bartender in of course you should be able to study and have access to information and access to your learning 24 hours a day seven days a week I think the construct of sitting in a room like this is absolutely great and you know the reason one comes to events like this is to to get this kind of intimacy of exchange between people but the reality is that we all gather information not knowledge we may need to distinguish between information and knowledge we've actually got too much information not enough knowledge the classroom probably provides the filter between these things I think we would certainly like to see entirely different models for learning the R.I.B.A. office based exam for example is a distance learning scheme where in some cases the online tutors never ever meet the candidates who they're tutoring it's been running for 10 years now it has something like 250 candidates registered on it that's just one example part-time study is obviously another one but I think the idea of a peripatetic student of architecture who's not necessarily registered at any one university but simply acts like a kind of gorilla taking gorilla, not the gorilla taking academic modules from a network of schools which might be global not even national is the kind of model that we have to look at in the future we can't kid ourselves that we have a monopoly on knowledge in the UK or that we have a monopoly on the means to deliver it through what has actually become I would argue a pretty inflexible system for architectural education yes it can be done more cheaply I think there's a way of being able to identify very very self-critically the fact that there is quite a lot in the architecture curriculum which is sacrificial we need to be very very careful now with students paying nine thousand pounds a year you aren't exposed to something that is incredibly entertaining but essentially sacrificial course needs to be stripped down to its basics I certainly don't discount the issues that Lucy's talking about business skills indeed I think that it's fundamental that the part three elements the professional skills elements need to make everybody understand that whether we like it or not we're working to and responding to a commercial context but we need to be super analytical and the lead has to come from the schools the ROBA can only provide a kind of sketch in the air of what these models will become but ultimately the schools have to be prepared to stage their own coup d'etats internally to actually provide models which are fit for the 22nd let alone the 21st century I just would like to ask Hanukkah to answer respond to the question and first of all education costs money teachers cost money, a building cost money and this is many aspects education costs money and you just have to accept that I'm still paying for my education and I graduated 16 years ago and and I think it's important that you that I know that sounds horrible but it's been worth every penny I had a fantastic time as a student and has really equipped me to a really happy life I'm leading just now it's been worth every penny and this is how you should see it you should invest in yourself and it costs money to my surprise as a Dutch person coming to Scotland I found that a lot of students actually don't work next to their study and I've been teaching it and tutoring here for a couple of years now and it seems more an exception than the rule that students work and I know architectural course takes a lot of your time but I found time to work next to it and you just have to make the balance yourself so that was my first thing I wanted to say it costs money and then of course there are ways to make it easier and and there's the learning environment is all around you I mean architecture is when you walk in the street when you go on holiday you see architecture all the time and so you can soak up knowledge without any tutor without any architectural department and you can teach yourself basically a lot about to build environments showing interest in any educational organization it's up to you as a student what you get out of it so again it's about that investment in yourself make the most out of it while having fun really important that last bit as well and what I also want to say is that there's a model in the Netherlands and I think that is quite unique I'm not sure how that is used in other countries in in the Netherlands you can study either at the university and I think they also offer part-time courses but you can also study at the academy and the academy architectural academies there's five or six of them in the whole country offer a course after you've graduated as technical engineer this is a part-time course either in evening hours depending on which city you choose or in the weekend hours and basically so you're about twenty four at this point you've graduated as a technical engineer and you find yourself a job three days a week an architectural practice as an assistant to come back to your question and and the other time in the week you used to study architecture that this has this model has become so popular and so successful it actually makes a really good bridge with practices practices are really keen to get a student from one of the academies instead of the universities because by that time they the total course is five years by that time they've got five years in practice and they've studied architecture because they have decided to study onwards there's a drive these students want to learn want to work want to create beautiful things so the attitude is there the knowledge is there and these students are really committed so there's actually that there's a real take from practices another thing I have to say is that practices tutor at these academies so they do this in the evening hours and weekend hours and so they actually get a first look at what will be out there once the students graduate so they get picked up straight away it's like a ninety percent guarantee of a job and because the students are working there's money coming in that can pay for the course so balances out quite well what it does mean is that it's a huge commitment and at the time I chose not to do it because for me I still wanted to enjoy life go to films and travel and do all those kind of things I couldn't commit to such a model but it's definitely economically interesting to look at so we're gonna open that the question to the crats if anybody would like to I've been enjoying the conversation greatly and I'm particularly taking what by what David Gloucester is saying about the RIB's view on these matters because I think very often schools of architecture hide behind the validation things even though we can't do anything experimental or innovative because we're on the line when it comes to the validation visits my own experience has been that the RIB when one went to them with innovative ways of doing things in education we were pushing an open door so I'm glad to hear that would likely to still be the case and I'd like to couple that with what Lucy Maury said of course we can't deal with everything and if we try to then I think we just make a mess of things but the idea of a core a stripped down core which all students follow topped up by electives and specializations in later years and I think that's the way to cover the area and to keep abreast of innovative technologies that are coming on the scene particularly IT and so on I think this should also be encouraged to have differentiation between schools of architecture there's no reason why we shouldn't all be trying to do the same thing and I think something that perpetuates the traditional way of dealing with things is the recycling of recent graduates onto the staff it seems to me that that's just not a very good idea Any other questions that you'd like to put? It strikes me that this idea that architecture architectural education has to move down a line towards being economic and commercially minded is is a great way of killing university education dead university education isn't technical college if we want technical college we could go to a technical college university education based on a model from the ancient Greeks is about leisure it's about the slow accumulation of knowledge and understanding as Chris described it, analytical skills it's not necessarily about this endless drive towards work I think we have to be really careful that we don't take this three to five years that the students are here and basically recapitulate what they're going to do for the rest of their lives the point of universities isn't technical knowledge to go back to a comment made earlier a dentist learns how to be a dentist it's an objective set of rules and knowledge based around that dentistry or being a doctor or a lawyer is based around it grows and evolves over time but when you open up someone's mouth there's a definite thing in front of you that you have to definitely deal with you know what I mean there's some like 80 teeth or something in the tongue and and then you I have no idea but the point is with architecture there is none of that you're given a site and there are no rules there is nothing specific or objective about what we're doing certainly these days whether that's good thing or bad is is besides the point the thing is we can't tell students the answer and give them BIM and give them CAD lesson and all of that they're going to do that for the rest of their lives and I think it's a disastrous idea it would literally denude universities of any of their beauty and poetry and it would be three years of depression I go back to my first point my first point I did suggest that there was a division between the general degree and the profession and they weren't necessarily the same I agree that there is a lot of benefit and joy should be in architectural education as an undergraduate degree but if you're talking about training people to become architects I think that is different and I think that the current system is very rigid and if we just the more general point here is about flexibility I think there shouldn't be one set way to become an architect there should be lots of different routes to get there but there perhaps could be an independent professional examination that could be taken that whether you whatever route you came through whether it was through working more professional practice or working on a site or doing writing theoretical research they were all valid routes to take you towards becoming an architect there's a piece I read recently by Peter Buchanan who talked about having a shared foundation year as part of an undergraduate degree where you had the urban planning landscape designers and architects working together for that first year and I thought that was a very interesting way of getting a shared a broader collaborative understanding at the beginning of your career when as you say you're not quite sure which way you're wanting to go and there are other more flexible approaches being looked at at the moment Will Hunter has got a project for a new London school of architecture with an idea of a new diploma that will be half the cost of the current diplomas because there will be no no school there will be no no real buildings and there'll be much closer relationship between the students and practice they'll be working or working a practice much more in the model and I'm sure you must have been inspired by the by the Dutch model so that I'm hopeful that there are more flexible ways coming through it was I'm picking up on a point you made David it was about the connection between between the architectural education and what essentially gets built you mentioned that the education in the UK is I guess one of the best architectural educations you can get but for me personally there's a bit of a disconnect between that education and what essentially gets built and in the UK at least most of it most of it's crap and what people have to live in what people have to put up with in terms of average room sizes and average amounts of daylight is quite low and quite low in comparison to other countries so in terms of the education that we get and what gets built is there's something that can change there which actually influences crap not being built anymore if you if you know what I mean not crap but like sort of bad buildings or small rooms or small debt you know these types of things I first need to take the question about denuding architecture courses of all the the juice I mean there's absolutely no intention to do that in fact if I was offering a critique on the national provision in the UK whilst whilst I'm not going to withdraw any of the comments made earlier about it it's basic excellence I think there is a fundamental lack of risk being taken by a majority of skills dare I say it which which is actually in relation to speculating about what architecture can be and I do think this is problematic there is the the bifurcation between the analog and digital worlds is partly responsible for it but I think there's also a kind of intellectual stasis which actually does relate to the the broader question of where the UK sits in the world offer of architecture education the reality is there are plenty of places I can tell you where they're getting very very hot and very very good at it and actually can nick the market share that the UK has had a monopolistic hold on for a very very long time so we need to be extremely vigilant certainly from the point of view of what the RIBA is willing to endorse to pick up the speaker at the back we're actually extremely open about it and any school that says well we'd love to do that but the RIBA won't let us it's just fundamentally misunderstanding what the purpose of architecture education is they're actually sewing themselves into the straitjacket and actually short changing all the viewers students from the potential that you can all have as problem solvers yes of course a lot of the built environments take up your point is miserable and I think it does relate to getting back some of our market share as it were by simply being better architects and the reality is actually quite a lot of architects aren't terribly good designers sad to report and this this should not be the case generally speaking I think the pick up a previous comment about the value of history and theory the value of history and theory is actually about being able to situate the quality of ideas that you have an act as an advocate for them in the same way that in a courtroom you have to advocate a defense of a client or the prosecution of a person we actually need to be better advocates for what we do and I think the lessons that we can learn from history and theory does do this now all this actually comes just down to a conclusion that this is a course which is among the most demanding in the world in terms of the information that you have to have at your disposal the ability you have to have to play yourself into different roles to be able to work with a let's say an oligarchy who has two billion pounds at their disposal for development and at the same time a hot carrier on the side we do need to be extraordinarily nimble very flexible very responsive and this is a huge demand that we're placing on ourselves but unless you got it fundamentally wrong when you walked in through the School of Architecture's front door on the first day of the first week of the first term of the first year I would suggest that you're all well up to it but you do need to challenge yourselves and the profession actually won't beat a path to your door unless you beat a path to its door and I think developing the synergy between the profession and the schools in a creative way so that we bring that connection between education and training a point that Chris made very very well earlier it's a massive distinction we need to be clear what one offers the other and actually the profession shouldn't be lazy about this it has a responsibility to all of you frankly I would not wish a graduate from a medical school who graduated yesterday to open my chest and look at my heart I would probably take somebody who had about 15 years experience still had good pair of legs a good eyesight and a steady hand but with that experience as well as the education behind them they're the person I'd want to open my chest not the recent graduate that applies equally to architecture the learning through doing that we've heard a lot about and which is absolutely fundamentally correct let's face it you get better at doing architecture through reiteration that's why Wright was still doing it at the age of 93 um some of me want to support what you're saying David but there's also a part of me where where we differ from the medical profession um where we've got either a mouth or a body in front of us um architecture requires vision when you've got a blank canvas and this is where young spirits come in or can come in and change things and I completely agree with the statement about the crap that was made earlier um I'm surprised because I agree with with uh when you look in Britain when you look around the architecture is being provided just now it's not high standard especially the housing stock is of really poor quality architecturally wise and um how why why is this and I want to ask you this question I want to actually request make this request to you when you come out of this course and I'm sure you all will become uh uh really good at what you're going to do after this course but could you please make sure that your new employer is going to change um and and make better architecture because I think the biggest problem is is that by stepping back okay you're graduated and you go and work for an office and you'll you'll be humble and you'll learn from the people in the office you actually very slowly lose your vision your enthusiasm your ambition that you had when you were studying so my question to you is hold on to that and while learning uh practice also maintain that feeling of wanting to do something new something different and question your employer is this good enough I've got a better idea um so the third question is is the traditional architect still necessary and this is open to any speaker on the panel Chris would like to answer that question you've filmed you should have hung on to them that's what entrepreneurs do you cannot follow that I'd like to I'd like to sort of break away from this distinction between traditional and something else to be honest because uh I think implicit in the question uh for me the answer is it's a question of scale the profession at the moment is polarized between uh what happens in large practices and what happens in smaller practices and it's to do with scale if you're being asked to design a large project then there's a whole series of of procurement methods contracts interdisciplinary activities that take place and you are brought into if you're dealing with a small project the chances are you're dealing exactly directly with the contractor you know the client they're paying you and so and so forth and you've got a small team of uh other consultants it's to do with scale rather than tradition I don't think anybody particularly from my perspective and I'm made a small practice nobody is in any way sitting in some sort of romantic cloud thinking yes I'm not going into CAD I'm holding on to that point 25 or whatever it was I don't think that exists I think some of the most innovative uh thoughtful and challenging work comes out of tiny practices and I think that's as much to do with the method of generating projects as actually delivering them so I think for me there are some things that I would say are really important have been really important for a long time but they've got more to do with values and qualities and aspirations rather than particular roles for instance I mean to answer the well maybe shouldn't answer the last question I think to answer the last question which might be something to do with this I think there are two things that would make uh perhaps your experience as a student less expensive and they're related to the modes of learning and the length of the course and both those can be explored and I'm particularly unconvinced that we've got the best model of the length of course and the relationship to practice I think there's a far more interesting agile model where students are related in some way linked into those practices that are actually teaching that's difficult to get right because practices are at the mercy of the market as well and nevertheless there are models of doing that and what you might do in an office might actually be credit worthy that we haven't even explored in this school second one is the the modes of learning that's something we are exploring we have a part-time course we've just commissioned and received a large study looking at the future of part-time courses and that relates to modes of learning as well as just whether you're coming in one or two days a week as I did for four years so I think those two things are really crucial because the two most expensive things in education are staff costs and the physical learning and teaching environment and as I said at the very beginning we think coming in to be around your peers even more importantly than be around us is very important and so jetting from one school to another and picking up modules here and there might actually be fine on paper but it doesn't get you to interact in the same way with your peers and that's actually where the real learning occurs so it's a challenging thing but nevertheless those two for me are the two things that could be adjusted I think we're actually getting to a really interesting point here one the minute you start talking about getting a job the question is what kind of job that is going to be if it is with a big practice if that is where you want to go you will have to pursue a particular approach and career path in the same way that somebody that wants to run I well Shell or BP goes down a particular route the corporate route you burnish the CV you play the game you do what is asked you become adept at competence based recruitment exercises you get to the top of the poll and you're probably when you get there because all of your life has been spent getting to the top of the poll but if that is the route that you want to take that is what it involves if you don't want to play that game you need to seriously think about what that means for you as an architect now and it is an issue of not being a traditional there is a totally different world out there people are really loving buildings in a way that they haven't done for a while and I was on the town centre review group and it was really interesting working with planners and architects and all sorts of people but there's a key thing it's people that make places fantastic and the three elements that we want to see are people place and prosperity and architecture is a means to an end and there are community groups and there are businesses out there and there are individuals that want to make their lives better and they want to work with somebody that can help them make their life or their business better but if you're going to do that you need to have all the skills to understand you need to be able to work with people you need to make sure that the building you're coming up with realises their aspirations and not just yours and it's again this learning thing and that is a different approach and there's a whole breed of architects out there we heard about indeed Johar and 00 architecture moving into the development side of things there's so many more options for you out there there are so many more people wanting but the only way it will work is people skills and understanding and if you've got a vision of what you want to do you're going to have to sell that but not in the commercial way it's actually working with the client patronage is the old way that it was used where the client was a patron of the architect that's changed but these things have to be reflected in architectural education working with people and getting a job really helps do all of that working behind a bar paying for things really improves your skills probably makes you a better architect as well I have to agree with what you were saying some very good very good points there but just going back to the original question I think was about the traditional role of the architect does it exist and I think ignoring the word traditional that the the architect is unique in having that vision of what the potential of a project is and nobody else really in the process and as you're working with a very enlightened client has that has that vision and that shouldn't be that really shouldn't be forgotten and that is where the opportunities are I'd really reinforce all the other points that have just been made by Ian I just I just wanted to bring up the point before maybe related to what you guys are talking about now what you were saying before about the the students and we have to go out and do things better what is as a David Chipperfield would always have it that Britain is developer led and not led by the architect so kind of therein lies the problem that the developers are leading in which is maybe why so much stuff is miserable in the first place because they maybe has some has something to do with it but the question of whether an architect is necessary if most of the stuff that is being built isn't very complex and anybody can kind of design it why do you need so many architects or why are architects needed if that's where the opportunity is if you go and work for a practice that doesn't it's doing developer led work they might not have the the the vision or the skills or the creativity to within the constraints of the developer the developers financial constraints the site constraints that's where the real opportunity for a talented architect is to get some really good architecture out of that and that's on the reasons when I came out of architecture school I wanted to work in a big commercial practice where I could I could really try and make on a on a large scale city center shopping center mixed development project really have some input into getting some good trying to get some good quality design through that process and I think that the opportunity and the challenge for a for a young architect is even greater and bigger and more wonderful and more exciting in that kind of environment I completely second that one of my my eye opening moments in my early architectural career was in Holland as a young practice I said that my own practice straight away after graduating because I think I'm too hard headed to work for another company unfortunately I said my own practice and we realized there's a lot of housing commissions for young architects in Holland and they're great absolutely fantastic and you'll see that because of that the actual standard of social housing in Holland is quite high because there's a strong ambition to do your utter best because this is your first commission as a young architect and the the not so visionary other architectural practice actually need to keep up with the younger ones because they're doing really really well because of it but my eye opening moment was with this very traditional social housing association that wanted the gutters and the drainage pipes accessible at all times for their technical team if something was wrong and they actually with that traditional approach they actually made it really really easy for us to find the creative opportunities because they were so direct in what they were looking for and actually opened up a whole lot of opportunities for us to actually play with the idea of where can where can the gutter go that they can still touch it but we we can still make it look beautiful and so those weeks trains are actually quite powerful developers in Holland are known for a bit more progressive approach because they do allow young architects to build for them or to design for them however they've got other limitations that you wouldn't even see here for instance my first commission a developer had already bought the bricks before they started appointing architects and they once there were five architects involved and we were given the bricks or five types of bricks and we could all pick one and we were given two shapes of windows and that's it and we had to design with that now how limited can it be however there became a full palette for us to start playing with so we started playing with patterns we started to turn the brick around we started to move the windows and suddenly we talked about dissonance like if you've got a strong pattern can you put them in one window slightly up and we really became musicians and sort of creative people within that and I really enjoyed that experience and this was the most traditional housing association in Holland so do take up that challenge I completely back up what Lucy is saying one of the things I wanted to go back to about developer being developer-led in this country and I think that is true to a strong degree one of the interesting companies that we got involved with a little bit down south was a company called Cathedral and they are a developer who go around actively looking for sites in London that nobody else will touch one developer wants one person to deal with by the land and they do what they want these guys look for areas and really really run down areas that are in dire need of something they have 70 stakeholders so nobody else will touch it and they go to the council and say well what do you need and they end up just doing something on that site so they stuck a cafe in a train carriage and that acted as a catalyst back to what you were talking about which grew and now that is a really up and coming site with a huge big multi multi-purpose building on it so that sort of model of actually just doing it starting something the local community are in there from the start so it's not something which is built then you shout for the community and nobody wants to go there and that was a model which I was completely fascinated by and produces something far more successful than something which is dumped on a site and made as small as possible to make maximum profit so for me that was something which was really successful and should be looked at further so I think Hanukkah introduces an interesting issue which I think is very much part of a contemporary construction culture which is the fact that now I think as many architects work for contractors or with contractors as within their companies as there used to be in local authorities about 25 years ago and I think for me one of the key things about being an architect is influencing and being involved in the whole realization project process which is the lesson from contemporary Swiss architecture why is it so excellent that's one of the reasons nowadays because of procurement methods and contracts that's very difficult in big projects building across the road is a very good example of how somehow amazingly a number of architects have managed to keep keep that influence all the way through working incredibly closely with a very good main contractor so that the handrails and everything like that have that touch but one of the reasons why that's the case is because the contractor themselves have been involved in developing that design which a story which will probably come out at some point in a lot more interesting detail and that same contractor has architects on their staff Joel and Ardie particularly who I'm sure some of you met somebody graduate from this school the interesting thing about being involved with a contractor which traditionally architects have seen as the enemy but in actual fact are our hands as architects is that as technologies become more sophisticated and bigger companies start to take on the risks and therefore are the final decision makers in other words the contractors developers it allows the architects the opportunity to be involved in them and influence within rather than outwith and I think that's another absolutely vital in fact it's a crucial area of influence for architects otherwise the crap that somebody so eloquently and rightly points out is is going to continue because I think that's the reason why it is mediocre is because artists aren't partly artists aren't influencing that whole stage their front-end work or if they're involved in it at all so I think the involvement as members of a contracting team within the company is a crucial area for architects influence in the future I think this is a key point because if we think of what the attributes of a traditional architect what might they be I mean are we going to see the likes of Brunelleschi again are we going to see the likes of Vambra or so I mean just let's actually look at the uvra that these architects were responsible for and key to this actually is that concept of craft there's an elegance and an ingenuity in the making and I think Chris's comments are very interesting because what they do is they posit in fact a new way that architecture should be working I mean it should be axiomatic that our primary relationship in the design team is with contractors they are indeed our hands and I mean the interesting thing is if you look at the country like Japan which has over 200 schools of architecture you know actually not a huge population why does it do that because the vast majority of graduates actually go and work with contracting teams so actually there is a possibility for us to reconfigure our relationships within the professional design team in a way to restore the potency of the architectural vision I don't think we're ever going to be the conductor of the orchestra again and in some ways actually I think that's a sort of fairly repugnant and old-fashioned vision but I think using the creative skills we have to get greater leverage is actually a question of us forming creative partnerships and there is a problem which is that we are educated as individuals and we then have this massive cultural shock that we have to work in teams and this is true whether it's even at the most modest level of project development it's a it's a it's a cultural schism between the nature of the education and the realization of the architectural project and I think that's something we have to address just responding to that there's a statistic which gets bandied around I don't know how accurate it is but within this country something like 95 percent of buildings designed in the UK are designed by non-architects and while we as architects can you know fight to take a bigger stake in that something bigger obviously needs to change to make that different I'd be interested to know what the statistic was in Japan where they have so many architecture schools and they must be doing something fundamentally different in the way the system is set up and whether that's through the protection of function as well as title I don't know but I was wondering if you had any I think there's something about the cultural embedding of design and architecture in some countries which simply gets it right I mean it's interesting I mean I worked in Holland for a while at the Arnhem School running an architecture and management master's course that happens and of course it's a protected activity in the Netherlands which is it isn't here we have a protected title here and it's fundamentally different so in other words any project in the Netherlands actually has to be realized with an architect involved in it and it creates very inventive ways of in which things are delivered we haven't we have one such case study I think it's really fascinating I think it's a question of us forming different relationships I think it's actually about 92 percent of projects realized without architects it's about it's significantly worse in the United States you know I think Reina Bannum used to say in the UK you have to go hundreds of miles to see good buildings in the in America you have to go thousands of miles and I always thought that was an interesting way of looking at it but it's about forming different relationships unquestionably I was struck by the point that that in fact it always made me seem it seemed weird in school that we were all being trained to be corbusier and then as you said we go out into the world and we work with a group of people even if you maintain that single as a single practitioner you still have to work with clients you still have to work with other professionals etc and it was a great moment of revelation to me to learn that in collaboration you can actually make better stuff because I would I'd always been sort of it always nobody has explicitly said it but it always been suggested that in fact no no you are the genius and if you're not a genius you're a mope and you should you know go do something else like accounting or something to that so I just I just I wonder what the panel thinks about that notion in terms of because we do some work to try to get people to learn how to collaborate I don't think the school is particularly bad at getting collaborations but I think different schools do do different things about how you teach people to learn to collaborate because the biggest thing in collaboration is trust and it's it can be a difficult thing to teach trust can I tell an anecdote about 10 years ago I was doing an entrepreneurship program in Bradford and I got in earlier and I was walking through Lister Park which is the park endowed by dint of philanthropic Victorian activity and I was walking through it and there's this group of people kind of standing in an area and I kind of looked at them and they looked different from everybody else they certainly looked different from everybody in Bradford and they were wearing particular clothes and I get closer up and there was a lot of talk about form and flow and various things and I thought that looks like a bunch of architects and in fact and I just said jokingly it could even be cabe the commission and architects on the built environment and I went into my meeting with the head of housing or whatever it was and I said there was a bunch of people in Lister Park who would know that was cabe they were down here to tell us how to do things properly and that is in a way the kind of symbol of thought and how people viewed architects this lofty body that had arrived to make people's lives better in isolation and I think one of the things that's really interesting that's come through consistently from the whole panel is that has to go that cannot cannot continue what it's not economic it will not give you a living it's actually about partnership and it's also about creativity and it's also meeting other people who disagree which give you the creative spark and that's the exciting bit that's the entrepreneurial bit so you know if you if you want to go and visit Lister Park and pass views oh and a challenge for you there's a magazine called the Scottish Review online and really interesting there's an article in it yesterday called Glasgow's Disgrace and it refers to the unfinished building in Edinburgh but he says Glasgow's Disgrace is the beginning of Sucky Hall Street as you move from St George's Channing Cross bit down the unpedestrianized bit and in it Andrew who former professor of English says this area has been a mess since 2001 when the master plan was produced and it was going to regenerate everything and it's failed and he said but there's now something that's been formed called a business improvement district and he was quite upset about this because it was led by business and commerce and he said it's all going to be about the garage and lots and lots of buildings and he said far better to give the money to some of the young students at the School of Art up the road to make things better now I will leave you with that on how you want to respond because I think a response is actually required you can respond but it's not on your own terms it's actually going to speak to the business improvement district people and say we're up the road we're part of this we use this how can we get involved in this how can we help change all of these things do something so there's a little challenge for you can it I think I think look at bruise was quite a collaborator actually when you think of the number of people anyway I think I think just because you're designing projects in yourself or spending time in the studio it doesn't in any way preclude the need or desire to work in teams actually I think one of the two things that you need to do to be able to work with other people one is you need to enjoy playing and I think I suspect if you weren't if you didn't enjoy playing with people before you became a student you're unlikely to be enjoying working in teams after you graduate and secondly you want you need a desire to do it and the recognition that you can't do architects can't build buildings without other people we can't do it ourselves unless unless you're James who can do it in the global south and even he needs people to build as well so I think I think there needs to be a desire and I think there needs to be a almost a temperamental interest in doing it I would totally agree because I think group work in uni is like a bad word you know it's like the thing you do at the start of a project whenever there's been site analysis and nobody wants to do it and all hate each other and then as soon as you can you split away and you do your own project and actually the hardest thing I think we did in uni and the most successful and the best thing we ever did in uni was stay working as a group so we did our masters and just kept working together even though it was quite difficult and we shared with each other at some points we just kept doing it and it gave us far more successful results because everyone's get good ideas and then together you've got a lot more good ideas so I'm still working with the person that I started group work in fifth year with and for me that shows how valuable that is actually. Can I just ask something? Chris you're talking about the group work and how that's or just generally practice is such a collective activity and education is a singular thing how does that actually though translate into architectural education because I think you're saying obviously group work is seen as the dull part and I used to think that when I was at university but that's often because universities use group projects to get rid of the dull section of the course and I think that certainly that was the case in my school I'm getting some mixed looks there but I think that there's a degree but I think there's a degree to which the whole of the course should be a collaborative thing I think the live project concept schools working or having projects are real and students engaging with those and actually facilitating bringing people together the architect is the often the central person in any project but they often work totally alone and I think that they need to to act more as a facilitator bringing different people together I think that starts at university not something you learn when you get into practice. The Peter Buchanan article which was published in the AR last September he proposed this idea of a foundation course shared across disciplines really to get away from what he called the solitary genius of the architect and I think what I found very inspiring visiting your school today is seeing your work alongside other disciplines my architecture school we were in a Georgian terrace building with each studio in a different room so it was hard to see what other people were working on but our diploma units we were working on joint sites and had to work find a way of doing a master plan together so there are I'm sure lots of examples of way of design work being done together but when I went to business school they I did a one-year full-time MBA program where we were deliberately put into groups of five people from different backgrounds to make it deliberately difficult and we did a lot of group projects and it was an incredible learning experience of how to work more effectively and efficiently with people that you don't get on with and so I think there are there are very good ways of incorporating group work into education. You don't need an educational organization to work together in a group you can do that yourself you can set that up yourself we had some great initiatives when I was at uni which was they were all out with the university curriculum and they were one of the strongest gestures and learning moments that I had during my education so there's nothing that stops you from doing that I actually graduated with somebody else which was very unheard of but it won us awards and it was a very joyful process and I think Stuart and I spoke about this before working together really makes you a better designer because you can reflect your ideas you can bounce off your ideas and they actually will become stronger because of it so I would actually recommend doing it yourself. There's been quite a lot of talk about the sort of solitary nature about of architects whether that's within education or sort of outside it and I was kind of wondering whether that could and that could be addressed in institutions and how other universities there seems to be a kind of a disconnect between creative education and maybe academic education and how if there if there wasn't a disconnect then potentially wider society would have a greater idea of what architects and creative people do and then that might mean that you know less crap gets built because people know kind of what crap isn't and stuff like that. I'm just wondering whether you any of you think that a kind of connection between art schools and universities like a further yeah a further connection between art schools and universities is desirable or not. Just an interesting point um planners used to go to Glasgow School of Art and the planning course and the kind of outlook that they had was reflected in the title of where they studied. As planning moved away from that and became more focused in different things in different approaches I think planning has suffered substantially. If you speak to planners of a particular era they talk about it being the stories and people and place. It now moves much more into development control and legal things and structure and plan and organization and this creative tension that you're talking about you could actually see when Dundee University took over the Scottish Crop Research Institute and Duncan of Jordanston and brought them into the university and the then Vice-Chancellor Arn Langlin said the most exciting thing for him was putting the artists with the chemists looking at the pathogens in potatoes and he said the artists were going whoa look at those shapes now you could do this and you could turn this into all of this and the chemists and the researchers who were looking at cancer cells in potatoes were going we've never thought about it before this is amazing and the artists were going these are beautiful they were going they're deeply destructive but this whole thing was going backwards and forwards and he said I think it was a real disappointment the one thing he really wanted to see happen was when they built the welcome building they had this giant naked mesh woman think of me Mac a piece of architecture and they never and she was kind of drenched over the welcome centre and they never quite managed to get the funding for that but that would have been as he said an amazing indication of how he was bringing together science and art and that's what and that's entrepreneurial as well it's this creativity it's the tension that's said but there are examples and I think we've moved away from that but you're better pleased to I think I think you're right I think the one of the untapped potentials still here for us here is greater connection to the other disciplines in the art school and although we do that to a certain extent with shared classes or electives we don't do as much as we could but it does rely on the other disciplines to be able to buy into that and that's quite challenging sometimes not from a point of view of they don't want to deal with us as architects but actually just from an institutional timetabling all that but that is an I mean that's to a certain extent why perhaps all of you are here to study architecture to be within an art school and have some sort of experience so for me it'd be great if you could choose in first year to have an elective and textile or jewellery and in fifth year do the same and that somehow you could not do some sort of quasi-ecumenical art cross-fertilization project but actually go in and find out how a jeweler draws look at it from a different perspective and I'm hoping and the ethos of the shared workshops across the road is indeed exactly that that you somehow just bump into that person who's cutting but to be honest in terms of the public I've always I've always thought that architecture needs a sitcom every other profession has a drama a sitcom you know you name it from teachers to detectives I've got Ted Mosby sorry got Ted Mosby if I may just on that last point about collaboration across the other courses within the Glasgow School of Art architecture is the longest course and as you go into first year in halls with the other students by the time you go into diploma if you carry on here for the both courses you are not with the same people you started with and I was wondering whether a the shorter kind of four year honest course would bring that more in line so that the last two years of architectural education isn't just architects in the studio not connected with the people they started with that's the Chris I don't I don't think I don't think sharing a flat's a good enough reason to shorten the course but it is a reason I think I think there are other reasons why the the length of the course and the current model is is being re-looked at and I think that's quite quite legitimate I mean I think as I say there's some and I haven't quite thought it through myself but certainly for academic years with one year somehow sandwiched in with practice is some it's where I feel the course could be and I don't know what that means in terms of degrees and whatever it is I would get rid of the degree frankly if it was me but I do think that somehow there could be some sort of an arrangement where we shorten the length and we allow a more porous arrangement which allows students to earn in architecture as well as learn and I think I'm not quite sure how we go about that or where whether that would be something you could choose to do in first year I'm going to do my year out in first year or second year that might also be possible but but certainly as I talked to particularly the other heads of schools in Scotland that's the debate that we're having at the moment and we've got different opinions about it but I don't see the part one two three and the five plus two as being the future in any way. One of the things I wondered about was within the five or the six or the however many years you're here was integrating a much stronger practical side and what we found really beneficial was actually building stuff so you know getting your hands dirty probably one of our most successful projects we almost built ourselves in collaboration with a stonemason and a joiner and what the one thing that shocked me when I left uni was the first time I sat down on site as chairing a meeting with a stonemason who'd been doing his work for 30 years and I had to tell him to redo something and I did not have that experience but if I I would know how to draw better had I had more practical experience it could be something which is you could get paid for as well you know one thing they talk to you do the young guys are building stuff they just go for it and I think that's a really important aspect we've accelerated that whole live build activity in the school this year across three years we did a big study internationally to look at that last year James is here specifically to lead a self-built project in Ghana he's already built five buildings in different parts of the world with groups of students built them so I think I've noticed in this school and in other schools there seems to be a a growing interest in the making the physical making now it might be I don't know that this is for you be interesting to hear your views but it might be because it's a as it were an antidote to the last 12 years of digital work that you've been involved in I don't know but I also think my own deeper sense is that it's actually a search for young graduates or young students to find what is the fundamentals of being an architect and architecture and if you strip away all the mechanisms and the and the disciplines and the collaborations and you're left with just material and a project to build somehow maybe I'll find that in that and I think that is a very interesting moment in a young person a young architect's development and in another dimension last year I was working in a college and they took a bit of your entrepreneurial activity and one of the lecturers said for the 20 plus years I've been here I've been showing students how to paint the same wall and we build bricks we get the bricks and we build walls and we do the same thing and then we knock it all down at the end of the term and we start it all again they said it would be so much more interesting if we could actually build something and that discussion sparked a huge interest in the rest of the staff not least oddly enough from the health and safety people who got terribly excited and they said oh that would be wonderful if we built something and showed people the health and safety aspects as it went along it's not I think it really excited and passionate about health and safety there are opportunities that are out there and actually this comes back to working with the contractors and the builders of the future so there are collaborations that can be made with colleges that are building that are teaching people how to build things that's where the exciting area comes from and it's ready and they're wanting to you know open up and talk and listen I'd like to draw close to today's debate invite the organizers up to give a concluding statement well thank you thank you all for coming this debate's going to continue to to go on I think it's important that we as students have a voice and we can present that voice so I'd like to start the vote of thanks by thanking AD Scotland for videoing the event and it will be published online so we can continue to comment on this I mean we've discussed what what architecture is what education is and indeed what an architect is and how do we approach it and how do we adapt to change how does architectural education ensure that it remains both fit for purpose and for the profession and all its difficult realities socially intellectually culturally relevant with a coherent ethos ultimately transcending fashion and opinion into order to contribute meaningfully the enduring fabric and structure of our lives we all individual and the outcome of our education will all be different we have a selection of individuals here all with backgrounds in architecture or with Ian in interest now in architecture um so I'd like to thank thank you all for coming Lucy, Hanukkah, Stuart, Ian, David and Chris and thank you Robert for hosting