Although there have never been any conclusive studies to prove this, many members of our profession regularly bemoan the notion that half of all architecture graduates never enter into “traditional” or mainstream practice. “Alternative career” is an inappropriate and outdated label for these nontraditional pursuits, but not because of the important insight that old “alternatives” are becoming more common; rather, because of the reality that the word “career” is losing its traditionally singular meaning. If graduates today are expected to have five or six “careers” (as was suggested by a noted futurist in a recent issue of Fast Company), how can we call any one of those five or six pursuits a career?
One answer can be found in the relevance of alternative practitioners to traditional practice. There are fundamental similarities about how we architects approach a problem, how we view the world, and what goals and ideas drive that view. We can work within a particular tradition, even if not in a traditional way. Architects working outside of mainstream practice settings—corporate boardrooms, community design centers, government offices, classrooms, and even courtrooms—all share common bonds.
As a profession, we collectively recognize the need to communicate effectively with members of the public. Accordingly, practitioners want interns to be better versed in skills such as writing, economics, and business practices. Yet, rather than encourage more liberal arts classes, we encourage more architecture requirements: codes, materials, professional practice, CAD, studio, and more CAD. We also encourage students to start working in architecture firms prior to graduation. These important efforts to better prepare young people for the profession focus on fundamental skills with immediate applicability in architectural practice as it is currently configured. They confuse “professional education” with “technical education.” Most significantly, they fail to realize that liberal arts classes and “non-architectural” experiences are preparing students for professional practice, often more so than yet another class or setting filled with architects, led by architects, ever will.
Additionally, requiring more architecture classes implies that the skills needed to practice are identifiable and static—or that, perhaps more questionably, the academy will be able to keep pace with what skills are needed and introduce them as appropriate. Recognizing the importance of flexibility in a professional curriculum, the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB) requirements specify that a maximum of 60% of coursework can be core architecture requirements. This leaves a minimum of 40% free electives. Though this requirement is intended to refer to completely free electives, many schools have required that these electives be fulfilled strictly in architecture courses.
The current structure of the Intern Development Program (IDP) also works against the exploration and discovery that is so important for the profession. If a graduate has an opportunity to work for, say, an Internet firm, and does so for just two years, she has likely placed herself out of any entry-level architecture job. NCARB requires that she still put in seat time drawing construction documents to complete IDP. Instead, her firm enlists her to provide an effective online presence, and economically it will never make sense to put her skills in front of a CAD machine for ten hours a day. Though she may design projects, interact with clients, and be perceived as a competent professional, she will never have the opportunity to get licensed—not because she can’t pass the ARE, but because she isn’t allowed even to take it. In fact, the AIA’s 2000-2002 Firm and 2002 Compensation Surveys recently acknowledged this situation by including a category for “non-registered architects” and “architect/designer” respectively, essentially removing the artificial distinction between licensed and non-licensed professionals. According to the AIA Firm Survey, non-registered architects account for 17% of all employees in architecture firms nationwide (second only to the 29% of employees who are licensed architects). We like to compare our profession to law and medicine, but both of those professions encourage, facilitate, and place great importance on professional licensure. There would be a crisis in the legal profession if just two-thirds of lawyers were actually “licensed” to practice. We are here arguing that there is already such a crisis in the architectural profession.
As opportunities within the traditional practice of architecture increase exponentially, young and experienced architects are pursuing “alternative” careers to a degree that the term “alternative” hardly applies. As Thomas Fisher notes in his recent book, In the Scheme of Things, “We call [what architects do] design, but it also goes by the name of leadership, and there are few things in the world that people value more than that.” The advent of “alternative careers” is exactly what we have hoped for for years: that architects should be as ubiquitous as lawyers throughout society. The difference is that the legal profession embraces and facilitates these alternatives, while the architectural profession—in disavowal of the incredible range of architects’ contributions throughout history—increasingly defines itself narrowly and technically.
If architects are finding satisfying opportunities to utilize their design skills in other fields and aspects of society, the profession needs to empower these people as ambassadors. Our profession has much to gain from the sort of public relations and behind-the-scenes work that these experienced ambassadors can offer. But does the architecture profession itself benefit or change somehow as a result of their experiences? In short, are we simply exporting our discipline’s knowledge and abilities, or are we exchanging? If we are exchanging, what knowledge and abilities should “alternative practitioners” bring back to the discipline? And how can we structure the profession to encourage people who have experimented outside the discipline to return to the development of mainstream practice?
The profession has an incredible opportunity to embrace every architecture school graduate as its own, regardless of where their careers have led them. The authors of this article have grown personally and professionally from the range of unique experiences and opportunities that have shaped our relatively short careers. At least one of us will likely never be licensed to practice architecture, though few people are more involved in the profession itself. The good news is that there are many other people, just like us, who care deeply about the profession that trained them. The profession needs to recognize and empower these many “non-architects” as ambassadors.
Authors John M. Cary, Jr., Assoc. AIA, and Casius Pealer, Assoc. AIA, are co-founders of ArchVoices, a nonprofit think tank on architectural education and internship. John earned his M.Arch. from UC Berkeley and is currently pursuing his PhD. He has written extensively on professional education and training, as well as on community engagement opportunities in architecture. Casius earned his B.Arch. from Tulane University and has since worked in a variety of capacities for nonprofit organizations focused on the built environment, including the American Architectural Foundation, the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, and the Tulane Regional Urban Design Center. He has also worked as a carpenter and taught carpentry and small business skills in the U.S. Peace Corps. Casius is currently pursuing a J.D./M.P.P. degree conferred jointly by the University of Michigan and Harvard University.
Originally published 1st quarter 2003, in arcCA 03.1, “Common Knowledge.”
