Architecture Addiction, The Official Blog of

After my own experience in architecture school, I’ve found a lot of similar stories from a lot of other students at a lot of other schools:

Most architecture students do not learn how to build in school. They don’t learn how different parts of a building fit together. They learn how to make pretty pictures on their computer screens.

Architecture students in Studio 804 at the University of Kansas, get this, actually build a house.

[How jealous are you right now?]

There’s resentment in Rockhill’s voice when he says he never got this kind of hands-on training when he was in architecture school. “The public would be amazed at how detached architectural education has been from the reality of building,” he says. Lectures and computer work dominate curriculum. Internships get students out of the classroom but generally slot them into the cubicle farms of architectural firms to grow into what Rockhill says is an entire generation of ill-prepared professionals. Because they don’t understand the literal nuts and bolts of construction, they pass the buck to the contractors. “A lot of architects are basically just good at covering their asses,” Rockhill says. “They don’t know what they’re doing.”

Read the whole article about what one school is doing right.

Jared Eder, a 2009 graduate of Studio 804 who now works at Ellerbe Becket in Kansas City, is among the students who have been lured to KU by the program. “I was sick of the ‘paper architecture’ route of the more traditional paths to a master’s,” he tells The Pitch in an e-mail. “There comes a time when you need to step away from the computer and all the ‘photo-realistic’ renderings and make something, put your money where your mouth is.”