URBIZEN

A few days back I was having a conversation with some of my fellow architects. At one point the discussion moved towards the availability of good architectural staff, especially at the junior level. The complaint was that the entry level architects were not industry-ready, and a majority of them lacked the most basic of design and drawing skills. That this lack of availability of required skills in the youngest generation architects is affecting the design and delivery of projects. This is a problem faced by many architecture firms. My argument was, “How much time and energy are architecture firms investing in training and teaching their junior architects? How many architecture firms today have a culture of mentoring?” The counter-argument to that was, “We don’t have the time to train, teach and mentor.” Well then can you guess who’s losing out here? For the benefit of the profession, and for the firms themselves, architectural firms should rethink the way they operate and create a