Skip to main content

Sustainability of the Architectural Profession

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 culture and structure that enables mentoring. I know, gone are the days of the “atelier” where architects worked in studios under the mentorship of the principal architect. We no longer have a culture of apprentices training under a master. In smaller practices, with less up to 10 employees, it is still possible to have a “studio culture”, where junior architects learn from the senior architects and work under the active guidance of a Principal Architect. This becomes tougher in larger offices. But the need for training and mentoring junior architects is ever more important.
One way that large Architecture firms can create this culture of mentoring and growing, is to hire a batch of interns every year. These interns can be paid a stipend, and a structure within which they learn, under the mentorship of senior architects. The brightest interns can be absorbed as employees. And by the time they are hired as full-time employees on a regular pay, they are already “trained” and on-board. This also ensures a continuous stream of good young architects. It also reduces the attrition rate since employees stick around longer as they enjoy professional development and personal growth.
It is important for mid-sized and large architecture firms and senior-level architects to actively engage in teaching and mentoring, whether at the university or within their own studios. To ensure that there is a continuous stream of good young architects, architecture firms should take up the responsibility of creating a talent pool and nurturing them.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Architecture - An Impure Art, an Inexact Science

Many of you would not disagree with the statement that Architecture is combination of Art and Science. If Frank Lloyd Wright proclaimed Architecture as the “Mother of all Arts”, then why not the “Mother of all Sciences”? Why has the mother embraced one child and forsaken the other? The Oxford English dictionary defines Art as: “The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines Science as: “The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.” Art in its pure form appeals to our sense of the ideal and our highest aspirations, experienced through passion and instinct. Whereas Science in its pure form tries to understand nature and the environment by ...
2 comments
Read more

Layermag

This is one of the few web-sites dedicated to South Asian architecture and architects. Though in it's nascent stages of development, I think it holds the potential to be the spearhead of an oncoming change. Web-sites and resources like these are quite necessary and useful to make people aware about contemporary and future movements in the South Asian region. "LAYER finds its roots in diversity. It was born out of a common desire to launch a platform for interaction, exposure and participation of South Asian designers, at all stages to experience and share their ideologies, which will help evolve the present status quo. LAYER indulges in all aspects of design and art. The nature of exhibitions, curational strategies and publications, demands new interrogation and reconsideration. This is fueled by the fact that in recent years, worlds of art, architecture and design have outgrown their modes of representation and production, and have started to cannibalize neighboring discip...
Post a Comment
Read more

Affordable Housing in Mumbai

Affordable Housing is one of the most important issues for Mumbai's development. due to its complex and dynamic nature it is a big challenge for the Government, urban planner and all stakeholders. In Mumbai, approximately 42% of the people live in slums and about 57% households live in one-room tenements, with 9 out of 24 wards with more than 50% slum population. (Census 2011) Affordability is a relative concept. It means different things to different people. But then how do we define Affordability? A high-level Task Force on Affordable Housing for All, set up by the Government of India in 2008, and headed by Deepak Parekh, has put forth the following definition of affordable housing: (http://www.naredco.in/pdfs/report-high-level-task.pdf) For EWS/ LIG: ≤ 4 years of income or EMI/ Rent ≤ 30% of gross monthly income For MIG: ≤ 5 years income or EMI/ Rent ≤ 40% of gross monthly income Currently the two approaches being adopted to address the issue of affordable housi...
Post a Comment
Read more