Architecture is both a profession and an art that continually engages a multiplicity of cultural, economic, and historical social concerns while also accessing a variety of technological data and constraints. Thus, architectural education should be a holistic scholarly investigation that incorporates humanities and disciplines outside the typical technical curriculum. The student must be engaged in a knowledge and process based facilitation of inquiry instead of a skill based training. As technological advances rapidly change skills and tools used in the professional workplace, education can provide the flexibility to continually learn and adapt.
The educator has a responsibility to embark with the student on a scholarly journey of investigation and discovery, while providing the guidance and encouragement to ask questions and explore new ways of knowing the surrounding world. It is critical that the student and educator together expand intellect, process, and intuition, and learn to hone perceptual tools by questioning givens, doubting constraints, and challenging assumptions.
Architecture is intrinsically experiential, enticing the user through multi-sensual signifiers and references to situate oneself in the spatio-temporal universe. Similarly, education should not only engage the intellect, but also the senses, in both the perception and conception of the world around us.
Different analytical and representational techniques will reveal vastly different sets of information associated with any architectural problem. Computer modeling and sketching as well as drawing and physical modeling are essential to the design studio, but only begin to outline potential representational media. It is through multidisciplinary and multi-media process that intellect and intuition are wholly orchestrated.
Imperative to any successful design enterprise is the ability to extract and interpret abstract data from a multiplicity of sources. Thus, the intellect must develop a theoretical basis for the effective filtering and processing of this data. An understanding of the role of theory and philosophy in architectural practice will allow the student to create their own view of the world and their role as a designer within. The process of researching and resolving a problem depends on the ability to encompass all given criteria and demands constituent to an appropriate architectural solution.
It is therefore the role of the educator to facilitate inquiry, not force investigation, allowing the student to become conscious of their world in unique ways, and to question the givens of life, and generate their own academic and professional guidelines. The greatest reward of the educator is to see the eyes of a student visibly open for, in many cases, the first time, and to be able to share in the intellectual growth of another human being.
"Everyone by their daily activities teaches, and all of us are students who continually rein- vent our discipline and reinvest in its educational framework. We study and teach through out our lives, whether we hold classes or not, by the effective means of example."
Max Underwood "On Education", Clifford Bourland, Recent Archives (Arlington: University of Texas, 1994) p. 107