Architecture has been recognized as one of the learned professions from the earliest times of recorded history, but its roots lie in the prehistoric agricultural revolution, which brought people together in villages, towns and cities and resulted in the rise of specialized occupations. The first professional known to history, Imhotep, is credited with designing the "step pyramid" at Saqqara under King Zoser (Djoser, 2630-2611 BCE); serving under serveral pharoahs, he was later deified (Janson, 1962, p. 38; Great Buildings Online). Queen Hatshepsut's architect and chancellor (and possibly lover) Senmut was honored with his own mortuary tomb (1490-1460 BCE). In the tradition of Western cultures, the names of those who designed great structures, such as the Parthenon in Athens (448-432 BCE, by Ictinus and Callicrates), were committed to history (Fletcher, 1954, p. 96).

Learning at a distance learning owes its beginning to the Egyptian/Phoenician invention of writing and portable media. This method of communication was soundly criticized by Socrates (470-399 BCE) for its ability to disguise the truth by avoiding discourse and cross-examination, as later recorded in writing by his student Plato (427-347 BCE) in the Dialogue with Phaedrus (Plato, 370 BCE). By introducing the world to its seven built wonders, Herodotus (485-425 BCE), considered the father of (Western) history, can be considered one of the first distance educators in architecture. Herodotus' History first described these structures; their placement in a list is currently ascribed to Antipater of Sidon in a poem written about 120 BCE (Rose, 2000).

While little is known about the early face-to-face training that architects received, it was by no means limited to personal instruction. The earliest surviving treatise on architecture was written by the Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius (Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, 70-25 BCE), in which he set forth three guiding principles—strength, function, and beauty (or, in Sir Henry Wotton's translation, firmness, commodity and delight) (Wilson, 1992). Vitruvius' Ten Books on Architecture (De architectura libri decum), transcribed by hand throughout the middle ages without the illustrations referred to in the text, were among the first books published (principio editio, 1486) when the printing press reached Italy.

Vitruvius was not the first to learn or teach architecture at a distance. He had learned from Greek manuscripts (such as the Commentaries of the Greek architect Pytheos) that have not survived the ages. By writing the Ten Books, Vitruvius sought to carry a tradition of learning that carries on his work in open digital libraries such as the Tufts University Classics collection, the joint Harvard University–Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Archimedes Project, and Humanistictexts.org.

Architecture does not easily fit the definitions of either an art or a science. While there is a body of knowledge to be mastered, it has little in the way of an underlying scientific theory; but it differs from pure art in that it has a scientific and practical aspect. It can be considered an applied art whose end goal is synthesis—the creation of something new. In the first chapter of Book I, Vitruvius describes the broad education that an architect must have, including geometry, history, philosophy, music, law, astronomy, and even medicine (public health and sanitation). He emphasized the need for the architect to be able to communicate with others, both in writing and graphically:

An architect ought to be an educated man so as to leave a more lasting remembrance in his treatises. Secondly, he must have a knowledge of drawing so that he can readily make sketches to show the appearance of the work which he proposes . . .

In addition to a foundation in what we would now call the humanities, Vitruvius also stressed the need for the architect to be able to synthesize that knowledge in a creative way, combining both practice ("the continuous and regular exercise of employment") and theory:

One who professes himself an architect should be well versed in both directions. He ought, therefore, to be naturally gifted and amenable to instruction. Neither natural ability without instruction nor instruction without natural ability can make the perfect artist.

In writing his Ten Books, Vitruvius was fulfilling the duty he felt to teach architecture to future generations, consciously separated from his students in both space and time (he could hardly have imagined how much!). His work is direct evidence that architects were communicating their ideas through drawings over 2000 years ago. However, because the technology of the time did not permit the reproduction of graphic images (for instance, no eyewitness depictions of any of the seven wonders, other than the pyramids, have ever been found), he necessarily relied on a one-way method of communication through the most stable medium of the time, text.

In a course on the advanced study of Renaissance architecture, MIT Prof. Mario Carpo explains that the ancient scholars relied on text rather than their illustrations. In the scriptoria where books were made by hand, text would be read out loud and transcribed by a large group of scribes. Graphic images, however, cannot be communicated verbally. They could not be traced on parchment nor easily copied, as scribes were not trained artists. "There was no reliable way to duplicate and distribute illustrations for technical purposes." (Carpo, 2002, ¶ 4). "Aware that copies of their work would most likely be unillustrated or illustrated unfaithfully," authors "avoided producing texts that were reliant on accompanying images" (¶ 5).

During Medieval times, architecture was largely inseparable from the building trades; except for a few reknowned clerics, design was performed by talented master masons. With the Italian Renaissance and its newly found interests in science, the arts and antiquities, architecture re-emerged as a profession separate from the building trades. Clients were no longer limited to the Church or the State—a wealthy clientele of patrons had emerged who were building for their own use. There was no system of education for these early architects. One of the first to practice architecture as a profession, Filippo Brunellesci (1377-1446), had apprenticed as a sculptor and goldsmith. He designed the dome for the Florence Cathedral (St. Maria del Fiore, 1423-1434), spanning a distance that had kept the building in a state of half-completion for many years. Having no experience in building, he was initially required to work under the oversight of his arch-rival Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455)—who soon gave up on trying to supervise construction of the unprecedented design.

The invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1440 made it possible for people to become educated other than through the face-to-face methods of tutoring and apprenticeship. It allowed them, in turn, to share their knowledge and discoveries with others whom they might never meet in person—in essence, they were distance educators. Architecture was an important subject, worthy of the earliest of these printed books. Leone Battista Alberti (1404-1472) is credited with inventing the method of creating realistic perspective drawings; his Della Pictura was written in 1435, but not published until 1511. The first edition of Vitruvius' Ten Books was published in 1486, but it took another 35 years before Cesare Cesariano (1483-1543), a Renaissance artist, first provided illustrations in his edition of 1521. By the time of Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) and Buonarroti Michelangelo (1475-1564), Renaissance architects were studying Virtuvius and providing illustrations for translations of De Architectura. One of Da Vinci's most famous illustrations is his interpretation of Virtuvius' description of human proportions.

Illustration from the Cesariano edition of Vitruvius, 1521, Book III, Ch. V. From http://www.vitruvius.be/cesar3h5.htm.	Leonardo Da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man."

The development of drawings as a visual medium for architecture marked a turning point in the profession's history. Medieval architects had only learned to build by a method of trial and error, resulting in many collapsed and ultimately leading to the invention of the Gothic "flying buttress." The primary means for depicting a design for the crafters had been the template and the scale model (these techniques were also employed in shipbuilding, where the use of scale drawings did not appear until the late 1600's). Now, through the use of accurate scale drawings and perspectives, an architect could create a realistic representation of the structure without first having to build it.

The technologies of paper, engraving and printing allowed for the recording, storage and broader dissemination of technical information that could now be expressed in graphical terms. The architect no longer had to be at the site personally directing the craftsmen in the various trades: the structure could be executed by others, following the architect's drawings and written instructions. The use of portable, reproducable media has thus allowed architecture to be learned and practiced at a distance for over 500 years. These architects continue to teach us through their drawings and written words, even though some of their most visionary works (such as many of Da Vinci's designs) might never have been constructed, or have since been destroyed.

From before the time of Vitruvius, the education of architects involved both the largely self-directed study of classic works to learn design theory (the principles of design) and hands-on experience. As the profession emerged, architects learned to practice their profession through a tradition of individual apprenticeship in the guilds, learning by doing. A Royal Academy of Architecture was established in France in 1671 (University of Waterloo Library, n.d.) bringing students together for the first time, in an academic setting. The formal teaching of architecture became more widespread in the nineteenth century, when state-sponsored schools were founded in post-Napoleanic, continental Europe. France's École Polytechnique was founded in 1795, and Germany's Bauakademie in 1799.

The leading institute was the École des Beaux Arts in Paris, created in 1816 out of the former Royal Academy. Groups of students worked in ateliers under a studio master, where the hands-on, apprenticeship approach to learning was concentrated into a short period of time. The experience was further intensified by bringing a larger group of students togetherthan had ever worked as apprentices, creating a unique learning community with its own social environment. Because the École sought to teach civil servants to design prototypes for civic buildings to be executed by provincial officials, "the students rarely took design beyond the schematic design phase, tended to have a dismissive attitude toward the eventual users, paid little attention to construction detailing or technology, and focused on the prototypical nature of the work." (Fisher, 2004, ¶ 3)—a problem that has continued to the present.

Beaux Arts atelier, 1905 (from Cuff, 1991, p. 29)

The first private school, Britain's Architectural Association, was founded in 1847, but it did not offer a full-time course of study was not until 1889 (Stevens, 1998, p. 176-184, Stevens n.d. a). The school is still in operation today.

Early architects in the United States did not have the benefit of formal education in architecture. Among the architects of the U.S. Capitol building, as it grew, William Thornton (1759-1828) was a Scottish-educated physician, but a self-educated architect; Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764-1920) apprenticed in engineering and architecture in England, and Charles Bulfinch (1763-1844), a Harvard graduate, was also self-educated in architecture (Architect of the Capitol n.d. a, b and c). While architecture was self-learned by educated gentlemen such as Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) (Kimball, 1997, Great Buildings Online), others did not have any higher education: Peter Harrison (1716-1775), considered to be the first colonial architect, was a sea captain and merchant who learned architecture from books (Howe, n.d.). With relatively few professional architects, most buildings were designed by their owners, or the master carpenters or masons who constructed them.

The Land Grant system of public universities introduced by the Morrill Act of 1862 allowed higher education in the U.S. to mushroom. The country's economic growth put a particular emphasis on the practical and mechanical arts. New building materials such as concrete and steel, the emerging technologies of heating, plumbing, natural gas and electrical service, and the challenges of managing a far more complex building process created a demand for trained professionals. The first American architecture program was started in 1865 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technolgy, followed by the University of Illinois in 1867 and Cornell University in 1871 (ACSA, 2003c). Next came Syracuse University, The Universities of Pennsylvania and Michigan, Columbia University, George Washington University (which no longer has a program in architecture), the Illinois Institute of Technology, and finally Harvard in 1895 (Schoenauer, n.d.). Many of these schools were founded by American architects who had studied at the École des Beaux Arts, bringing the studio approach back with them. While thesee were not the first examples of studio-based education in the U.S. at the time, (Lackney, 1999, ¶ 3), the Beaux Arts studio approach quickly became the norm for design education.

The Columbian Exposition (1893 Chicago World's Fair), organized by Beaux-Arts trained architect Daniel Burnham and attended by hundreds of thousands, featured buildings designed in classical style by many of the country's leading architects. The new technologies of photography and lithography allowed many more to experience these wonders, creating an instant demand for monumental public architecture that was well served by those trained in the classical styles (Rose, 1996). Underneath their white plaster facades, the buildings of the exposition were supported by long-span steel frameworks, lit by electric power, and included modern plumbing systems, new building technologies that made it possible to construct functionally modern buildings in a classical (or any other) style. The fair's massive, expedited construction effort was made possible by the new communication technologies available to architects: the telegraphic printer (1867), the typewriter (1873), the blueprint machine (which had come into use in 1876), and the telephone (which first linked Chicago with New York in 1892).

Administration Building, 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Architect: Richard Morris Hunt	Alexander Graham Bell calling Chicago from New York, 1892 (source: AT&T)

The publication of Sir Banister Fletcher's seminal History of Architecture on the Comparative Method in 1896 provided students of architecture with a rich catalog of historical styles to emulate. They now had a reference tool which exposed them to all of the styles of the past, from around the world. Classical building forms became the norm for public buildings and monumental works and were embraced in the schools. In the meantime, a new, entirely American building type was emerging in the commercial sector, for which there was no classical precedent: the skyscrapers of architects like Louis Sullivan, who led the development of a (relatively) bare-boned new "Chicago style" with the design philosophy that "form follows function."

Gary Cooper in The Fountainhead (Warner Brothers, 1949)

Beginning in the late 1930's, classicism with its aristocratic and imperial symbolism was replaced by the post-war machine-age, modernist movement. European educators such as Walter Gropius and "less is more" advocate Ludwig Mies van der Rohe fled Nazi Germany and found refuge in American schools (Wolfe, 1981, p. 45). This new influx of educators brought with them not only a new design philospophy, but a new teaching philosophy as well. Unlike the highly formalist approach of the École des Beaux Arts, which focused on abstract monuments, the German institutes stressed craftsmanship and technology as part of the curriculum, with students gaining hands-on experience working with industrial materials. They extended Sullivan's "form follows function" philospophy to the limits of unadorned, stark simplicity.

Modernism was concerned with far more than a style that could give expression to machine-age efficiency. It was also grounded in a larger populist, egalitarian philosophy. Industrialized building methods would provide decent housing and working environments for the working class as devasted European cities sought to rebuild; the house became "a machine for living" (Le Corbusier, 1931, p. 4). The modern movement had parallel developments in many fields, as Frederick Winslow Taylor's principles of scientific management (1913) and Henry Ford's assembly line (1914) production methods heralded an age of rationalist thinking.

In the United States, modernism's "International style" captivated the schools and eclipsed the more exuberant art deco movement of the late 1920's. Concrete, glass and steel were in; decoration was definitely out. The names of the architects of New York's iconic structures—the Chrysler Building (Raymond Hood), the Empire State Building (Shreve, Lamb and Harmon Associates), and Rockefeller Center (William van Alen)— are rarely encountered in schools of architecture. The unique style and philosophy of Frank Lloyd Wright never developed a following; he stands as little more than a footnote (largely ignored by academia and his peers, Wright went on to found his own private architecture school). Mies, "Corbu," and American devotees such as Philip Johnson and Louis Kahn defined the new face of architecture.

Farnsworth house, Plano, Ill., 1951. Architect: Mies van der Rohe	Glass house, New Canaan, Ct., 1949. Architect: Philip Johnson

Modernism eventually gave way to post-modernism and several other "isms." The beginning of the end was marked by demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis in 1973, a low-income housing project built less than 20 years earlier and bearing an uncanny resemblance to the new cities envisioned by Le Corbusier and others in the 1920's (its architect, Minoru Yamasaki, has also suffered the destruction of his World Trade Center towers, completed in 1972). Pruitt-Igoe reminded the architectural community that architecture is part of a complex social structure, and that people, and how they interact in and with their environment, will be a primary determinant of a project's success or failure. In a dramatic stylistic about-face, Philip Johnson's 1984 AT&T building in New York, resembling a giant Chippendale china cabinet, declared an end to modernism, an especially ironic turn for someone who, as founder and director of the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, had introduced the International Style to the United States in 1932. Post-modern "pop" architecture such as that of Robert Venturi ("less is a bore") and Michael Graves took hold in the schools, which struggled to come to grips with an almost irrational, "anything goes" approach to design that celebrated complexity and contradiction.

The high-tech, post-industrial, information age has brought new technologies that give architects an unprecedented range of expression, seemingly freeing designers from all previous constraints. The current inspiration for many architecture students is architect Frank Gehry and engineer Santiago Calatrava. Their work is characterized by high-tech materials sculpted into organic forms, a level of artistic expression that can only be accomplished by computerized design and fabrication technology. Unfortunately, the near-deification of such figures, like their modernist precessors, promotes a stereotype of the architect as the visionary but solitary genius—a modern day Howard Roark, the heroic figure (based loosely on Frank Lloyd Wright) of Ayn Rand's 1943 novel, The Fountainhead. The culture of individualism is nurtured in the schools and reinforced by the profession, perpetuating the same arrogance and detached insensitivity that characterized Beaux-Arts students.

Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain, 1997. Architect: Frank Gehry	Milwaukee Art Museum, 2001. Architect: Santiago Calatrava

Although building technology has grown ever more complex, environmental and social factors have become increasingly important factors in design, and architectural styles have come and gone, the learning model for design education persists (Lackney, 1999, ¶ 8). As University of Minnesota Dean Thomas Fisher observes, "Professional architectural education has remained fairly stable for more than a century. Despite changes in ideology, as a Classical education gave way to a Modernist and the a Postmodernist one, the design-orientd, studio-based pedagogy has remained largely unchanged" (Fisher, 2004). All of the 115 schools of architecture in the United States (NAAB, 2004a) teach design through the studio approach. The design studio knows no cultural boundaries: it is the standard approach to architectural programs worldwide (UIA, 1991, p. 16; Milliner, 2003, ¶ 3). Except for more pin-up surfaces and the occasional desktop or laptop computer, present-day studios bear a close resemblance to those of 100 years ago.

H.H. Richardson's atelier, 1886 (from Cuff, 1991, p. 30)	MIT architecture studio, ca. 1900 (from Cuff, 1991, p. 42)	Architectural drafting room, 1936
Norwich University, UK	BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore, India	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Illinois Institute of Technology	University of Virginia

In the United States, an architectural education is focused on the "first professional degree." Considered in academic circles as the equivalent of a Master's degree, it is a prerequisite for becoming licensed. There are several types of degree programs that qualify:

• a 5-year Bachelor of Architecture degree
• a 4-year Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science in Architecture (neither of which is considered a first professional degree), followed by a 2-year Master of Architecture degree (the "4+2" program)
• a 3-1/2 to 4-year Master of Architecture degree, for those who have a BA or BS degree other than in architecture

Degree programs vary among the schools. Yale, Harvard, and MIT have no undergraduate programs in architecture, offering only graduate degrees. Columbia awards a master's degree; it has academically separate pre-professional undergraduate programs in architecture at its Columbia and Barnard Colleges. Cornell, the first school to expand the curriculum to a 5-year program in the 1920's, continues to award a Bachelor of Architecture degree. Many schools have moved to the "4+2" format, delaying a student's full immersion into architectural studies until the sophomore or junior year. While the student has an extra year of studies to complete, the Master's degree arguably has a higher level of stature (but does not improve a student's earning power). Whatever the format, the program involves 4 years of concentrated studies in architecture, structured around the design studio.

An accredited "first professional degree" (B Arch or M Arch) is a prerequisite to a structured internship (taking a minimum of three years) working under a licensed architect, followed by a rigorous licensing exam administered on behalf of the individual states by the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB). Under state licensing laws, a candidate must be a graduate of an architectural degree program that has been accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB). (This is separate from the accreditation that the parent educational institution must meet from one of the six regional accrediting boards for post-secondary education. Other professions, such as engineering, also require specialized accreditation of degree programs.) NAAB is controlled by its four "sister organizations:" the American Institute of Architects (AIA); its quasi-independent student organization, the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS), NCARB, and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA).

To obtain architectural accreditation, a school's degree programs must meet structual criteria for faculty, facilities, library, student support, etc. (NAAB, 2004b). The core program of required courses must also satisfy 34 student "performance criteria," providing evidence that specific competencies and areas of knowledge are being achieved (NAAB, 2004c). A battery of reports and site visits by three-member accreditation teams are designed to insure that these criteria have been met. Accreditation will be based on an architecture program report (see, e.g., the 2003 APR from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and the the visiting team report (see, e.g., the 2003 VTR for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).

The course of study (whether in one or two degrees) involves a minimum of 160 semester-hours (National Council of Architectural Registration Boards, 2004b, p. 5), but many programs range upwards of 180 hours. There are four major components to the curriculum:

• 30% (45 to 54 credits): general university studies and electives outside of architecture (but they can be closely related, such as art history or computer classes)


• 60% (90 to 108 credits): core curriculum of required courses in architecture. The core curriculum is broken down as follows:
• 60 or more credits (40% of the total) are usually devoted to the design studio
• 30 to 36 credits (20% of the total) are spent on core courses such as architectural history, structural engineering, materials and methods of construction, and visual communication (drawing)


• 10% (15 to 18 credits): additional electives in architecture (by taking academic overloads, students can study more electives)

Schools are free to offer whatever courses they choose, as long as the accreditation criteria are met. The typical non-studio component of the core curriculum of required classes might involve:

• 6 credits of architectural history;
• 6 credits of structural engineering;
• 6 credits of construction materials and methods;
• 3 credits of architectural theory;
• 3 credits of visual communications (drawing)
• 3 credits of study in "professional practice" (business management, marketing, ethics, legal aspects, contracts, etc.);

which leaves only 3 to 6 credits in the core for everything else required to fulfill the NAAB student performance criteria.

The design studio is the central focus of architectural education in schools worldwide. The term describes not only a place, but a totally-immersive process and a social system. It is where and how students form their attitudes and learn to think, act, draw, write and speak like an architect. It is a learning community, largely isolated from the rest of the student body. The studio has been described as an "insane little bubble of nonreality" (Monaghan, 2001). "Studio culture" has both positive and negative aspects (American Institute of Architecture Students, 2002, 2003), concerns which are echoed in other countries Milliner, 2003).

Typically, core non-design classes are taken in the mornings, and studio classes are scheduled for three afternoons per week. The six to nine credit hours assigned to the studio class each semester understates the importance of the design studio. "All courses are secondary to the studio assignment, both in terms of the number of units and hours devoted by students in this atelier-like setting." (Lackney, 1999, ¶ 12, citing Cuff, 1991, p. 121). The studio is open 24 hours a day. Students may spend every afternoon, most evenings, and weekends in the studio. Pulling one's first "all-nighter" on a project is a rite of passage, setting the stage for many recurrences.

Accreditation criteria require that each student must be provided an assigned workspace, typically a 4'x6' drafting table in an open, warehouse-like space with ample natural light. Only two schools, the Boston Architectural Center and the Southern California Institute of Architecture, where students work in offices during the day and take classes at night, have requested (and received) waivers of this requirement.

The few students who do their work outside the studio (typically graduate students who have families, jobs, or both) are "out of the loop" of this social system, isolated from their classmates—even though they may be much more connected to profession or the world at large.

The division of the curriculum into studio and non-studio classes is often reflected in the faculty. Studio teachers usually don't teach technical subjects, while those who do (and who may be more likely to have practical experience as architects) generally do not teach design in the studio. They rarely sit on "juries," the mechanism by which studio work is evaluated, and fight an unwinnable battle for their students' time and attention.

Several studies have examined the dynamics of the design studio in detail. Dana Cuff at UCLA describes the studio from the perspective of the student in Architecture: The story of practice (Cuff, 1991). Numerous books by Donald Schön at MIT have examined the learning processes that occur in the studio (see, e.g., The Design Studio, Schön 1985; Educating the Reflective Practitioner, Schön 1987).

Academically, the studio differs from most other classes in the university. It shares the characteristics of other classes taught through a coaching methodology, in that there is no assigned textbook, and no objectively-graded quizzes or exams. Assignments rarely take the form of a written paper. While the school will have general objectives as to what learning should occur at each level of studio, there is no predefined body of knowledge to be mastered.

One design critic (instructor) will be assigned to each section of 10-15 students; the group of critics for that class of students usually jointly decide on the type of projects to be done. The role of the design critic is comparable to that of a drama coach, charged with helping each student realize his or her potential. There is no standard methodology for approaching a design problem; the approaches of different critics may be as varied as that of the students.

Studio learning is problem-based: students learn by doing. There may be several projects of varying lengths, from eight-hour problems to those which will take a full semester. A design problem will have a variety of defined constraints: usually a building site, a statement of the function or use to which the building is to be put (e.g., a primary school for students with special needs), and a more or less detailed program of spatial and functional requirements (in British terminology, the "brief"). For a school, the program might describe the number and approximate square footage of classrooms, offices, gymnasium, auditorium, cafeteria, library, and special purpose rooms. An initial presentation of the problem by the instructor might include a description of the mission or educational philosophy of the school and the characteristics of the student body. While the problem is usually imaginary, students are occasionally presented with a real program of requirements, and in rare instances, a real client.

Design problems have no predefined solution, and often present conflicts that will require difficult compromises to be made. A key part of the problem is defining the problem itself. For our school example, students would need to examine the users' special needs and identify how that might impact the physical layout of the facility. A field trip to a similar facility might be conducted to give students a better understanding of how it is used. Students may work in teams, particularly in an initial problem-definition and data-gathering phase, but are usually expected to come up with individual solutions at the end. The range of potential solutions will be limited only by the students' imaginations.

Once the initial constraints have analyzed, students will start to define the elements of the building, diagramming potential organizational relationships in "bubble diagrams," and gradually giving form to them. Students will go through many cycles of analysis, design, and evaluation. They will prepare endless sketches and build cardboard study models, constantly experimenting with differnt design ideas. Each design is tested against the problem requirements. In one scheme, the central focus of the building may be the main entrance, while in another, it may be the assembly room. A promising approach to grouping the classrooms and distributing administrative and service functions among them may prove to be impossible to achieve on a constricted site. Whatever decisions the student makes will need to be justified as part of a coherent overall concept for development.

Communication of design studio is mostly graphic, and partly oral. During assigned class time, the instructor will work his or her way through the studio space, giving will "desk crits" (critiques) to each of the students. These sessions may be 10-20 minutes long, a couple of times each week. In a graphic and oral discourse at the student's desk, the critic will review the work the student has done, elicit reasons or justifications for the student's decisions, and help the student find a direction. The critic may point out weaknesses in a design or important factors that the student may have overlooked, provide encouragement for further development of a promising scheme, point out historical precedents by other architects, or suggest alternative approaches to a problem that may lead to different conclusions.

Desk crit, Lawrence Technical Institute	Desk crit, Washington University	Desk crit, Catholic University

The open studio allows students to witness (and often participate in) the development of other students' ideas. Classtime desk crits are not exclusively one-on-one interactions between the student and the instructor, as they can be observed and overhead by anyone else in the class. The critic may even ask other students to gather around and observe a particular student's work.

Because students are expected to do their work in the studio, all students have the opportunity to observe what their classmates are doing. They may practice critiquing each other's work, engage in brainstorming sessions, and try jointly to make sense of what the critic has said and shown them. Students who are confident that they have found a way to approach the problem may assume the role of a mentor, helping out others who have yet to find an approach that makes sense to them. While there may be a high level of cooperation, students are also fueled by competition to come up with the "best" design. Some may lock their work away in a drawer overnight so that others won't steal their ideas, or, in extreme cases, do their work at home and bring it to the studio for review only during the assigned class hours when the critic is present.

The second stage of assessment—an inseparable part the learning process—is the "pin-up session," a periodic group review of work in progress pinned up on the wall. This may occur every week or two. Each student will attempt to explain her or his work to the group, other students will ask questions, and the design critic will comment on individual presentations and on the work as a whole. Through this manner, students are exposed to, are able to observe and reflect on a wide range of approaches to defining and solving the problem. They may get ideas that they can incorporate into their own work, and contribute to the work of others.

Pinup session, Washington University	Formal review, Notre Dame University

The week preceding the final review is the time of the most intense activity in the studio. Single, double, and even triple-nighters may be undertaken to finalize ideas and put them into presentable form. This intense effort is required not only because of the amount of work required, but because of the student's desire to bring it to a high level of completion. Seeing the work being done by classmates helps a student evaluate how much additional effort may be needed to compare favorably. Architects are not noted for their time management skills, and knowing when to cut off the open-ended process of designing and start wrapping up the project is a perennial problem. The term "charrette," referring to an intensive short design exercise, comes from the two-wheeled carts on which École des Beaux Arts students would transport their large-format drawings from their atelier to the school to be juried; students would continue working on their drawings in the cart, even as they were being pushed down the street. Even those students whose progress does not require such an intense effort will come to the studio, if only to socialize, help the friends out, and prepare themselves emotionally for the final review.

The studio project normally culminates in a formal "jury" where students present their final solution with plans, elevations (front, rear, side views), cross sections, and perspective drawings. Typically lasting an entire afternoon, the presentation may include previously prepared diagrams and sketches to illustrate the development of an idea, or brief written statements to supplement the graphic and oral presentation. Several critics, and possibly outsiders, will provide a formal evaluation following each student's presentation, and the session ends with concluding comments on the work as a whole. The student's grade for the entire semester may depend upon this final review.

The studio approach embodies many teaching strategies that offer alternatives to, or a way to enrich, traditional classroom pedagogy. In current educational jargon, it is a constructivist, collaborative, hands-on, experiential, problem-based learning process involving an entire learning community in an exercise in critical thinking. It is geared specifically to learning in multiple modes, with particular emphasis on the visual and kinesthetic. While the studio approach has much to offer, there is little organized study of pedagogy in architecture in the United States. The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture's Journal of Architectural Education features many articles of topical interest, but few on pedagogy. American educators exploring the use of Internet and communications technologies in design education, such as Harvard's Spiro Pollalis and MIT's Anne Beamish (now at the University of Texas-Austin), find their outlet in overseas journals and conferences (see, e.g., Gereaedts and Pollalis, 2001, Beamish, 2004). Units such as the University of Washington's Center for Engineering Learning and Teaching (http://depts.washington.edu/celtweb/index.html) or the University of Michigan's Resources for Engineering Educators Website (http://www.engin.umich.edu/teaching/resources) are not found in architectural schools.

In one of his many books on studio education, Educating the Reflective Practitioner, MIT's Donald Schön describes what he calls "knowing in action"--the "sorts of competence that all of us exhibit every day in countless acts of recognition, judgment, and skillful performance" which do not require conscious thought and may not be amenable to explanation. Examples range from riding a bicycle to analyzing a complex balance sheet or quickly diagnosing a patient's illness: one can do it, but be entirely unable to describe in words how it is done (Schön 1987, p. 23-25). Schön's concept of "Reflection in action" refers to how, in the course of acting, we improvise, changing our behavior to address unexpected new conditions. This improvisation is not a random exercise, but an intelligent, measured response that may even appear to an outsider as "the smooth performance of an ongoing task" (Schön 1987, p. 29). The design process is a prime example of "reflection in action." At each step, the designer evaluates the consequences of the decision in terms of (1) the initially expressed problem criteria, (2) conformity to or violation of implications of previous decisions, and (3) new opportunities or constraints arising from the decision.

Schön describes the paradox in learning how to design (developing the "competence" of reflection in action): "the student seeks to learn things whose meaning and importance she cannot grasp ahead of time," a paradox that he notes was described long before by Plato in the dialogue with Meno, who was searching for virtue. This paradox is shared by the instructor, who "cannot tell the student what she needs to know, even if he has words for it, because at that point the student would not understand him" (Schön 1987, p. 83). Resolution of this paradox rests in learning by doing, with continuous feedback from the instructor, providing the student with a growing base of experience on which to make further judgments.

Schön argues that a "reflective" practicum modeled on the principles of the design studio could yield results in many other disciplines, providing specific examples in musical performance, psychoanalytic practice, and counseling. Such a practicum can bridge the frequently occurring gap between education and practice in professional education and avoid the prospect of "a proceduralized profession in which technical rationality wholly drives out artistry and a professional school organized around a science that wholly drives out education for artistry" (Schön 1987, p. 309).

Thomas Kvan at Hong Kong University has written widely about architectural education and "virtual design studios." He draws a parallel between the architectural studio and the model of problem-based learning found in teaching medicine and business. This model involves five stages, the first three of which cycle through an iterative process:

• problem formulation;
• self-directed learning;
• problem re-examination;
• abstraction; and
• reflection.

Kvan points out that in design education, the final two deliberative stages are often curtailed by the focus on the review of a final project in the culminating jury session. Problem-based learning focuses more on the process, permitting it to inform future actions (Kvan, p. 19-25). Kvan argues that the final stages of deliberation are an integral part of virtual design studios, allowing students to examine what they do and to change how they do it. The archiving and retrieval capabilities of digital technologies provides an "audit trail," permitting the entire design process to be examined, assessed, and improved. This deliberative stage of abstraction and reflection corresponds to the highest level of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives (discussed below in Pedagogy, Learning Theories).

One way in which architecture differs from other academic disciplines—particularly the related profession of engineering— is that it is not founded on a body of scientifically proven theory, nor, for the most part, is it supported by empirical research. There are few doctorates in architecture, other than in the area of architectural history.

Like other visual and performing arts, architecture schools often have problems fitting in with their parent universities. Most architecture faculty members do not fit the academic "mold"—they do not hold advanced degrees, conduct research, or write papers or learned treatises. Architecture graduates generally are not the source of grants or endowments, nor is there an industry that can benefit by endowing chairs and sponsoring architectural studies. The architecture school is not a source of outside revenue to help support the university's research traditions, nor will it help attract Nobel laureates to embellish the university's reputation.

The architecture school is one of the smallest academic units, constantly struggling to stay funded. Accreditation standards require the institution to make a heavy investment in facilities and faculty. Schools must provide studio space for each student, equip and staff workshops and computer labs, and maintain a high ratio of faculty to students. There are few large lecture classes to accomplish economies of scale. Because research funds are scarce, graduate students in architecture must be supported by scholarships.

The architecture school is often isolated, interacting little with other parts of the university community. Students in other disciplines do not take any courses in architecture (other than architectural history), as most of its classes are closed to non-majors. Given the demands of the program and the studio, architecture students spend as little time in other classes as they can. Sports and extracurricular activities attract few architects.

Architectural education also is also disconnected from the profession—some might say it deliberately distances itself the profession. According to National Architectural Accrediting Board statistics, only half of the 2,000 full-time architecture faculty members are licensed to practice architecture NAAB 2004d. Fewer than half of them are members of the American Institute of Architects, the professional organization of architects. Architectural educators have historically resisted calls from practitioners to provide more well-trained graduates who understand how a building is put together, who know how to make technical drawings (as opposed to conceptual sketches), who can communicate coherently orally or in writing, work with others, and manage their time effectively.

From the educators' point of view, the required internship period of 3-6 years after graduation is where aspiring architects should (and can best) learn the how to practice. To them, the school's mission is to develop the mind and give students a broad exposure, providing the foundation for a lifetime of practice, and not simply to train them for entry-level jobs in design firms.

In 1996, a Carnegie Foundation report, Building community: A new future for architecture education and practice, examined architectural education from a broader perspective than had ever been done before (Boyer and Mitgang, 1996). This report (echoing Vitruvius) called for an education that was more liberal and humanistic, more focused on and better connected with the profession, client needs and the community at large, and that would better prepare architects to take a leading role on social and environmental issues. The "Boyer Report" echoed deficincies identified in earlier studies emanating from Princeton and MIT. One of the previous studies found:

"...many practicing architects felt their schools shortchanged them in nondesign topics: 43 percent of those Bolman interviewed said they hadn't learned enough about how buildings actually get built, 39 percent wished they had been taught management skills, and 22 percent regretted not having learned how to deal better with people. No one thought that school had provided too little training in design. . . these curricular imbalances were not correctable simply by adding a few more courses, but related instead to the more fundamental question of whether the method and climate at most schools might be contributing to a disdain for technical and practice-oriented topics." (Boyer and Mitgang, 1996, p. 23)

In essence, the Boyer report found that architectural education needed to become far less insular and more directly relevant to the role that architecture plays in its societal context. It criticized the persistent division between the design and non-design portions of the curriculum: "the programs that have evolved at many schools seem to be either-or propositions—emphasizing either the technical and practical aspects of architecture or its more theoretical sides, but often failing to accommodate both adequately" (p. 67). Design studios were not "living up to their vast potential as settings where integration of knowledge might be fostered." The greatest area of dissatisfaction among alumni—almost 80% of those surveyed—was with their "professional practice" course, failing to prepare them effectively in areas such as contract negotiation and financial management (p. 68).

The dominating influence of the design studio has also come under criticism from students. While supporting the positive aspects of studio education, the American Institute of Architecture Students' "Studio Culture" report (AIAS, 2002) and its position paper (AIAS, 2003) at the 2003 National Architectural Accrediting Board Validation Conference (NAAB, 2003a) call for humanizing the design studio as a less pressured, more respectful working environment.

The response from the accrediting organization to these reports has been to require schools to define and demonstrate their overall mission; to reinforce the requirement for general education in arts and sciences; to offer a more diverse, outward-looking curriculum; and to adopt and publish a studio culture policy (NAAB, 2004b, 2004c). In response, schools have added courses covering more issues with a social and environmental impact (such as non-Western design and "sustainable" or environment-friendly design). Some have sought to create more "comprehensive" design studios where students are exposed to and consider factors beyond abstract design considerations, such as technical, social, and environmental factors.

Unfortunately, among the architecture schools surveyed for this study (see links), there has been little curricular response to the findings that students need more practical knowledge. There simply is too little room in the curriculum for more technical or practice-related courses, and this would do little to prmote the application of technical knowledge. To accomlish these objectives, it may be necessary to refocus the design studio, and to better coordinate and integrate design with practice courses.