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Recent years have seen record numbers of architecture school graduates.
Yale School of Architecture grad students watch as a roof panel held by a crane is positioned at a Jim Vlock Building Project for Columbus House on Adeline Street in New Haven, Conn. on August 8, 2017.
Recent years have seen record numbers of architecture school graduates.
Recent years have seen record numbers of architecture school graduates.
It is the time of year when high school students begin to focus on their college applications. Spring and summer are often spent visiting institutions and the fall is spent submitting college applications.
Every architect has heard others declare “I always wanted to be an architect!” Frank Lloyd Wright said “architecture is the mother art,” and that mother seems to have birthed the role model of the “Renaissance Man [or Woman]” in the minds of many - especially for those thinking of going to school to get a degree in architecture. Whether it is Mike Brady on “The Brady Bunch” or Howard Roark in “The Fountainhead” or even Art Vandelay on “Seinfeld,” our cultural imagination projects an image of what architects do and that piques the interest of those applying to colleges.
Architecture offers up the possibility to be an artist who makes critically useful and visually impactful things. Recent years have seen record numbers of architecture school graduates. New schools are being formed and existing schools are expanding their curriculum to include construction administration, urban design and even cartooning. Climate change has made sustainability and resilience the new focus of education as well.
The unabated flow of graduates may seem good in a boom time when there are jobs, but construction is an extremely variable industry. This year there will be 1,700,000 new homes built – ten years ago 300,000 were built and two years before that almost 3,000,000 – and commercial construction is no different. When you graduate in a boom, as it has been in the last two years, it looks like a great idea – but if you graduated from architecture school in 2009, the degree seems more like a major in music or theater – a noble mission as much as a career, given the paucity of paying positions. There are about 6,000 professional degrees in architecture degrees awarded each year. There are well over 200,000 people with professional architectural degrees in America, in a job market containing between 70,000 and 100,000 jobs depending on the construction climate.
Becoming licensed requires a professional degree and an internship with licensed architects before you are eligible to take the licensing exam. Licensed architects are required for any construction in some states, but most have a hard requirement for licensed architects to design buildings that are used by the public, versus homes or interiors. Fewer graduates are now getting the license to practice architecture than in the past, but a professional degree is necessary to be eligible to get licensed.
Students need a Master’s in architecture offered in two formats, or a Bachelor of Architecture degree. Connecticut has two schools that offer two of these paths, both Master’s. Yale in New Haven has had a separate school of architecture since 1959, after that major being part of its fine arts school since 1916. Yale has a terrific non-professional architecture program in its undergraduate curriculum, but its bachelor’s degree does not allow the graduate to take the licensing exam. Its School of Architecture offers a traditional Master’s degree, three years of graduate study, after undergraduate school.
The University of Hartford is a newer program that offers a new track of getting a master’s degree, the Department of Architecture’s “design + technology” (AD+T) program. One path offers a master’s degree that is integrated into a non-professional undergraduate degree, allowing for a Master’s in six years (versus the seven-year program with four years of undergraduate and three years of graduate school). UHart also offers a Master’s degree for those who already have an undergraduate degree.
The third degree, a Bachelor of Architecture (BArch), is a five-year way to qualify for licensure, and requires a focus that, in turn, requires a demonstrated devotion to being an architect in undergraduate applications, but more students change majors once they experience the realities of the profession - versus the imagery offered by Howard Roark or “starchitects” like Frank Lloyd Wright.
I have been fortunate to teach at both schools and teach at UHart now. The profession of architecture is being impacted by new technologies as much as any discipline, so those looking at any education in architecture face years of changing training beyond any schooling. This new technology will mean the next generation will need fewer architects per building, but both Yale and UHart are offering options to the focus of their training that are useful in non-traditional ways of expressing architecture in our culture – a new manifestation of “the mother of the arts.”
Duo Dickinson is a Madison-based architect.
Duo Dickinson is an architecture who writes about Connecticut's ever-changing streetscapes for Hearst Connecticut Media Group. He is based in Madison.