Reimagining architecture's future, really. What is dismissed in practice.
Opportunities revealed in a letter to the editor of Canadian Architect on reimagining continuing education.
A recent letter to the editor of Canadian Architect magazine inspired me.1 I am inspired by a quirky moment in the intent and message of the letter. I have no information if this letter as it is published is the direct intent of the author of the letter or how much it and its intent are due to the editing of the letter by the magazine's editors. I do not want to define where or who the final form of this letter actually comes from, and that is not where I am coming from. I am reading it as it stands in the hard copy publication.
Whatever may be missing or changed in the letter would have to be complex indeed to change the meaning of the entire letter. This letter reflects the state of affairs to me, even if it is inadvertent. The text takes on issues in continuing education, a topic that is superficially plain and logical, and not really in need of presentation in such a magazine. It is not controversial beyond the level of perhaps stubborn bureaucrats troubling each other with differing approaches. I do not feel it is a reimagining of continuing education, and the aspect of practice that the letter wants removed is what is actually needed and already weak.
What I am paying attention to is how the letter sets up an essential part of professional activity and then dismisses it. This is an opportunity to capture through that dismissal the value of architecture that is concealed in practice. This turn in this letter expresses factors that can define a catalyst for advancing toward the profession's future. It is a lack and an absence, and it is also 'concealing', a term that I use in my writing under the heading of The Goal in Architecture or G¡a here on Substack.
The letter makes its assertion, claiming a "compelling argument", that certain “[il]legitimate [non-]profession-specific” “unstructured continuing education requirements” should not be included. What is revealed for a moment in the interaction of ideas is the core of architectural value in light of continuing education. In doing this it voices support for the colonization of architecture by technology. The difficult to measure or so-called '“unstructured” component is what architects must deal with. We have the concealed grounds for architecture and its means bubbling forth to the surface through a set of non-sequiturs.
Part of the letter is quoted below, with selected statements italicized. The part that I quote has three true statements that contradict each other. My commentary, focused on the italicized text, follows.
Regulating educational requirements is a tough challenge, certainly, for any organization. "The broader the range of issues to be accommodated, the greater the difficulty to regulate," is a familiar axiom. In our profession, regulating education should be premised on the fact that architects process information and come to understand their craft in unique ways. Visual literacy, for instance, is core to an architect's formal education and professional skill set. The accreditation process for evaluating architecture university programs in Canada, as one example, requires an exhibition of ideas and concepts as a principal component. This is how we communicate, learn, and grow as architects. Yet, ironically, attendance at such an exhibition would be ruled invalid as counting towards provincial continuing education requirements, because its inherent value cannot be readily quantified.
A sizable amount of regulation focusing on professional development is also premised on the notion that one can somehow quantify reading, and accurately corroborate the time taken to research a topic, author a book, or publish an article. In contrast, travel-which most architects view as an important way of coming to understand architecture is only deemed valid by regulators if it can be corroborated by a tour guide receipt. A mode of regulation that would more accurately reflect lived experience would not be driven by administrative expediency, and would assign value beyond that which can be easily quantified.
Activities cited in the "unstructured learning" category-aside from association meetings and committee work—are, on the whole, largely impossible to regulate with specificity, and in most cases, fail to credibly validate either currency or knowledge. Elimination of these activities would be a positive first step, and serve to focus attention on legitimate profession-specific requirements. A compelling argument can be made that compliance with unstructured continuing education requirements achieves nothing but increased workloads for regulators, ill will of individual members, and no credible validation of whether the individual in question is up-to-date or not. Structured professional development, on the other hand, can and should be monitored in a comprehensive and straightforward manner.
The accreditation process for evaluating architecture university programs in Canada, as one example, requires an exhibition of ideas and concepts as a principal component.
"An exhibition" of ideas and concepts and visual ideas by students point to a core component of professional architects’ education that bears the core value of architectural practice. The architectural project and the review of it as participation in the public sphere, hence the multifaceted use of the word ‘exhibition’, is essential ground for anyone gaining a professional degree. An example of this public quality is that anyone could walk into the AA off Bedford Square in London, straight into a raucous crowd in a crowded room to view projects of Zaha Hadid’s studio. Maybe there are more controls on access now, but I could and did join such publics when I visited London through the 1990s and the early part of this millennium.
Yet, ironically, attendance at such an exhibition would be ruled invalid as counting towards provincial continuing education requirements, because its inherent value cannot be readily quantified.
This is an amazing turn where the student or architect exhibiting certain capacity in particular qualities is turned to merely visiting an exhibition. Exhibition is used to include this, as I noted, but it is obvious that there is a big of difference to its use here, and that this has minimal value compared to the former. The most important difference being that the viewer of an exhibition is not using their skills with something at stake to actively make and exhibit decisions. This is where I question if there was an error in editing. Nevertheless, the letter continues in a way that makes this intent plausible.
A mode of regulation that would more accurately reflect lived experience would not be driven by administrative expediency, and would assign value beyond that which can be easily quantified.
This is the big ask of us. It reflects the dire need of the value architects bring to our environment as a practicality that is lived. But we need to question what values architects' output supports. This is almost greenfield territory now. Such questioning will show how we are remiss as a profession. We need to define what the values we look to serve are, including at a paradigmatic level and how to assess these fairly and consistently. Although the quoted sentence turns from the first definition of the ineffable and beautiful core of architecture in practice, one can root for this third assertion in the letter as being what we need to do, which we have needed to do for a couple generations now.
Elimination of these activities would be a positive first step, and serve to focus attention on legitimate profession-specific requirements. A compelling argument can be made that compliance with unstructured continuing education requirements achieves nothing but increased workloads for regulators, ill will of individual members, and no credible validation of whether the individual in question is up-to-date or not.
This assertion is radical to me. This letter becomes banal in the worst way. It is banality as Hana Arendt described it. It is banal because "these activities" are already and have long been external to the definition of architectural professional practice and in many professional education programs. There is in fact a compelling argument that the remaining "legitimate profession–specific requirements", while being essential knowledge, are commonly supplied by a great many non-architect professionals and businesses. The technological nature of fees, contracts and association with the trades included in making the environments that architects plan, define our income and our financial value in practice, but they do not define the profession of architecture in practice.
Secondly, we maintain our value as architects because we bring "these activities" in their undefined but (for many of us) obligatory way, out of the education we get, many of us bringing it innately, feeling that this is truly what architecture is about when we begin our careers and choose the architectural profession. To state that a compelling argument to ignore or exclude this can be made is necessary only because this is like a guilty practicality. It is akin saying, 'We should be honest in life, but who can be honest these days?' We know that the real spirit of architecture is in the unmeasurable and unremunerated concealed core of practice. But we get paid for the box, not the apples in it. Many boxes are sold empty.
To call the attempt at bringing real core 'unmeasurable' values of architecture into continuing education “[il]legitimate [non-]profession-specific” “unstructured continuing education requirements” is preposterous, actually. It is to go a step further, legitimizing selling empty apple boxes by arguing that farming apples is ridiculous because so many of the boxes are empty.
At this point the letter turns the screw again by expressing continuing education as a narrow question of being up-to-date. Continuing education certainly has the utility of keeping pace with change and maintaining functions that we may not be individually involved in for periods at time. But the higher value is to create a community of evolution for the professional. This fulfills the term ‘continuing education’ in the fullest sense. Continuing education can add future orientated R & D on multiple levels. Development in architecture beyond the technological evolution through daily practice has been through our professional educational programs, often spurred by architects who teach so that their research can proceed at all for decades. The cost of what we do is borne only as the project outcome making research in architecture with the fullness of an issue difficult. We are in practice with the experience of the world, continuously experiencing it in part as learning in practice. Developmental work for the profession that extends to the very paradigm of professional values should happen out of practice. This is not a cost issue. We do not fund it because we conceal its value in the profession's public sphere, while “[il]legitimate [non-]profession-specific” “unstructured” architectural values are not remunerated.
Continuing education can actually bear those unmeasurable values that we must nevertheless answer to that are not directly part of measurable technological activity in practice now. Even beyond that, continuing education must join and enhance ‘advocacy’ to go beyond mere promotion to becoming the expression of architects and architecture’s ancient and essential role in the wellbeing of life and the public sphere.
The component of practice that is dismissed as "these activities" bears the service and values of architectural practice that belong only to the profession. "These activities" that this letter values as illegitimate and non-professional are at the core of the profession. The lot of “these activities”, these unmeasured attributes of life that we do give measure, can be brought adjacent the regulated techno-bureaucratic practice to determine the crux of our serious issues in the profession.
This is an exemplary moment of architecture’s chimeric quality from within the conservative POV of our current culture, of it moving past our eyes while we act as if it were not there. This is literally happening in the letter. The effort to regulate continuing education vanishes architectural value. Our public sphere still claims and recognizes that architecture exists in principle, for which I am grateful, even if what is claimed to be that is more often not architecture. So we are safe becuase we really need architecture. No doubt, architects need those regulating factors in practice, but we would not exist were it not for "these activities" that we are lucky to keep because the term ‘architecture’ is still culturally meaningful and no one else is doing it.
Dismissing the essential component of providing architecture in the world cannot be rational. Architecture does not fully present in measurable qualities, so its presence is also not rational in the profession today. The letter has a series of non-sequiturs that we are blind to by habit. That is why I include a close reading of the letter's text.
The unmeasurable heart of architecture is concealed via the professions in all nations in the current technological context. If our profession wields the problem properly, architects' fortunes would rise along with the quality of the life and the world. We are all passing through this the moment; architecture is about this because this is aspiration in human conscious life. This lies at the heart of movement toward a complete renewal of the profession. As a global issue, facing it is beneficial widely. Who wants to step up?
Letters to the Editor: ‘Reimagining Continuing Education’ in Canadian Architect, April 2025 V.70 N.02, pp. 10-11.