The studio is the centerpiece of an architect's education. Traditionally, an eminent practicing architect would work closely with apprentices for an extended period, offering demonstrations and critiques as a way to impart skills and knowledge. Yet major changes in both the architectural and academic worlds have rendered that model largely irrelevant, notes Dana Cuff, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. Today, most of academe's full-time studio faculty don't have active architectural practices, in part because many architecture schools are located outside major metropolitan areas, where building opportunities are not plentiful. Studio education is evolving in other ways as well.
Professors organize the classroom around real-world problems rather than hypothetical questions.
The studio will never disappear, nor should it. Main Return to the Academe Today index.