Like every confused high-schooler, I did not know if I was meant to study architecture. As an introvert, it was almost ironic that I had an aversion to ‘blending with the crowd’. But I was also scared about making a mistake. I mean, my graduate course was supposed to “determine my future,” which, for a seventeen-year-old kid, is a pretty daunting thought. Did I make the right choice? I still don’t know. Can you help me figure that out?

I did my research before getting in. I spent hours on the internet reading blogs and Quora answers about how a bachelor in architecture was an excruciating, and extremely rewarding course, binged all YouTube videos that came up with the keyword ‘architect’, read ‘The Fountainhead’, and even talked to a bunch of people that my friends and family connected me to. One of them was this guy who had already left the field to work as a designer, but he still asked me to go for it. “Even if you decide not to practice it, the course itself is amazing. It will teach you a lot, about everything. I think everyone should go through this five-year experience at least once in their life.”

Okay, that convinced me.

Once I got in, I didn’t hear a lot of good things about the course and even less about the field. In fact, as time went by, it grew worse. As I lived it, I was enjoying every moment; but none of it made me any sure about my future. I asked around, to peers, seniors, and faculties, in the hopes that they would tell me I was overthinking it, and it would be fine. But apparently, everyone was as uncertain and hopeless as I was, if not more.

And so when I graduated from the five-year-long “professional course,” I was not surprised when I realised I had zero confidence in myself as an architect.

If you throw the question about education to any random architect, the review you will get is not going to be a positive one. I tried. It took digging through a lot of mud to find only a few specks of shine.

Almost everyone agrees that with the present way architects are being trained, at least here in India, they are not being prepared for the way the industry works. There is a lot of focus on “concept” and presentations, but close to none on the many aspects that are much more prominent in the practical world: talking to the client, handling architecture as a business, understanding money, coordination and professional communication, handling last-minute changes, and still seeing your idea through to completion.

We can try blaming it on the system, but is that fair? Anyway, the purpose of writing this is not to find someone to blame. It is to realise there is an issue and, more importantly, try to resolve it. What can be done about architectural education?

“Of course, we need to know our foundations, but the part where you are keeping up with what’s trending, what’s new…maybe architecture is going through a phase right now…maybe a lot of our education is living in the past?” one of the architects, as a review of the current architectural education system.

Many others feel that collaboration with practising architects and live projects is necessary. Keeping students in a bubble for a year or two might do well to develop their design thinking, but beyond that, they need to know more about the practice. And if we can club this need for exposure to organisations and projects in the outside world that require help?

It’s not the idea or all of the curriculum itself, that is impractical. As students, we also disregard a lot of it because we do not realise the stakes. Even those of us hell-bent on practising architecture after graduating don’t know what it is like out there. We make our own priorities and realise much later that we made a mistake.

Can the architecture curriculum be more about learning from the practical world? Can we have more, or perhaps longer, internships to tell us what it’s like? Is it possible to have some of our studios designed as simulations of office environments, maybe in collaboration with other institutions, teaching us intra-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary collaboration? Can we do less variety, but in greater detail? Can we allow every student to learn not only about construction but also about the thousand other options someone with an architectural education can opt for? Can we dream the craziest dreams, and also learn how to make them a reality? Can we teach how to handle a client, by watching how actual clients are dealt with? Can we teach students how to run a firm, and operate a profitable business in architecture?

Can we train our architects so that when they graduate from the institution with a degree and someone approaches them to design their house, they are not hesitant to do it?