Adele Santos is the Dean of the School of Architecture at MIT and principal of Santos Prescott and Associates.

AJ: Today all architecture schools are advertising their specialized programs in architecture. Is this a calculated response to trends in the schools attempt to collect the best students and funds, and if this is a reality then how do you think it will affect the practice of architecture eventually?

Adele: Well, I think you are generalizing, which is not quite accurate because the specialization in this particular university and the way it is configured is highly unusual. I mean if you go to Penn, Berklee and other places you will not find this separation out into disciplined groups in the manner that you have here. It is quite different there. I think in most schools the focus is on bringing students into the Master of Architecture program and give them much more of a general education. In other words, you start right from the beginning integrating all these subjects as part of design, because they are not separate, and the idea then is that you are, in a way, dealing with a kind of general education in architecture that touches on all the foundational issues that we all believe in. The specialization tends to happen at a post-graduate level. So, people coming in with a professional degree, might choose, because they have already had that general background, to specialize in building technology or what have you.
I think the drift of it in architecture schools in general is to give a very balanced education where design is actually focused.

AJ: Don't you think, however, that even M.Arch students trap themselves in these fields due to a weak HTC department and a very competitive job-market that would pay more attention to a person with highly specialized technical skills?

Adele: No, I think this is actually rather overblown as an issue. I think that when you leave school and go to an office they are going to ask you some very specific things. They will look at your portfolio and see if you can design at all. They are certainly going to ask about your computer skills and which programs you know. And I think that people may choose to specialize later because of their interest. I mean somebody going into HTC, for example, is likely to want to teach one day. People who want to go further in building technology, probably want to seek out firms later where there is a different and more technological emphasis. But I do not think it is a marketing deal. For example, urban design would be something that a number of schools have. And somebody who has gone through architecture and wants to know more about the city because that is their passion, will go to Harvard or us, or UPenn or Berlkee, to "specialize" in that. I started in architecture and I got my Master of Architecture and went on to Harvard to do urban design because I hadn't had enough of it, and then I went to Penn and did City Planning. So I was accumulating degrees, but it was a very specific strategy to add to my architecture diploma.

AJ: How were things different in the seventies when you started practicing on your own and when the norm was generalist architects that relied on one only undergraduate degree than they are now?
Adele: Well, there was a big change in architectural education when in the United States the Master of Architecture degree became the first professional degree. Before that it was B.Archs. I have a B.Arch. The extent to which it is fit to practice, I do not think it has to do with the educational institutions as much as with the change of practice itself, because I think practice has changed a lot. The client groups have changed a lot also. We were dealing with individuals more and now we are dealing with committees. If you are in the public sector you also have to deal with the public process. So the nature of practice has changed a lot and has become international, national, etc. People do not practice in the locale. You could be anywhere. And then once you deal with computerization and all the change of that, then we do not even have to be in the same place to practice together.
Scale has changed, the complexity of projects, the palettes of materials and methods available, the way teams are composed, for example, now there are more offices that agree to collaborate to do a job, so that you do not have to be the hundred person firm in order to do a big job. You can be a four person firm that teams regularly with an eight person firm. So there are clusters formed and I think this is very different.
Pinup: Is the architect of today still a generalist?
Adele: I think you start by being a generalist and you add on skill sets. That is what people, for example, will get people to do in their office.
Pinup: But should the architect's generalist education change into something more specific as the game of the field changes? Should the architect be able to acquire more competitive skills in project management, economics or negotiation instead of as much theory and design?

Adele: If you go to any office, you sort out the skill set and there are people that just inherently are talented in design sets, other people are naturally talented technologically. Unfortunately, there are not so many of those. Some people have management skills. I think for us to be training managers in architecture schools is just a waste of time because we have got so much to teach. And, indeed, there are more things to learn now and we have less time to teach them. Instead of six years we have three and a half. So, we keep leaving things out of the curriculum, which is scary. For example, students graduate these days with very little knowledge of the history of architecture. All that stuff just kind of gets dropped out. It seems like a luxury to put the time into that, but that's ridiculous.

AJ: Have you noticed that at MIT?

Adele: I haven't looked at it enough, but I have been told that you do not have enough of it. And it's amazing, how can we be dealing with a design language without understanding the history that led us to where we are. I don't think we deal with contemporary history, by the way.

AJ: Do you think that three and a half years is too short?

Adele: Well, yes, it is too short and we are longer than most programs in the country. The question really is …"is our teaching methodology correct? Because I suspect not! We do not teach in a way that is really well calibrated with what we are trying to impart.

AJ: Do you think that students, especially some M.Arch's here at MIT lack basic architectural skills, not just when they enter buy also when they graduate from the school?

Adele: I have argued that this is actually extremely unfair for students to come in without the basic skills to allow them to be effective. If you don't know how to draw and see and do all sorts of things, that puts you at a disadvantage immediately, so at Penn we had a crash course during the summer that was really important. If you did not have the skills you had to take this intensive course, it would take a lot of time to catch up. I think it takes a good semester or two to catch up. And that is wasting time. So, if we do three and a half years we have to be better at teaching what we need students to know in a more effective fashion. I mean the other thing I always complain about, and have not had the chance to look at here, is that you have to pick the right vehicle to do the job, so you are trying to teach contextualism or whatever. Pick a problem that is not so complicated that you end up doing all kinds of stuff, which interferes with the real focus of what you are really trying to teach. We tend to overcomplicate things, when we can get the message across very simply. And I think that a lot of information can be recorded and replayed, so students can digest it and so that we don't spend our time in the lecture room giving all the facts. It should be to discuss the implications of issues. There are ways of changing our teaching.

AJ: What would be a good way of improve basic skills?

Adele: What I did at the University of San Diego was that Fridays was the skill-set day, and we had tutors. The faculty was available but it was all scheduled for the tutors to deal with computer skills, model-making skills, woodworking skills, and whatever else possible, and people could actually do this. Some of them were not about improving skill sets, but more about learning to do fantastic perspectives, or fly-throughs. So, by the end of the fifth semester, everybody was at the same level and quite sophisticated because they had their Friday tutors taking them through this.

AJ: Are MIT students ready for the profession of architecture after three and a half years?

Adele: No, the time here is short, but I am mostly interested in training students on how to think and problem solve because you are never going to have all the knowledge. But, if you have a way of approaching information and problem-sets, then the knowledge comes through the process of discovering. But you can certainly put it into a conceptual framework that everybody going out would know how to approach a series of issues, particularly on a technical level. That, in a way, is sort of on the job training and you sit down in an office and work with someone who is superior in knowledge to you, but you at least need to know how to tackle the issues that all sorts of specialists will bring to the table [engineers, etc.]. I think that we need to figure out what we really need to teach immediately, which is why the idea of management would be silly for us to do because not everybody is going to be a manager anyway. Maybe one in ten will have the temperament to deal with this aspect of the profession, so, why go through that? We must touch on the basics through the lens of architectural design because this is the moment we can do that. Once you go into an office, you are on your own.

AJ: Would you consider that design is the core around which everything else revolves?

Adele: No, and that is the part that needs to be strengthened. If that is really strong, and to be strong, in my opinion, it has to be larger. You cannot bring in 12 students, for example. You should allow 24 students to enter. Then you get four faculty teaching them and you get a much richer education, and then the following semester you bring in the two and a half year students. Once you get to the elective studios, you have more choices. If you only have the choices of two things it's not good enough. You need more choices. You need a better exposure to a world of ideas and then you work your way through it. So, I think if the core of our program is really strong, then all the surrounding elements that appear to be satellites right not, are integrated into it because this core is the focal piece, and what holds everything together. When it is too small, it appears to be not important as there is more faculty surrounding this than there are in the middle. As a diagram, it simply does not work.

AJ: What type of firm would you suggest would be more beneficial for a young architectural professional to work for in order to develop as an architect?

Adele: I look at each student individually. Some people would flourish at a large firm, and some would get lost there and they would be making tea and coffee. I think it has a lot to do with the personality. The really talented people in terms of design usually want to go into a smaller firm that is know for design because they want to identify with that firm and its belief system. Of course, it is difficult to get into one of these firms unless you are extremely talented and you have a fabulous portfolio and there are people who want to work with you. I think that in terms of a large firm you can get incredibly good training if you just deal with it for a year or two. Go in there and learn the technical stuff that you did not learn at school, understand the process of an office, and be alert to learning. The main thing is that you have just begun a lifetime of learning. Hopefully we have set in place a way of thinking about architecture that is a healthy and good one and then when you go out you can work and aggressively try to learn as much as you can wherever you are! Pick it all up!