architect or architect?

Iannis Papagiannakis

Education is a process as well as a mechanism that shapes ideas and social relationships. In this aspect it can be seen as a political process (politics considered in its wider sense of public actions on social relationships, or, of people as �citizens� being responsible for and having control over their social relationships). Within this view not only should education be determined by those related to it (students, teachers, professionals, etc.), but they, in turn, should be actively involved in its shaping.

Institutional education provides people with a specific knowledge that will place them in a specific professional, social or financial position. More than that though, education should be seen as a way to develop ethics and critique. For it is the latter that make education distinguished from professional training.

The process of education has been opposed to the process of training. Universities and educational institutions in general have ceased to be places of knowledge and tend to be places of professional training, in order to meet specific needs in a given time and place (i.e. market demands); they focus more on the training aspect of education, rather than on the development of a critique ability and an ethical conscious.

The process of one becoming an architect should be seen, above all, as an educational process. This includes the acquiring of knowledge, as well as the development of an ability to identify the issues and to respond appropriately in the specificity of each case. Architectural education should not provide one with a virtue to practice under "convenient� circumstances. And, on the other hand, an architect must not only know what and how to build, but also when and where not to build.

Only through such a process will one be able to respond to the second role the architect is acquiring nowadays; on top of giving architectural answers to social issues, the role of the architect now extends to re-imposing the issues.

Considering architectural education as a political process -in a democratic way (where decisions are taken by those that will bear their consequences)- institutional education should not become a product managed by institutions, in the same manner that architecture should not become a product managed by the market.

Iannis Papagiannakis an architect. He studied architecture in Thessaloniki (AUTH) and completed the Master of Urban and Building Conservation in Dublin (UCD) He is currently working with Blackwood Associates Architects, Dublin