Spring Break
The Daily OrangeWord Connection
Industry stereotypes lead SU's architecture's program to include communication skills
By Irene Manahan
Posted: 3/26/08, 1:29 AM EST Section: News
|
Now, try asking them to write. Architects are commonly misconceived to have the ability to create illustrations, but lack writing and communication skills. Sure, an architect's forte isn't exactly his vernacular, but his career depends not only in his art, but in his language.
The knowledge of such skills is understood to be learned in school, but in actuality many professional architecture schools often ignore writing and speech courses.
"We're so used to thinking about the fact that architects draw, and we forget how much of architecture has to do with words," said Norman Weinstein, an independent scholar and writer and part-time professor of Canadian Studies at Boise State University.
Weinstein, a contributor to The Chronicle of Higher Education, recently wrote a column in the March 7, 2008 issue discussing the lack of communication skill he witnessed among even Ivy-League architecture majors.
Weinstein explained that an architect often has to deal with plans and contracts, write to members of the profession and explain his drawing using a huge amount of writing.
"For a profession that requires writing and speaking so much, I find it kind of strange that the demand for (these kinds of courses)" does not proportionally match up, Weinstein said.
In guiding students in the art of masterful design, university programs commonly lack communications studies, Weinstein said. A division typically lies between departments, whereas writing skills are seen as being owned by the English department.
It is important to break down barriers between departments, Weinstein said.
At the Syracuse University School of Architecture, students are encouraged to write and speak publicly, but no courses in the curriculum really specialize in producing the text or speech for their specific industry. Rather, students develop the skills through training in their courses.
"Writing is certainly something we try to concentrate one from day one in both the undergrad and graduate programs," said Mark Linder, chair of graduate studies and an associate professor at the School of Architecture.
In the graduate program, students are not required to take any specific writing classes, and undergraduate students are only required to take two as a part of the core curriculum: writing 105 and 205.
Be the first to comment on this story