Influencing AIA’s Role in Influencing Architectural Education

Integrating American Institute of Architects (AIA) sponsored research into National Architectural Accrediting Board academic programs will dramatically influence architectural education. This will provide what over half of all respondents to membership surveys cite as primary interest: knowledge of and changes in building technology/science.

Students are ideally suited to support research into the many facets of sustainability, adaptability, and resilience, providing them with first-hand awareness of the interlocking relationship with planning and design. They will take this scientifically based research orientation into their postgraduate professional careers.

The AIA’s role in this strategy will be linking practicing professionals to the academic research groups to ensure that the research is directed at practical applications. Working with NAAB, architecture programs would be compelled to modify the longstanding Gropius education model with practical research curricula focused on sustainable design, adaptability, and resiliency. Together the AIA and NAAB could assure that the nation’s architecture schools maintain a balanced diversity of potentially useful research matter.

Besides breeding better equipped architecture program graduates, this academic institution-based research approach will position the AIA as a sustainable design research-oriented institution. Let’s foster a more meaningful connection between exploration and feedback from the actual design process, making architects less reliant on borrowed science.

To view James’s thoughts on other issues facing the AIA and the architecture industry, click the below links.

The Role of Architects and the AIA for the Public Good
Promoting Pay Equity, Gender Equality and Diversity Inclusion in Architecture 
Prioritizing Sustainability throughout the Architecture Profession
Engaging the Current Generation of Emerging Professionals
The Importance of Group Political Action to Architects
Promoting Architectural Innovation in the AIA
We Need to Reinforce the AIA Pipeline
Live or Die: Overcoming the Architecture Industry’s Biggest Challenge
Striving for Greater Inclusivity in AIA of Non-Traditional Architects