Students, professionals, academics alike; we are thirsty for growth and ripe for change. The future of architectural education holds no exception.
Like grapes on a vine, we interlink, we connect, we grow with the support of one another through all stages of architecture school. Though a future must support vines in their growth toward an education that weaves inclusion, celebration, climate consciousness, versatility and flexibility. Each path individual, yet interwinding. Nevertheless – grapes do not cease to flourish. As students we seek our own paths and ways to grow – we learn how to ripen in a dark room and find beauty in the greyness of sour fruit.
FAulknerBrowns: Collaborative design in Studio
A considerate academic future holds place for all paths, and each individual within them, no matter their ripeness or flavour. The future holds no place for a sorting table. Every grape is capable of producing wine. Each wine can be paired with the perfect dish. Each combination creating a palette fit for prosperous flavour that reflects fruitful and conscious labour.
All too often a small grape may come to feel swamped within the darkness of the professional world, at the surrender of a large crushing foot as it casts shadow over our academic past to squeeze out creative juices that once flowed freely. A future celebrates every grape in every bottle of wine. It stamps out the gap between vine and foot, school and profession. The future holds place, perhaps, for the two to interlink. We may question the process, the time and the necessity. The future does not require wine to be crushed or laid to rest. Instead, we uplift, empower, interlink, and celebrate all fruits.
Graduated, bottled, and labelled, we are marked by overarching bodies with a ‘duty stamp’. Maybe a future questions whether there is room for more stamps… or less stamps… or exactly how each stamp effects the value of wine.
As students, graduates, and wine connoisseurs, we have the power, fresh and fruitful, to recognise and unite all disciplines, niches and specialities through one shared language over a glass of our works and dishes of discussion. We hope the future has set the table for such a banquette.
We must crush the exclusivity, the expense, and the expectation. Instead, celebrate for all that is. We must salute the sour face that follows a ‘bad’ glass of wine – a future instead looks to what we can learn, and how it has come to be.
Architecture and its continuity lie in diversity and recognition, celebration and paths for growth in different directions. Perhaps, the future of architectural education is a really bad wine. Or not wine at all. Perhaps the future is Beer?