I used to think designing in school and designing in practice were two different worlds. In this episode I argue the opposite: schools of architecture need to teach the same design process students will use when things actually get built. The test case? The dreaded overnight scheme — your boss tells you at 5pm that a design goes to the client tomorrow morning. No time for precedent studies, no lecturer feedback. So how do you become an expert overnight? The case study is the formula: that same evening, go visit a building of the type you're designing. Watch the users, feel how it works, note the construction, the ventilation, the thermal comfort — then ruminate, reflect, and draw your scheme. Skip this, and all you can offer the client is form-making: the latest style, a glass façade, and a superficial grasp of the actual subject.
This is also a case for visiting everything — not just award-winners to fanboy over, but mundane, straightforward buildings where you ask the unglamorous questions: how does the drainage work, where does the water tank go? An architect is the jack of all trades who can still be a master of many, and clients know it. So why isn't this learning the prerogative of architecture schools? School is where you can make mistakes without a real client — and if your building isn't pretty but it works, judge yourself: the tutor may give you a C, but your effort was an A. Get the process right in school, and you enter practice hitting the ground running.
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