Architecture: The story of Practice

Author Dana Cuff

1991 MIT. 

"Not long ago, a prominent architect who works almost entirely on immense projects - urban desng commissions and complexes of buildings usually hedged in by regulations, committees, and developers - told me his analogy for the design process. He likened architectural creation to the process a potter must go through when she has a kiln that distorts as it dries. Each pot must be shaped with that distortion in mind, or the potter will never achieve her aesthetic objectives: 'When you put in a pot that is tall and fat, you have to know it's going to come out short and skinny.' Based on past experience, this architect broaches the design process by factoring in future distoritions produced by the kkiln of committees, regulations, and clients. His early designs inlcude numerous ideas intended to "burn off" as the scheme is developed, so that the final result has the qualities he seeks... Unlike the kiln, however, the culture of practice does not lock out the artist once the object has beenn created, but is a creative context in its own right."

Richard Morris Hunt, the first American to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris (1845-1853); establishment of American ateliers that were the precursors of architecture schools and constrasting with the aristocratic practitionors (principal and assistants) of the time.
The atelier - student-run studio under the direction of a studio master, or architect-teacher - the basis for academic training. The other type: established by H. H. Richardson: the atelier-practice model combining the two. MIT, the first architecture school, was founded by Hunt in the former, academic stye.

A question: whe were universities (as wel know it) established? Perhaps it is also around the same period of late 9th century where professions were being established.

"There are also architects today who produce 'paper architecture', and there are galleries emerging across the coubntry to disribute those works. These architects have found a new form of architcture that is more like other art forms and can be marketed as such."