Monthly Archives: June 2021

12 tips for new design graduates

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MY PERSONAL ADVICE TO NEW GRADUATES STARTING THEIR CAREERS IN ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN

My undergraduate architecture students have finished up their thesis and are getting ready to graduate. I’m proud of all of their successes, and eventually they will all have rosy futures, but right now they face a somewhat grim outlook… the industry is suffering from the effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic and jobs may be hard to come by. I wrote this piece partly to relieve some of their anxieties. It’s not going to get them jobs but once they do, it can help them transition into it a little easier.

In truth, I could’ve written this article several years ago. I have often given my advice to graduating students as they start their careers, and yes, mostly the advice is unsolicited. But I suddenly felt like writing it now and I hope my students (and any students who might read this in the future) will excuse my presumptuousness.

Aside from architecture, I teach and advise students from other design disciplines, so I want to disclaim that this article is mostly focused on architecture and interior design graduates, primarily because the advice I’m offering is based upon a certain kind of job profile in small to medium companies which form the bulk of architecture and interiors practices. In contrast, my students from product design or communication design generally go on to work in large corporate offices and although there may be some common carryover, these tips are more suited to smaller workplaces. So, if you’re not an architect or interior designer, take from it whatever you can. I hope it helps.

Here’s my dozen personal tips to all of you who are about to enter the professional world of architecture and design.

#1 DON’T RUSH INTO WORKING

Sometimes I wonder why students want to start work almost immediately after they graduate. I wonder why they don’t want to take some time off to recover from a rigorous and stressful design education. Once you start your career, you fall under the constraints of a traditional working life and will never get as many days off as you deserve. Take the time now to rest your brain, think about your future, work on your portfolio, travel, volunteer, or do things that a full-time job won’t allow you to do once you start working. Now I do understand that many of you need to start earning, either to support your family or to pay back your education loans. I get that, and if that’s the reason for jumping into a job right away, so be it. But if you have the time and financial standing, take some time off and travel. You may not get a chance like this again.

For the record, when I graduated, I took six months off to travel through Europe and India, with friends and later, by myself. It did cost a lot of money, most of which I put on a credit card, for which I paid dearly over the next couple of years. I don’t normally recommend students to be so financially frivolous but I’m honestly glad that I did it. I’ve never been able to have that much time and freedom since then, after 10 years of studying (!), and that small amount of credit card anxiety wasn’t that much compared to what I earned in subsequent years. And nothing compared to the experience of traveling to see places and buildings that I had only read about in textbooks. A lot of that experience has now borne fruit in my teaching career.

#2 CHOOSE A LEARNING WORKPLACE

If you can, try to work in an office that promotes a learning environment rather than a place where you’re just another CAD Monkey (as my friends and I jokingly called ourselves). Architecture has been an apprenticeship-based discipline for millennia, and employers who expect freshers to already know everything the day after graduation are not employers you want to work for. Of course, beggars can’t be choosers, so try to avoid being a beggar in the first place. Do the kind of work in college that elevates you as a candidate for better companies. Spend the time to create a portfolio that shows as much of your process work and learning as the final designed product. Do some research on how firms treat their fresh graduates. During interviews, ask questions about how the office works as a learning environment. Employers will rarely say that they’re hiring you purely to educate you, but good ones will understand that they’re making an investment in training you and will be clear about how and what they expect you to learn.

It’s often the case that small and medium firms offer better opportunities for learning than large corporate offices. There are exceptions, of course, but generally in a small office there are more diverse responsibilities and work is often shared. In larger firms, you tend to get pigeon-holed into one task that either you’re really good at or a task that is necessary but no else wants to do.

#3 MAKE A LONG-TERM COMMITMENT

One of the things that bother me as a teacher is finding out how soon my students leave jobs that they find unsatisfactory or unfulfilling. No one wants to work in a job that they don’t like, but when you just start out in your career, you also don’t really have a good idea of what you like and what you don’t. I don’t mean to sound condescending about this, but I find students nowadays to lack the patience to stick through a difficult job; many leave before a year is up, sometimes not even lasting six months. There are two problems with this. One is that architecture projects typically aren’t short projects, most last six months or more. It’s a good learning experience to work a full project cycle from start to end. Just because parts of a project aren’t fun or interesting doesn’t mean that all of it will be that way. You’re learning how to solve problems, not how to escape them. You can learn just as much from negative experiences as positive ones (if not more). 

The other reason is that an employer has invested in your training. It often takes six months just to get used to how an office works – their design process, team dynamics, hierarchy, logistics, digital systems. Typically, your first six months isn’t economically productive for your employer; they tend to spend more time and manpower in training you than they get from your actual work. As a manager, I’ve often thought it would simply be faster and easier for me to do the work myself than to check, re-check, and approve the work of a less experienced fresher. It’s harsh to say but a firm is still a business; if an employer invests in you and doesn’t get a return on that investment, it can be both emotionally and financially disappointing for everyone.

#4 PRIORITIZE LEARNING OVER COMPENSATION

This is a big one because more and more graduates have become vocal about low wages in architecture, especially for fresh graduates and interns. In another blog article, I’ve discussed in detail about why this tends to happen so I won’t get into that here. I believe that young designers deserve to be paid fairly for their time and effort, but I’ll also say that this shouldn’t become an obstacle to learning. When students come to me for advice about whether to take a low-paying offer at a good office or a higher-paying offer at a more mediocre office, I usually tell them to take what they think is fair while prioritizing a good learning experience. I wouldn’t advise anyone to work for free or for extremely low wages, but I think students should also be more realistic about their worth. The work that young graduates do in their first year of working is often not much more than drafting, and an office will usually pay accordingly. 

It’s a tough balance to strike, but I use my own experiences as an example. In almost every job I’ve taken, I’ve initially earned less than I think I deserve, but I also understand that I’m untested. An employer doesn’t know my potential yet and low margins of profitability make it difficult for an architect to gamble on paying someone more than they might be worth. So I ask for a performance review six months after I start. (Many firms already have a policy like this, which is good.) If I can prove my worth and value after six months, and if I work hard and diligently, then I’m in a better position to demand higher compensation.  This technique has worked for me for my entire career. It’s more satisfying to know I earned more because of my proven worth, not because of what’s written on my resumé. 

#5 ASK QUESTIONS BUT RESPECT THEIR TIME

Once you start working, you will undoubtedly have many, many questions. In my first job after graduating architecture school, I was very fortunate to have managers who were willing to answer my questions whenever I asked them. I only realized later how much of a disturbance and distraction that must have been for them, and I wasn’t nearly the only one – I had several friends working with me who had similar levels of experience, and who knows how many times our manager had to stop working to entertain our frequent questions. He rarely complained or told us to come back later. But once we realized that we might be distracting him, we started to do it differently… we kept a list of questions at our desks and as long as the question wasn’t urgent, we would simply add it to the list and keep working. Then at some convenient point in the day, we’d ask our manager if he could give us some time and we would ask all our questions together.

The advantage of this is that, in delaying the question sometimes it would answer itself in due course. That’s an important learning when you start your career – to balance the things you can figure out on your own with the things you genuinely need help with. It’s also a well-known advice that when you go to a colleague with a problem, try to go with at least one potential solution as well. Even if your solution is rejected, your employer will appreciate your genuine attempt to think independently. Employers tolerate questions (and often encourage them), but they also want to eventually trust you to figure it out yourself.

#6 HAVE AN ENTREPRENEURIAL MINDSET

I like to teach entrepreneurial practices to my students even though most will spend the first few years working for someone else. But many will likely start their own practices in due time, so it’s important to know how to be a good entrepreneur – not just about the business and finance side, but also the managerial aspect. However, the big myth is that these learnings are only valuable once you start your own practice. That is not true. A good employee who has an entrepreneurial mindset regardless of their hierarchical rank is usually recognized and rewarded eventually.

An ‘entrepreneurial mindset’ is an attitude of ownership over the work, the projects, and the general workings of any organization. It’s the idea that your work, however minor, has some reflection on the business as a whole, and that you have a share in that reputation. Maybe you don’t actually have a financial share and you’ll get paid a salary regardless, but that’s misleading because architecture firms don’t tend to have big profit margins and often have high turnover. Your salary may not reflect profit-sharing, but when profits go down for whatever reason, the employees who don’t have an attitude of ownership will likely be the first to go, the younger ones in particular. Keep a sense of pride in your work and maintain an attitude that what you do reflects on the entire organization. Believe me, in all but the most unbalanced and unfair working environments, this attitude is rewarded with better projects, more responsibilities, more compensation, and more advancement. Not only will this mindset earn you respect in your job, it will also be valuable for when you’re ultimately running your own firm.

#7 AVOID OFFICE DRAMA

Too often I hear about my students getting caught up in office politics, drama, gossip, and the many machinations and manipulations that even the smallest of offices can fall victim to. Interns and freshers often become unwitting pawns in these games, which almost always result in an unhealthy office environment, and it takes an disproportionate toll on less experienced employees. My simple advice – stay away from it. Lie low, focus on your work, and avoid getting caught in the middle of interpersonal conflicts that have little to do with you. Sometimes this isn’t easy – a young designer working on a team needs a clear channel of hierarchy, and office politics can cloud that channel. Who do you report to? Who makes decisions on a project? Whose instructions to follow? It’s best to keep a clear head and clarify any doubts in the beginning. Make sure you find out before you join on any project team who are the team leaders and what role everyone plays. If there’s any doubt, ask openly. Avoid corridor conversations and taking sides, and when you’re given instructions make sure you note them down in a personal project journal. And of course, don’t fall prey to gossip involving you or anyone else.

If you find that an office is too enmeshed in this toxic culture and it’s more than you can handle, then seek counseling from other professionals that you trust and perhaps start planning an exit strategy. But in the meantime, observe. Sometimes being observant of bad behaviour gives you a good idea of what not to do in your own practice. Many of my lessons as a professional have come from observing the behaviour of others and deciding that that is definitely what I don’t want to do. 

#8 MAINTAIN A HEALTHY WORK-LIFE BALANCE

Adding to the potential stress of office drama is an unhealthy working schedule. Many architects and designers still cling to the romantic vision of a creative practice with long, grueling working hours, late night charrettes, and last-minute deadline encroachments. There’s abundant research that shows that none of this is actually productive, and in fact becomes unnecessarily taxing on workers. In a discipline where most of your work requires your brain to be creative and innovative, it isn’t good to always be tired. Of course, I’m not saying that everyone should ideally be 9-to-5 workers, and if the pandemic has predicted anything, it’s likely that all the norms of the standard workday and workweek may be up for reconsideration soon (if not already). But don’t become a victim of ‘architecture overtime’ simply because that’s ‘how it’s done’. 

I think that sometimes many of my students leave their jobs so quickly because they get burnt out. It’s often expected for a junior designer to put in lots of work-time to impress the boss, but this has consequences in the enjoyment of the work and your motivation to do it. I don’t believe that the first year of a designer’s professional life should be spent in 16-hour working days with no social life. There are many other avenues in which you can grow in these early years. Don’t waste it all on poor time management.

#9 SUPPLEMENT YOUR OFFICE WORK WITH OTHER LEARNING

Your faculty in college always told you that a great deal of your learning will happen outside the classroom. The same is true in your professional life. You will no doubt learn a lot on the job – in fact, more intensely than in college. But you won’t learn everything there. Most offices have a very narrow way of working – they use a specific software package, they have an established process of design, they perhaps even use similar materials, details, and techniques in their architecture. It can be easy to fall into a rut of learning, but the answer isn’t necessarily to leave the job for another one. You’ll just be moving from one routine to another. So it’s important to supplement your office experience with additional learning while you still have free time and energy in your life. Take a class in something entirely different than your office work. Learn software platforms that your office doesn’t use. Go to events, conferences, and exhibitions, and travel on the weekends to visit architecture in different cities and towns. And read, read, read… stay up to date on what’s going on in the profession – both in theory and practice.

You might even decide to study something different from architecture. I strongly believe that future economies will be disruptive and volatile, so it may not be a good idea to focus all your abilities into one discipline. There’s a lot of scope for diversification within architecture, but there’s also a lot of scope outside of it. In case the industry growth declines, it’s good to learn other design disciplines, or even other business practices. The best thing about a 5-year architecture education is that it prepares you for many other related careers. Many more architects branch into other disciplines than vice versa. My personal feeling is that architects should branch into interaction design, digital experiences, environment visualization (gaming, CGI), and data visualization and analysis. A lot of the skills you need for these fields are already baked into an architecture degree, so it’s good to diversify while you can and be prepared for uncertainty.

#10 DON’T SHRINK YOUR SOCIAL CIRCLE – WIDEN IT

The great thing that university life does – especially architecture school – is that it opens up your life to new ideas, new experiences, and new people. College tends to be a time of social expansion; your social circle gets wider and encompasses more and more people, cultures, and ideas every year. 

But I’ve noticed that when students graduate, their circles tend to contract. You stay in touch with only those college friends you were really close to, and the majority of new people you meet are through work. This is understandable because after years of expansion, one tends to want to settle down and contract… especially if you’re an introvert like me. But the problem is that this is the time in which you need to actually expand your horizons. You are in an even more intense period of growth, and you need to meet more people, you need to make more connections. As we’ve said before, you may quickly find that your job doesn’t suit you and you need to find something else. At that time, it’s good to know people so that you can find better opportunities. 

You may soon become ready to start your own practice, so having a network of collaborators is seriously important; it can make or break your new career. You’ll need to know vendors, suppliers, contractors, designers, and of course, clients. So while networking is often seen as a bad word (I used to think so, and sometimes still do), I’ve found that having a solid professional network of people you like and trust can make your next role much easier to transition into. You will need the help and support of others, so build up that network and stay in an expansive social mode while you still can.

#11 SPEND YOUR FREE TIME IN WORTHWHILE CAUSES

I mentioned earlier that you should supplement your working life with learning new skills. Another thing to consider is to devote some time to charitable causes. When working to build up your career, it can be easy to get caught up in your own self, especially once you start earning your own money. There’s a ladder of consumption that’s all too easy to climb – get a new place, buy new clothes, get a new car, then get a bigger place, more clothes, a better car, and so on. I don’t want to preach and tell you how to spend your hard-earned money, but I think it’s also important to reflect on what your architecture education has given you – the power to help people and change their lives for the better. If that’s not necessarily happening in your job, then it’s good to exert that power in some other way – by volunteering your time and energy.

As an architect you have a lot of creative potential. Use that to help people. Improve homeless shelters, assist with pro bono building projects, create newsletters or flyers for non-profit NGOs. My rule of thumb is to spend at least half a day each week in some kind of voluntary, charitable project. Of course, no one is forcing you to do this, but look around you… the world is not in great shape right now. It needs creative people like you to help fix its problems, even in very small ways.

#12 BE ETHICAL IN YOUR SIDE WORK

Almost every principal architect knows that the majority of his or her employees do some work on the side. It could be charitable work as I mentioned above, or it could be the humble beginnings of your own practice. Most employers know this and look the other way. Some will explicitly tell you that it’s ok to do it as long as it’s not on ‘company time’, using company resources. It’s important to respect this, no matter how easy it is to get away with. It’s simply not fair to your employer to use their time and resources for your own projects without their explicit approval. You don’t want to start off your professional career with unethical behaviour.

You know what I’m talking about. Working on your own projects during your workday, on the office workstations and software. Printing drawings on the office plotter after hours. Just don’t do it. An employer has built up his or her practice over years, and it’s unfair to repay their investment in you in this way. Use your own resources – your own laptop and software license, and get your plots printed somewhere else. It’s not that hard to do.

Of course, the best thing is to simply be open about it and ask your boss if you can do it. Most employers will not be ok with you doing work that directly competes with them, but many employers are ok with you doing small projects that they wouldn’t take on, as long as you don’t use their resources. Some may ask for a share of the fee, or some may simply just let you do it as long as you’re open about it, and you don’t do it during office hours. I once was working on a long-term pro bono charitable project and I simply asked my boss if I could print my 4-5 sheets on the office plotter, after hours. I did it openly, and he was fine with it because it was a charitable project, and it was only a few sheets. He even sat down and hand-rendered my elevations for me (he liked to remind me how much better at drawing he was than me). 

Situations vary, and you have to carefully reflect on your specific relationship with your employer and think about how he or she would respond and whether it’s worth the risk to burn bridges like that. In the end, I feel that it’s always better to either be open about it, or simply do it all on your own time.

That’s my 12 tips (for now). You’re welcome to add more, comment, agree, disagree… anything. But regardless, I wish all my graduating students the very best for the future.

the physical and metaphysical in architectural representation

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THOUGHTS ON THE MANUAL/DIGITAL DIVIDE IN ARCHITECTURE EDUCATION

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Yesterday I read a post on LinkedIn from an architecture student (or perhaps a recent graduate) who called out architecture schools for being hypocritical about sustainability. The example she used was the common requirement for printing out multiple large sheets of paper for project presentations, both during the project and at the end of it. Most of these sheets are submitted and then discarded after some time, and whether they get recycled or repurposed is questionable. The same was said about the materials used for model-making and workshop assignments: wood, paper, plaster, foam, clay, and sometimes concrete, brick, paint, plastic, etc.

She has a point. One of the clearest visual images of any architectural school is the view of large quantities of materials swept up at the end of each working day and piled into overflowing garbage bins. On the one hand, there’s a romantic association with these images – they imply productivity, creativity, activity, and represent experiential and practical learning. For a teacher like me, it’s actually a joy to walk into a studio and see such a mess every day. But it does have its cost in wastefulness.

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The deeper point she was making was that with the rapid advance of digital tools, why do architecture schools still require physical sheets and models to be produced in such vast quantities, all while chirping about waste reduction and conservation of resources in the building industry. Many commenters agreed, and sharply pointed how backward some institutes can be with respect to digital presentation tools. They pointed out how the COVID pandemic proved that we could get along fine with digital-only tools. Online learning forced us all to admit that we can indeed present and review digital design work without a loss in learning.

But is that really true? And is a shift to digital tools and presentations actually more sustainable than physical drawings and models? I question the premise of this, and I’d like to address this supposed claim of hypocrisy on two fronts – physical and metaphysical.

THE PHYSICAL FOOTPRINT OF ARCHITECTURAL PRESENTATIONS

I’ve done no direct environmental studies of the impact of paper sheets and physical models used in architecture schools. Let me disclaim that right away. (But then again, neither did the student who made the claim in the first place). So, I won’t go deeply into carbon footprint calculations or estimates of greenhouse gas emissions. But many people have done the work and the consensus is that, while paper does generate a lot of waste in landfills, it also contributes only 1% towards total global greenhouse gas emissions. I’m not saying it’s so small that we should ignore the problem, but there are way bigger issues to deal with first – transport and vehicle fuel is the biggest culprit, along with electricity generation, construction, and a host of other sectors.

By comparison, the contribution of the ICT sector (digital communications, etc.) to greenhouse gases is 6%. Looking at life cycle costs of paper vs. digital rather than just the landfill component, the claim that digital presentations are more sustainable than paper sheets becomes more dubious. And while we now realise that recycling isn’t the solution we all hoped it would be, we do know that one of the easiest materials to recycle is the paper and cardboard we use for drawing, printing, and model-making. 

For a roughly calculated example of this, let’s look a typical jury presentation day in an architectural college conducted in two different ways… an entirely digital presentation and an entirely physical presentation. Assuming 6-8 hours of presentations by 15-20 students, we can look at the following carbon footprint impacts (measured in carbon dioxide emissions, CO2e):

A digital presentation requires a large 42-60 inch LED screen or projector, and at least one laptop or desktop computer to run the presentations. Based on current calculations of energy usage and assuming coal-generated power, the electricity alone generates about 1kg of CO2 emissions (more for a projector because of the bulb) for the day. But if you also consider the cost of the internet, servers, cooling of rooms that contain the servers, and everything else in the background that makes the presentation possible on that day, that number can go as high as 25kg CO2e. 

And what if the presentation was done entirely online via videoconferencing, like we’ve been doing during COVID? There’s no LED screen or projector needed anymore, but we have to multiply the number of devices by 20-plus and multiply the data transfer accordingly. The carbon footprint goes even higher. (Estimates of the carbon footprint range from 0.1 to 1kg per hour depending on how long the camera is on.) So we’re potentially at 30-40kg CO2e for a full day of online presentations.

That number can obviously be reduced a lot if we consume energy generated from non-fossil fuels like solar panels or wind, and in fact this is where our emphasis should be. If we’re teaching entirely on campuses in person, then campus buildings should be converted to solar power, like they are at the college where I currently teach. If we’re teaching remotely, then individual homes should go solar, like my wife and I did in our own home. Or the entire grid should be made renewable, if we do it at the infrastructural level.

By comparison, the amount of paper and cardboard that might be generated for one day’s jury presentation by 15-20 students can be roughly estimated at 2-5 kg (assuming students print out sheets as well as documents of their research and detail drawings). If big site models are made with lots of cardboard contours, then slightly more. Estimates for the carbon footprint of paper (including production and transport costs) give us a carbon footprint for this day’s presentations of about 5kg CO2e, about one-fifth the footprint a purely digital presentation on campus, and up to one-eighth of a strictly online jury. Plus, most of that paper and cardboard can be recycled and/or reused. One factor that would increase this footprint, however, is accounting for the energy consumption of plotters used to print such drawings (as well as the transport cost of going to the print shop to get them printed in the first place). But the overall footprint is still much less than digital.

Since many presentations (before and hopefully after COVID) will likely be a blend of physical and digital presentations, we may actually be having the worst of both worlds. A constantly running LED screen showing digital renders with simultaneous printed sheets of orthographic drawings pinned up on a board is a likely scenario. So it may not be an either/or question. It may have to be a compromise.

One of the things I’ve personally done to reduce the consumption of paper is to eliminate the need to print every single stage of the project journey. I usually require all my students to produce a Project Portfolio, a 100+ page document which contains all of their research, progress work, sketches, diagrams, references, and technical drawings. These usually don’t need to be displayed in an exhibition or jury situation; they’re primarily kept as a reference. These are usually heavy printouts, and if we restrict the printed material to large sheets alone (for better visibility of orthographic drawings) then the carbon footprint of that single day’s presentation can be reduced tenfold. 

We can also ask students to make physical models out of recycled or recyclable materials like wood, paper, and cardboard rather than plastic, foam, or metal. And if non-fossil fuel power supply becomes more the norm, then even the digital footprint can be reduced simultaneously.

But the main reason why I still like to see orthographic drawings printed large scale and pinned up on a board is that architectural plans, sections, and elevations can be complex and layered drawings. I have yet to see a floor plan shown on a digital screen where I didn’t have to constantly zoom in to see the details. Seeing a plan or section on a sheet that I can see in its entirety as well as in detail is critical for giving feedback on things like layout, proximities, adjacencies, etc. And seeing plans together with sections, elevations, and 3D views is also critical so that I can orient myself in the space the student has designed.

Am I being nitpicky and old fashioned? Perhaps. But seeing an architectural presentation on a sequential series of disconnected digital slides is nowhere near as clear as seeing all the drawings and images together in one place, at a large scale. I’m constantly asking students to “go back to that slide, now go back to the other slide”. The overall image and impression of the project is fragmented and disconnected. It takes me far longer to understand and ‘grok’ the project this way, and I don’t think it solely has to do with my age or generation. A huge 1m x 2m panel where one can see all the project images at once allows anyone to see and appreciate the project holistically, which is (presumably) the way it was designed.

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THE METAPHYSICAL NATURE OF DESIGN EDUCATION

By far, the larger debate of using manual vs. digital is ideological rather than practical. Very few people bring up the sustainability issue; people seemed more concerned with the philosophical viewpoint. And it’s a fierce debate, with many accusations and stereotypes thrown around in a chaotic fury. The debate often falls along generational lines, but not necessarily so. And I think it’s no longer strictly a binary argument between manual vs. digital. The reality of technology and the internet has forced the discipline to shift strongly towards the digital side so that the debate now occupies the spectrum between hybrid vs. all-digital, with most people arguing just how hybrid it should be.

I’m not going to rehash that debate here; there are plenty of articles for and against. What I’m only going to advocate is that purely digital is to be avoided, not just for the sustainability reasons I outlined above, but also on metaphysical grounds.

When I refer to metaphysics of design education, I’m speaking about the intangible ways in which we perceive the existence and quality of objects, spaces, and materials. In design education, we teach about the materiality of things, the physical presence and mass of things, the fullness or emptiness of things. For architects, this is supremely important because even though the output of our labour is a set of abstract drawn instructions for someone else to build, the final outcome is still a physical building that is affected by gravity, light, shadow, and other forces. These forces are weak or absent in all but the most advanced digital modelling tools. 

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I want to emphasize that despite my age and experience, I don’t consider myself a dinosaur or old-fashioned (even though some may consider me so). I welcome new technologies in architectural representation. I graduated from an architecture school that was at the forefront of these technologies, and I’ve used digital tools throughout my career. They have a much-needed value and importance in the work we do. But they’re not the entire picture. I consider myself a hybrid practitioner (as do many architects) and I tell my students that they need to master both manual and digital tools so that they can know when to use each in their own time and place.

One of the arguments in favour of all-digital representation I often see is when people point out that the vast majority of architecture offices no longer have drafting tables or modeling workshops. And it’s true that in most firms, the output is primarily and overwhelmingly digital. There are many architects of course that sketch and draw by hand, or make study models by hand, but the output that is paid for by the client in terms of deliverables is 99.99% digital.

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My counter to this point is that even if professional architects are using primarily digital tools, most of them have used manual tools at some point in their education, and that’s precisely where it’s needed – during training – to develop the metaphysical understanding of architecture. Even if an architect abandons the hand drawings over time, their digital skills will still carry over that manual sensitivity. A good digital drawing will have the same life, weight, and character of a manual drawing. A good digital model will be created with the understanding of the weight and assembly of components, and the proper texture of materials. A student who has felt, weighed, handled, smelled, and heard the difference between a slab of granite and a slab of wood will know how to apply each judiciously in a digital model, rather than haphazardly. A student who knows how the components of a wall are assembled, and how the elements of the wall are represented by hand on paper through line weight, pattern, and shading will know how the wall would actually be built on site.

I’ve seen the work of students who rely too heavily on digital tools in their presentations. Materials are applied randomly or thoughtlessly. Components are assembled in no real sequence. Cantilevers are projected impossibly. Columns are too slender and unbraced. Furniture is out of scale and proportion. These are all failings that occur when the jump to digital tools is made too early. An experienced architect can draw wonderful digital drawings and make beautiful digital renders, but they will only become beautiful buildings if they’ve understood the physical – and metaphysical – nature of what they’re designing.

In the end, I do agree that architecture schools need to ‘walk the walk’ in terms of sustainability, so I’m glad that the LinkedIn user provoked a conversation about this issue. But I feel it has to go far beyond whether we’re printing and throwing away too many paper sheets. There are some compromises we can make to reduce wastefulness while still retaining the tangible and sensorial aspects of what we do. We should definitely embrace the advantages that digital tools give us, and we can also sometimes wax nostalgic about the way things used to be done. But we should do so without romantic attachments. As long as we’re still in the business of making physical buildings, there will be a need to be in touch with our physical understanding of architecture in its wholeness.