Architect also hammers nails
Johannes Link wrote What’s an architect anyway?
in response to Customer Oriented Architecture.
We seem to find ourselves in a similar spot:
“Now – for our customer’s sake – I’m sometimes called an architect myself”
Johannes agrees that the role of a “software architect” strongly depends on the context.
“That said, I still have difficulties to imagine a software architect of value who cannot write code (any more). In the end, even Frank Lloyd Wright was able to hammer in a nail straight and sound and in the exact right spot. At least, I wish he was that sort of guy.”
Frank Lloyd Wright seems to have been that sort of guy, and so was Vitruvius, almost 2000 years ago. You’ve got to know at least your (rock)hammer, nails and liberal arts.
When I encounter an “architect” who can’t program, a yellow light goes blinking… In most cases it turns to red. I keep my mind open, I might just encounter one deserving a green light…
I visited the campus of the Frank Lloyd Wright school of architecture at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona. First year architecture students spend the first year living in a tent, which they can re-build to a building of their own design. Education consists of (among others) theory, building, and creative art forms. Taliesin West as a whole was hand-built by the (student) architects themselves.
Reading the schools’ program, they do not do sheep-dipping either, seems a lot like my preferred style of learning and ‘teaching’:
The Taliesin education provides the foundations for creative, cooperative, independent persons in architecture through active experiential learning. The School has pioneered experiential learning in architecture since 1932 and remains dedicated to the principle of “Learning by Doing” which is interdisciplinary in nature.
