It has been ten years since the 5-year program in architecture and the architectural education accreditation were introduced. Now it is time to face the reality that the ideals we had dreamed of didn’t come true through the architectural academic ecosystem comprised of school education and construction industry field. and seek for practical alternatives in response to the changes in society.
The Framework Act on Building, which regulates the value of buildings based on the publicity, has been enacted, and the bills which will affect the architectural design education directly or indirectly including Architectural Service Promotion Act and Urban Regeneration Act are in the process of legislation. Also, the certifications related to the performance of the building such as energy efficiency, green building, and barrier-free space have been reinforced, which made the determinant factors for architectural design more complicated and diversified.
The market for construction and architectural design services, however, has fallen in bad shape. It is imperative to re-examine the vision of architectural education and rearrange the framework of architecture design education responding to the changes in the real world which have a direct impact on architecture design education since the introduction of architectural accreditation. Resident participation in design, village community, urban regeneration, cultural city, creative city, sharing economy, social values, social enterprise, cooperative society, community land trust and so forth; all these have a close relationship with our everyday living space, but what is the reality of architecture education responding to these changes?
Architecture design education has forced 30,000 people who majored in architecture to adopt the standardized architectural design based on the accreditation criteria of ten years ago. In order to complement for this rigidity in the architecture design education, it is required to introduce reinforcement of the social communication education as a coordinator, ensuring flexibility of curricula within 5-year program, redesign of three-dimensional education system, reinforcement of cooperative courses in blocks responding to social changes, and so on. It is necessary to escape from accreditation-led education and establish a more flexible system which fosters creativity and interdisciplinary cooperation and communication centered around students. What remains to the last should not be an institution. If human being is deprived of, then how will the competitiveness of architecture be ensured?