Architecture Education in the Mid-Roaring 2020s

Blake Stephens
AIA, NCIDQ, LEED AP
Professor and Architecture Department Chair, Saddleback College

My students at the community college have come to me after a few years of isolation during the pandemic. They are bright and intuitive, as well as under-socialized and isolated in their virtual social networks. Many or most seem to have a gap in their social development that gives them a shyness and reluctance to interact in person, and in groups. Teaching them at a college level quickly exposes a gap in English and math skills, but they have amazing technological skills from their iPhones, to gaming, to AutoCAD, to websites, to the internet, to programming and now to AI.

They can do design and research work dynamically, but often lack the common sense to intuitively synthesize their knowledge into a useful and humanly sympathetic design, while delighting the observer with colorful 3-D renderings.

Vitruvius said that architecture must be “useful, enduring and delightful.” My generation of architects missed the delightful in many instances. The current generation grabbed delightful, but often sidestep useful and enduring.

One student and I were talking about virtual reality today. I asked if virtual reality goggles would surplant physical reality and give everyone a beautiful mansion on their headsets while they lived in a shipping container. The student told me that gaming was exactly that.

We often have classroom discussions about the cost of construction and real estate, the unaffordability of housing, the gap between income and buying a home. My students feel the goalposts keep moving away from them as they navigate college, educational loans, the cost of even rental housing, and the American Dream of owning a home. I tell them that they may be the architects that solve homelessness, reinvent the American home, and perhaps bring a golden age of design back to our middle class, like Joseph Eichler did with his mid-century modern hosing tracts using the Case Study architects.

The energy and optimism of students is what keeps me teaching into my retirement years. I love the synergy of seeking youth and seasoned experience that defines our interactions. I am supremely optimistic about their futures!

Blake Stephens AIA is an award-winning architect with a specialty in residential practice. He has designed more than 220 custom homes in California in Bel Air, Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Palos Verdes Estates, Redondo, Hermosa, Huntington, Laguna, Long, Manhattan and Newport Beaches, Laguna Niguel, Mission Viejo, Aliso Viejo, and San Clemente as well as homes in the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Bellevue and Washington State, New York, Pennsylvania and in Europe. Other projects include retail stores on Rodeo Drive and in multiple shopping malls, condominiums in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Redondo Beach, West Hollywood, Long Beach, Huntington Beach, and Seattle. He has also designed schools and churches in Los Angeles. He was part of the project team for the Museum of Contemporary Art, MOCA, on Bunker Hill in Los Angeles as well as California Plaza, One Rodeo, The Beverly Wilshire Hotel Renovation, and the expansion of the Pacific Design Center. His architectural career spans 41 years.