8J. Academia

In this episode we address the affordances and constraints of architectural academia. This generation highlights the important freedom academia provides to work through ideas that are not directly applicable to architecture as a service industry, but they also acknowledge the ways that labor structures like the tenure track process, or fellowships, push designers towards exhibitions, installations, competitions, and speculative work instead of a building practice. The group also comments on how the broader context of higher education in America, it’s neoliberalization and ballooning tuition costs, impacts architectural academia as a space of learning and a space of architectural production.