Masonry Magazine April 2004 Page. 37
Partnering with Practitioners
ONE OF THE MOST EFFICIENT ways to accomplish this ideal is for schools to partner with experts in the respective materials. Schools that take that approach quickly learn the value of such partnerships.
The International Masonry Institute (IMI) works with countless recognized universities, professors and instructors of architecture. In its role of "adjunct" masonry instructor, IMI programs enhance existing masonry curriculum with additional lectures, competitions and hands-on learning.
IMI, which is a joint labor/management cooperative trust of the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers (BAC) and signatory contractors, invest millions annually in quality craft training programs in all of the masonry trades. It reaches out to future designers, as well as practitioners, to impart a clear understanding of the benefits of skilled craftsmanship. It is a critical lesson, when the difference between skilled and unskilled workers can literally make or break the best-designed project. Much like the study of architecture, the study of materials is based on a fundamental understanding of properties and characteristics.
Working with schools has taught IMI something, too. Architecture students get enough general material understanding to spark an interest in academic masonry solutions, but not enough to develop a level of comfort with the material that can follow them into a professional setting.
This means that masonry education is often stronger at the professional level, particularly at firms that seek out best practice solutions in masonry. This is great- at least for those firms -but where does that leave practitioners in firms without standard masonry details, best practices or protocols? What about the young designers who have chosen to practice architecture in an individual practice with the hopes of establishing their own approach and brand of design? In these cases, what the architect doesn't learn in school can mean a missing skill set.
A good architecture education is also supposed to develop problem-solving skills that become the basis for creating architectural solutions. The architect is taught to break down the world into components with relationships and associations that can be collected in a delicate arrangement of space, form and function. These spatial relationships are then crafted using an array of materials, each requiring as much understanding as the architectural principals behind the design solution. Because the architect is often expected to have a multi-faceted and diverse working knowledge of materials and systems, true material learning is achieved through the course of work experiences, industry contacts and continuous learning.
The School of Experience
WHAT WE DIDN'T LEARN in school was the value of the entire construction team, the value of pre-project planning and the value of direct craftworker and contractor involvement. All too often, students are (explicitly or implicitly) taught to separate the construction industry from the design industry, building on an inclination "to view architecture as a solitary endeavor," says University of Minnesota Associate Professor of Architecture J. Stephen Weeks.
The barriers created between those who design and those who build leads to a further impediment, when the inability to build what is designed is blamed on the opposite party. A better approach is to flip that supposition on its head, and instead teach architecture students that builders can build what they design, as long as designers understand how those components come together.
One of the designer's greatest skills is the ability to see with his or her hands. Proof of this is the use of modeling to study and solve architectural problems. For the same reason, hands-on masonry learning has proven to be invaluable in understanding the feel of material and modeling real life building solutions.
Making the Connections
IMI PROVIDES UNIVERSITIES and professional firms hands-on programs that focus on the issues a designer should continue to remember, practice and learn. Issues like modular building, material understanding, detailing and craft techniques that represent good masonry solutions. Parallel to its craftworker training approach, IMI teaches the craft of masonry to designers through hands-on teaching that allows a better level of comfort and appreciation of the material's potentials.
At Minnesota, Professor Weeks has students in his introductory classes build small wood frame structures, as well as masonry components. He finds masonry the most challenging.
"Many students have difficulty making the connection between what they are expected to detail on paper and what it looks like in the field, unless they actually do the same work themselves," says Weeks. "Hands-on masonry, wielding a trow-