Pub. 4 2016 Directory

10 THE MONTANA ARCHITECT | 2016 | www.aia-mt.org C an Architecture be identified as a specific cultural condi- tion—like music? Or, does it reside within the precinct of a necessary, public responsibility—like banking? Of course, it is both. We define the public realm; we celebrate modest moments of space and composition; and we gear our designs to the movement of the sun and the situational notion of ‘place’ that anchors our collective memory. Architecture education intends the locus of this variety of satisfactions and it sets expectations of practical, professional acumen as well as aesthetic aspiration. In a unique manner, it focuses more on questions than answers. Archi- tectural education, like Professional practice, is hard to explain to those outside of the sphere of activity that we all work within, yet I see our responsibilities as similar to those of doctors and lawyers— the public responsibilities of health and justice. We are responsible for the environment—its care, its structure and its beauty. I tell my first year students, “the good news is that people go to doctors and lawyers when they have a problem; they go to architects when they have a dream.” As our new Dean, Dr. Royce Smith likes to say, “we teach our students to dream out loud!” The School of Architecture at Montana State University is the highest ranked department at the university. With modest resources the school boasts an excellent shop, a robust study abroad contingent, nationally respected engagement initiatives and strong design and de- sign communication credentials; its curriculum features an unusual combination of professional expertise and design training, within the context of a College of Art and Architecture that includes Schools of Music, Art and Film and Photography. The School of Architecture at MSU is an excellent opportunity, attracting students from all over the country and Canada; I am proud to be its new Director. In service to Montana, the nation and the world, we have a lot of work to do. We should build on the successes of the Community Design Center, with its extensive legacy of community engagement, and extend outreach to also include a ‘practicum-directed’ studio that responds to complex urban conditions in Missoula or Billings. This studio, built on the structure of seven months of professional employ- ment, will afford students an opportunity to gain professional skills as they work on a major urban project at a scale that can’t be duplicated in Bozeman. As technologies become more sophisticated, it is evermore import- ant to build bridges from the academy to the profession. Working directly with professional architects, in an individual ‘residency’ arrangement that has a mentor assigned within the firm, or working in an ‘atelier’ that hires a firm to provide graduate studio instruction, exploring ‘experience-rich’ architecture—high rise construction, performance space design, or large urban sports facilities—gives students an opportunity to learn about design as they work along side designers who are involved with designing buildings that demand continual experience within a specific sector of the profession. These special studios also provide opportunities for faculty to engage the profession. It is my desire that students are required to have a mini- mum of three months of professional experience in order to graduate with an March—our first professional degree. The profession of architecture continues to have serious gender and ethnic diversity shortcomings, even after considerable resources have been directed to the solution of this issue. While in Texas, I was able to triple the diversity of the college by establishing a robust organi- zation of institutions, Building Partnerships in Architecture Educa- How Do We Define Architecture? D. ANDREW VERNOOY, AIA DIRECTOR, SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY