The RAIC Foundation has a particular concern for the students who attend the Schools of Architecture across the country, as they are the ones whose best work, we acknowledge with most of our awards, bursaries and scholarships. In the midst of the pandemic, our concern deepens to include their personal wellbeing.
With post-secondary institutions now delivering most if not all of their courses online, the social contact and opportunities for creative collaboration between students are greatly diminished. Whatever the virtues of Zoom as a medium to enable students to work remotely; or of Miro to enable them to pin work on a virtual white board for their professors and peers to review, these platforms cannot begin to replace the value that personal interaction provides.
Among the students I have spoken to, who attend three different post-secondary institutions across the country, all have reported that they were spending between 60 and 70 hours per week in front of their screens. The problem with having a single electronic locus for all activities – lectures, labs, design studios, crits, tutorials, precedent research and pretty much anything else, is exactly that. There are few if any variations of sensory input and no change in physical environment. This is without question imposing both mental and physical stress on every one of them.
While this affects all students, whatever their discipline, it perhaps impacts architectural students more than most. Architecture after all is both a place-based and a multisensory experience, with one’s appreciation embracing sight, sound, touch and smell, not to mention the emotional and intellectual responses we have to scale, proportion, materiality and light. However high the screen resolution, however realistic the 3-D renderings and however clever the fly through virtual models, something is sadly lacking when it all comes through a single illuminated screen.
I challenge anyone who claims that what we are experiencing during COVID is a vision of the future. Some would argue that online learning is efficient and economically attractive, because it can reach more students over greater distances, reducing staff and facility costs. This narrow actuarial approach, discounting externalities such as social engagement, physical and mental health will no doubt be extremely enticing to some academic institutions and the governments they work for, but it should be resisted at all costs.
What may appear benign and even appealing from the outside, can be very different when you are immersed, never mind drowning in it. Our hearts go out to the architectural students whose current experience is a pale shadow of that which most of us remember from architecture school. Spare a thought for those you meet and offer them support when you can.
These are not easy times.
Jim Taggart FRAIC
Executive Director
RAIC Foundation
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