Education for the creative act

Architects are, with few exceptions, ‘school trained’. This paper traces the history of the relationship between architectural education and practice. It describes the approaches developed at Cambridge and the Bartlett in the 1960s - and the theories that each embodied: one based on architecture as a cultural manifestation and the other governing the science of building. The paper concludes with the view that we need to be more realistic in our attitude to artistic aspiration as a component of studying architecture while strengthening the ways by which building performance can be tested.