My deep gratitude to Dika Terra Lim, who helped to proofread my writing and provided her valuable time to read this essay.

Problems in setting competencies

2Consequently, in which way should we respond to these complexities? One broadly acknowledged method is by setting competencies that would serve both academic and practice worlds sufficiently. Utilizing ‘competencies’ as a bridge to connect the two fields is comprehensible: competency is a term rooted in the Latin etymology competentia means ‘meeting together, in agreement and symmetry’. This delivers a noble message about harmony and order – it is probably the latter that has been translated into the English word ‘competence’. Later, the present participle of the Latin verb competere has been used to describe ‘sufficiency of qualification’ since the 18th century.

3At present, the term ‘qualification’, becomes a problematic term. The word implies an authoritarian agency whose power is to justify the accomplishment of competencies. Hence, the question would be, who or what has this agency? Setting a qualification implies the impossible notion of enforcement of a standardized measurement and standardized competencies in the divergent world of today. Consequently, we would at least encounter a two-fold problem: on the one hand is the discrepancy in the definition of competence between the practices and the educators due to the different expectations and goals of these parties respectively. The second is that competencies should come from a context where they are needed; otherwise, it would be pointless to clarify this matter.

4It is inevitable to place the context of architectural education outside the capitalistic situation of architectural practices. Especially, suppose we depart from the premise that architectural education supposedly prepares and supports anyone to be a professional architect. In that case, the intersection between these two ‘worlds’ is the mechanism of how architecture operates. The practice is bound by cost, time, and quality/performance. Thus, the practice operates through the optimization of this triad. Consequently, in the design studio, which is the core of architectural education, the triad is unlikely imposed. Students are given a brief and a time frame to complete a design project. Within education, the cost is often presumed omitted or has no limit. Apparently, this omission makes a drastic detour in terms of the output of education. The graduates are ingrained in a design process that revolves around an individualistic, idea-centric, and speculative atmosphere instead of gravitating toward teamwork, functionality, and practical value. On the opposite side, tailoring the education only to prepare them to be practicing architects would change the nature of education back into a vocational school. Hence, the primary question which encapsulates the problem is: is there any way to incorporate how architectural practices operate into a college-level education? Or is architectural education truly just vocational training?

Revisiting the nature of architecture education

6In Designerly Ways of Knowing, Nigel Cross (2006) shares Rittel’s concern. Cross argues that designers, scientists, and scholars operate in completely different manners.

The designer is constrained to produce a practicable result within a specific time limit, whereas the scientist and scholar are both able, and often required, to suspend their judgments and decisions until more is known – ‘further research is needed’ is always a justifiable conclusion for them. (Rittel, 1972: 392)

7Rittel proposed to formulate design tactical skill by applying a sequence of thinking iteration called ‘epistemic freedom’ (Rittel, 1987: 5). The thinking iteration aims at evaluating the designer’s making for any subject. Utilizing this method would liberate designers to develop agility in assessing any problems and to convince themselves that their decision is the best possible outcome (see Fig. 1).

Case study 1: Tactility and observation

9The participants operated in groups of three. Each group was assigned to explore one of four types of common landscapes in Bali: forest, beach, paddy-field, and river. The students had to record their observations through sketches. In this exercise, sketching is instrumentalized as an observational tool – to clarify what they see and transcribe their observations into diagrams (see Fig. 2).

10Betty Edwards, in her seminal book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain utilized this exercise and showed that drawing skill is developed along with an observational attitude involving:

• The perception of edges
• The perception of spaces
• The perception of relationships
• The perception of lights and shadows.
• the perception of the whole, or gestalt.

11The key to learning to draw, therefore, is to set up conditions that cause you to make a mental shift to a different mode of information processing – the slightly altered state of consciousness – that enables you to see well (See Fig. 3 and 4) (Edwards, 2013: 5).

Case study 2: Notation and teamwork

12Drawings and model-making are utilized to simulate the closest possible real-world problems of architecture. The interplay of scales in drawings and models intends to assist students in comprehending problems in architectural practices. Nevertheless, without gaining experience in constructing a building, it would be impossible to truly understand practical issues.

13Therefore, I argue that introducing scale and a reflection on how a designer “plays” with scale in the design process is vital in architecture education. By exposing the agency of scale in the design process, students will directly tap into at least two complexities of real-world architectural problems: coordination of information and management of resources.

Further discussion

14The purpose of the two cases is to ingrain a critical attitude in the participants’ everyday activities. The exercises aim to stage activities and habits instead of emphasizing the output. In this way, the whole process is experienced not as a mere production process. The process is tailored by placing key activities such as, in case study 1 (not in hierarchical order):

• inter-scales closed observations on surrounding objects (everyday objects);
• making visual diaries;
• locating patterns in everyday objects, and;
• framing patterns in visual composition.

15In the case study 2 (not in hierarchical order):

• understanding the dialogue between object dimensions and information scale of complexity;
• knowing the role of visual cues (notations) for collaborations, and;
• experiencing the needs for collaboration and teamwork in manifesting ideas.

16These activities would yield a versatile habit for any design-related situation and condition. Accordingly, shifting the objective from output-oriented to the design-thinking-cum-attitude-oriented activities provides us a leeway to define competencies that will serve both domains of education and practice. Standardization and qualification would always be temporary in nature; therefore, setting competencies for the sake of standardization/qualification compliance would not be sustainable.