I thought the writing was ok but ... do architecture students really believe they're about to transform the world through architecture? If so - why?

It's capital-A Art that gets to dominate the skyline. Some architects get to transform the world; but only about half a dozen. Everyone else gets to do boxy oil company HQs and strip malls. The author is .. not happy about this.

Does anyone into anything out of passion not believe so?

I believed so as I enrolled into mathematics, physics and computer science studies, only to be very much disappointed with academia (more than I expected: I did not expect much, but what I've met was sadder than I could envision).

Yeah, maybe when you're 16~18, then you grow up and understand just how hard it is to make a difference even in your own social circle, let alone the world. I guess people should stop pretending all the great man and woman we hear about today did their thing alone. They all needed someone else, even if just to make their ideas popular or to give them financial means.

I've never claimed I envisioned doing it solo. That's where most of the disappointment actually came from: teaching assistants and professors were so uninterested in the subjects they were giving, they'd hardly motivate anyone, let alone give them a chance to participate in anything world-changing. Even to the point that out-of-the-box creativity was punished. That drove the student body to turn into an exam-passing automata.

Universities are a perfect place for that, and I hoped for such a stimulating environment. I did end up meeting a teacher or two in later years that met my expectations, but they never stuck around long enough.

And no, the fame is not the driver, imho: I believe all humans would gladly contribute to a challenging problem solution, without requiring ego satisfaction (that can come later :)).

One of my favorite lessons in making a difference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW8amMCVAJQ

Of course they do. Do you think everyone who plays sport believes that their sport can somehow transform the world? Do you seriously think every bassoon player and salsa dancer believes they're going to change history?

Europe has a lot beautiful architecture that add to the culture of a city. America just doesn't have that.

Ok and the newer buildings that actually pay a good architect are impressive that add to the beauty of a city as well.

If you live in a city in the US that is just strip malls it's depressing

I love European architecture, and I generally detest US urban design, but this is a really unfair generalization.

I used to live in Berkeley. More recently, I lived in South Park, San Diego. Both places have beautiful homes. I would _love_ to be able to build an American Craftsman style home where I live now (Ireland) but it would most likely be deemed "out of character" with the surroundings and refused planning.

http://s3-media3.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/8VGRjHKhUkzpKVPCdeX9X...

Grand Central station in Los Angeles holds its own too http://kmetros.net/wp-content/uploads/galleries/post-95/full...

(Edit - the above was supposed to refer to Union Station in LA, not GCS in NYC.)

Even among modern architecture, there's something to be said for the aspiration, even if not the reality. There's a beauty in the colorful, low-slung storefronts in Ocean Beach, near San Diego. https://goo.gl/maps/tSaHPChSjLo Of course, I could do without the cars and parking lots. Maybe I'm biased by my history but dingy burger joints and head shops near the beach evoke a sense of relaxation I don't get much of in European cities.

Old brick buildings can be really depressing when they're not kept up. And Europe has plenty of unattractive housing projects (https://goo.gl/maps/KLRXsCrck8s )

Here's a ghastly shopping centre near my home in Dublin http://cf.broadsheet.ie/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Phibsboro...

Maybe Europe's advantage was having more time to accumulate buildings, so over time the ugly ones got torn down. Of course, why don't we have more Native American architecture? A nomadic lifestyle combined with materials that generally degrade over centuries? (Notwithstanding that, of course, there may be Native American architects doing interesting work today. I don't know)

But really it's because fewer European cities have been destroyed by car-centric design. Those which have are about as ugly as US suburbia, but I struggle to think of too many examples. Outer neighborhoods of Dublin and Stuttgart come to mind.

>Old brick buildings can be really depressing when they're not kept up.

Brick dominates the UK, but the architecture in the continent in general is much more varied and interesting (see Paris, Rome, Prague, Cracow as examples).

True - and my favourite places in the world are medieval towns on the continent (Obernai, Colmar, Rothenburg ob Der Tauber, Riquewihr, etc. all hold enormous appeal for me). I was just trying to point out that the US isn't _all_ hideous and Europe isn't _all_ charming architecture.

> fewer European cities have been destroyed by car-centric design

Galway is pretty terrible, if you're talking about Ireland, and some of the former industrial heartland of England is pretty bad too (Coventry in particular)

Yup - #GalwayCityOfCars comes up a lot in Twitter for me, and they've fought any improvement for cycling until after getting an enormous motorway built, because clearly a 1 meter wide bike lane is the cause of their congestion issues.

Small note: Grand Central Station is in New York, not LA

Sorry, I meant Union Station, not Grand Central. Too much copy-pasting.

*terminal

Fair, that is the correct name, but you'll hear it called Station, Terminal, or the shortened "Grand Central".

The subway part of it is a station, but for all other trains it’s the last stop.

To a certain degree, it's not unfounded. The spaces we exist in can have a profound impact on how we operate, what we think about, how much energy we have, etc. This is intuitive to anyone: At the extremes, compare coding in a garbage heap, in the office, and at home (even without the associated distractions [eg kids, meetings, the uh.. garbage compactor], the difference you "feel" is immediate)

So then, as you would in any area, you take that intuition, and you become an expert in it, and you realize that with a sufficient number of small improvements you can enact very large ones in total. Theoretically, it should be possible to build an environment thats somehow absolutely perfect from programming in, and creating let's say a 40% boost in productivity with no significant downsides. Replicate the model repeatedly, and 40% programming productivity boost won't simply improve the programmers; the benefits will cascade, likely leading to improvements across the board.

Alternatively, you have the impact of symbols, in things like a grand church.. A city will with a religious superstructure has a distinctly different feel than a city with minor churches here and there. The culture of the populace is very obviously affected, though perhaps why might not be. It might simply be the fear of god being ever-present, or perhaps the general knowledge that most in the area will naturally be tied to that particular religion, or maybe even the simple fact that its a damned impressive feat of human engineering

Architecture clearly has a significant impact on us, so its not that hard to believe that, were you successful and skilled enough, you could make a very significant impact; However, I'm not of the belief that most architecture is (at least by intention), and I don't think we have much hope for it in the near-future. But the potential is always there.

PS: Also note that I'm a strong believer in Christopher Alexander's perspective on living architecture (don't buy that much into pattern theory specifically, though obviously it works well for CS), and ofc Ram's Form follows Function, and those two ideas are what inform most of my opinion on how architecture should be treated

Two friends of mine were architecture students. One is on a fairly successful career trajectory (working at a very good firm in NYC). The other is struggling and not presently working in the industry.

This is just trading anecdata for anecdata, but neither of them were ever possessed of the notion they'd "transform" anything. The more successful of the two always seemed very passionate about the subject, but otherwise he generally came across as pessimistic about what he'd achieve.

Not unique to architecture; in the past ~3 decades, every higher education department has had to justify their existence with grandiloquent overselling of their major's external impact. It's one of the reasons why we're in our current student loan crisis. Milliennials bought all of the "Go to college!" propaganda hook, line, and sinker. We didn't know any better.

In an early counseling session, I told my adviser that I was in the engineering program as a step to a Masters in Architecture. He nodded and said something along the lines of, "From time to time we get students here with that plan. By the time they graduate they realize that they can make more money with their B.S. than they would if they spend the time and money to go on to architecture school."

After graduation, I often interacted with architecture firms on various projects and quickly lost interest in architecture-the-job.