To preserve the future of architecture, the current model of architectural education must be allowed to end, argues Harriet Harriss in our Performance Review series.

It is often said that architecture school fails to prepare students for the realities of the profession, but the deeper issue may be that it prepares them all too well: students learn to accept overwork, self-sacrifice, and the slow harm of a profession built on extraction.

We have confused hardship with rigor and endurance with achievement. Our institutions teach students how to survive dysfunction rather than how to change it. Instead of fostering collaboration, care, and reciprocity, schools reinforce outdated production models with surprising efficiency.

Now, as the world faces unprecedented challenges, the purpose of architectural education has never been more critical. If the discipline is to endure, its teaching methods must undergo a transformation—not collapse, but composting—so that something healthier and more responsive can emerge.

Here are five steps every architecture school can take:

1) Establish care, rest, and reciprocity as studio standards

Many educators, themselves exhausted, still glorify the all-night work session as a badge of commitment. These patterns persist because they mirror the wider profession: long hours, unpaid work, ethical compromises. We label it “professionalism,” though it is more akin to dysfunction.

When we create a culture where self-harm is equated with excellence, how can we expect future architects to protect one another, their communities, or the environment? A teaching model that normalizes self-exploitation inevitably extends this harm into workplaces and the built world. Until architecture learns to care for its own, it cannot truly care for anything else.

But architecture education can be different. Imagine if care, rest, and reciprocity were the norms in studio culture, not exceptions. Teaching in this way does not lower expectations; it raises them, requiring greater ethical awareness, mutual support, and ecological responsibility.

2) Teach the architecture of impermanence

A truthful architectural education must address the entire lifecycle of buildings—including their eventual end. Every structure will deteriorate, need to be dismantled, or have its materials repurposed. To design as if buildings are permanent is not only unrealistic; it is environmentally irresponsible.

Ignoring decay is a failure of integrity in design.

Teaching students about impermanence means equipping them to plan for responsible deconstruction, reuse, and material continuity. It means helping them see impermanence as an inherent design consideration, not a flaw.

When students consider how things end, they also discern what should last: resilient systems, practices, and cultural values. They learn that architects must not only construct, but also thoughtfully deconstruct—imaginatively, ethically, and with care. Studios become spaces where outdated assumptions can be put to rest, making room for regenerative approaches to take root.

3) Prioritize pedagogy over bureaucracy

The expansion of university bureaucracy is no accident. Growing accreditation demands, risk management, and revenue protection have bloated administrative structures to the point where teaching now serves metrics rather than students. The facts are clear: senior administrative salaries have outpaced inflation and faculty pay, even as classroom resources diminish.

Higher education is increasingly run like a business—highly effective at self-preservation, yet ill-equipped to prepare students for urgent challenges such as housing shortages, climate crises, and spatial inequity. For the field of architecture, this is a fundamental obstacle.

If bureaucracy is justified by compliance, then compliance itself must be reimagined. Accreditation should prioritize what truly matters: climate awareness, fair labor, ecological repair, and decolonial collaboration. Schools should be evaluated not for copying professional norms, but for innovating and improving them.

This is not a plea to eliminate administration, but to realign it. Direct resources to studios, workshops, and community projects. Measure impact by contributions to the planet, not just productivity. Reject systems that mistake paperwork for real purpose.

4) Rethink the design jury tradition

Some customs should be respectfully retired—chief among them, the design jury. Often described as a rite of passage, the jury functions more as public judgment than constructive critique—a display of hierarchy that undermines confidence, perpetuates bias, and confuses intimidation with rigor.

The endurance of this tradition is more about habit than genuine value. It is time to compost the jury system, grueling workloads, and the myth of the lone genius, making way for new approaches. Instead, foster slower-paced studios, collaborative feedback, community involvement in assessment, and critiques grounded in care rather than performance.

This is not about making architecture easier. It is about making it more incisive—removing harmful rituals so students can think critically, work sustainably, and design with true planetary accountability. To stay relevant, architecture schools must let outdated teaching practices end with dignity.

5) Foster collective practice over professional performance

For architecture schools to remain meaningful in a time of climate crisis and social division, they must emphasize collective practice rather than professional posturing.

The profession should move away from hierarchy and toward interconnected, collaborative networks. Students need to learn how to work with a diverse range of partners—activists, ecologists, policymakers, and grassroots organizers—throughout their education, not just afterward.

The era of the solitary architect as creative genius is over. In a