Three Centuries of Educating an Architect

From apprentice to pupil, Beaux-Arts to Bauhaus, B. Arch. to M. Arch.—the education of the architect has undergone a tremendous transformation over the centuries. In Joan Ockman’s Architecture School, which is more of a historical narrative than a prescriptivist guide to the future of architecture education, readers can come to understand how learning styles went from a craft to a profession that often requires a graduate degree over the past three centuries in North America. A few fun facts from the book: Young architects in the 18th and 19th centuries learned geometry and mathematics in drawing schools offered at night. MIT was the first university in 1865 to combine the German and French models of teaching into an official program. And the first large influx of women into the field happened around World War II. • $31.50; MIT Press, 2012