© Megan Fowler

在建筑学院需要学习的13个重要的非建筑技能
The 13 Most Important Non-Architecture Skills You Learn in Architecture School

由专筑网李韧，杨帆编译

我们都知道建筑学是一个漫长的旅程。无论你获得5年的专业学位，还是选择继续读研（或两者兼有），这都是一个辛苦的过程。然而，大多数人都认同这些年的收获非常大（更不用提你在工作室收获的友谊）。建筑教育不仅仅是学习设计伟大的空间，同时你必须要意识到，建筑学也是老师的教育生命。以下所有的技能都可以在你的学习期间偶然获得，但这也是学术界以外的一项资本。


1、快速犯错

本着做事迅速的精神，我们不妨先将这列为第一点。你可能听过这样的忠告：不要因为错误决定而浪费很多时间。然而这底线是，无论是在设计还是生活方面，你都会犯错误。然而，你在建筑学院学到的最重要的事情是尝试新鲜事物，因此必须尽快地认识到错误或不可行的想法，从而摆脱它们，然后获取一个可行的方案。这便是 “扼杀在摇篮里”，可以用复杂的设计思想解决生活的其他棘手问题。如果你掌握了快速制造和改正错误的技巧，你可以有效地屏蔽所有的问题，同时你也不必担心会花太多的时间在没有结果的事情上。


2、设计思考/解决问题

说到解决问题，常常用到的办法就是老师口中的“设计思维”。教育、知识以及设计思维可以应用到人们需要解决的任何领域的问题。建筑师从一开始就被教导从各个角度（通常是字面上）看问题、收集信息、研究先例，然后在设计解决方案时做出深思熟虑的选择，并分析最后达成的效果。这个过程和技巧可以应用到任何类型的问题上，这样能使你更有效率地解决它。

Architecture school is a long haul and we all know it. Whether you get a 5-year professional degree or choose to take on a few years of graduate school (or both), it’s a grueling process. However, most would hopefully agree, it’s worth it for the knowledge you gain throughout those years (not to mention the friendships you form in the close quarters of the studio). Architectural education is about more than learning to design great spaces and whether or not you realize it at the time, architecture school is also a great teacher of other life lessons. All the skills below are those you’ll likely attain incidentally during your tenure in architecture school, but which will be an asset outside of academia as well.

1. Making Mistakes Quickly
In the spirit of doing things quickly, we might as well cover this one first. You may have heard the advice to not hang on to a bad decision just because you spent a lot of time making it. The bottom line is, you will make mistakes, both in design and in life. However, the important thing you learn in architecture school is to try things out, realize mistakes or unproductive ideas as quickly as possible, get rid of them, and then move on to a viable solution. It’s a version of “killing your darlings” that can be utilized in schematic design ideas as well as other tricky life decisions. If you master the art of making and realizing your mistakes quickly, you can cover all your options efficiently and you shouldn’t have to worry about spending too much time on something that’s fruitless.

2. Design Thinking/Problem Solving
Speaking of solving problems, one of the overarching threads through a design education is what instructors refer to as “design thinking” and what you can think of as a fancy term for problem-solving. An education in, and knowledge of, design thinking can be applied to any field where people need to solve problems. Architects are taught from the beginning to look at a problem from all angles (often literally), to gather information, study precedents, and then to make thoughtful choices when determining a solution and to analyze the effects of the moves they make. This process and these skills can be applied to any type of problem to make you more efficient and effective at solving it.

© Megan Fowler

3、学习，阅读，研究

另一个广泛适用的技能是探知如何学习。没有人天生对艺术装饰马赛克的设计主题了如指掌，但如果你必须做一个关于它们的建筑历史课件，你也会从中学到一些相关知识。当你的教授安排了一系列的阅读，并希望你一夜之间完成，如果你知道该如何有效地学习，你就不会浪费一整个夜晚。高效地积累新的知识永远有益，所以在理想的情况下，希望你可以在走出学校之后，仍然坚持一些好的学习习惯。


4、时间管理（希望）

事实充分证明：许多成年人，尤其是建筑师，在时间管理方面十分糟糕。然而，如果你在学校的时候能获得一些扎实的管理技能，你在未来的职业生涯中一定会感谢当时的自己。当然，良好的时间管理对学习来说非常方便，当你在学校时，要避免尽可能过多的熬夜，这样的习惯在未来也十分有益。由于在建筑学院经常受到强烈的时间压力，这对于建筑学学生来说是很好地学习如何分配任务的优先次序、以及如何明智地管理他们的时间的机会。基本上来说，如果你有良好的时间管理能力，同时你又是一个建筑学的学生，那么生活无论什么时候出现危机，你都一定能很好地解决。

3. Learning, Reading, Researching
Another widely applicable skill set is simply learning how to learn. No one is born with an innate knowledge of design motifs in Art Deco mosaics, but if you had to write a paper about them for an architectural history class you probably also learned a bit about the process of conducting research. When your professor assigned chapters of reading to be completed overnight, hopefully you also learned how to actually absorb what you read so that you didn’t waste your nights staring blankly at the same paragraph for half an hour. Having a skill set that allows you to accumulate new knowledge efficiently will always be beneficial, so ideally you’ll be able to hang on to some of your old study habits even once you’re out of school.

4. Time Management (Hopefully)
Full disclosure: many fully functioning adults, and architects in particular it seems, are just awful at time management. However, if you can gain some solid time management skills while you’re in school, your future professional-self will thank your past student-self endlessly. Of course good time management is incredibly handy while you’re in school to avoid as many late nights in studio as you can, but needless to say, it doesn’t stop being useful after you’ve graduated. Due to the often intense time pressure involved in architecture school, architecture students have a good opportunity to learn to prioritize tasks and manage their time wisely. Basically, if you succeed in having good time management while you’re an architecture student, whatever time crunch life throws your way in the future should be a breeze in comparison.

© Megan Fowler

5、不要太较真

如果你在建筑学院生活得顺风顺水，这绝对不正常。无论是在公共场合画图，还是在一个拥挤的教室建筑测量天花板的高度，抑或携带2号图板穿过校园，建筑系学生所遭遇的困难一定大于那些不用动手的专业的学生。建筑学院迫使你做一些看起来有点可笑的事是为了让你适应这些，这样以后你在工作中会发现一切都容易得多。当然，这也适用于任何工作，甚至社交场合，你可能会发现在未来，你需要专注于更多的事，因此你不需要担心你在做这件事时会显得多么荒谬，这样会给你带来更多的自信，更好的表现，更少的尴尬与焦虑。


6、接受批评

只要你不是大师，你作为一个建筑学学生就一定会面临着批评。我希望，如果你已经学会了上述那些不把自己看得太重的技巧，你就不会把这些批评当成大事，别人在批评你的时候很难考虑到你的内心情绪。强硬的评论常常会被认为是个人攻击，我们都知道学生们会盲目地捍卫他们的作品，而不会吸收任何评论者的反馈（其中大部分是有建设性的）。你并不是大师，纠正你对工作的误解和争论是有区别的。因为建筑学院充满了批评和反馈的机会，随着时间的推移，你应该学会厚着脸皮，去理解和接受那些有建设性的批评。

5. Not Taking Yourself Too Seriously
If architecture school acclimates you to anything, it is comfort in being conspicuous. Whether they're drawing in public, measuring ceiling heights in a crowded classroom building, or carrying a 4-foot by 4-foot piece of cardboard across campus, the architecture student is sure to encounter more than their fair share of staring from those in less hands-on majors. Architecture school can force you to look more than a little ridiculous at times and the earlier in your education you come to terms with this, the easier it will be for you to do what you need to do to finish your work. Of course, this applies to any job or even social situation in which you may find yourself in the future. Focus on what you need to do, don’t worry about how absurd you’ll look or feel while doing it, and it can lead to greater confidence, better presentations, and less general awkwardness and anxiety.

6. Taking Criticism
Unless you’re the second coming of Frank Lloyd Wright, every architecture student has faced a bad critique. Hopefully, if you’ve learned the previous skill of not taking yourself too seriously, you won’t take the criticism personally, but it’s always hard to listen to an outside observer tear apart a project you’ve put your heart and soul into. Tough reviews can often feel like a personal attack and we all know the students who will blindly defend their work to the death without absorbing any of the reviewers’ feedback (most of which is hopefully constructive). This is not who you want to be in architecture school and it’s likely not who you want to be in life. There is a difference between correcting a misunderstanding about your work and just being argumentative. Because architecture school is full of opportunities for critiques and feedback, over time you will be able to thicken your skin and also to understand and integrate constructive criticism into your work.

© Megan Fowler

7、捍卫你的工作和想法

考虑到上述情况，你不应该做的就是日复一日地推销自己。这是一个微妙的平衡，但你对你的作品已经投入了大量的时间，你是最了解这个项目的人。如果老师质疑你的选择或动机，你应该能够回答他的疑问并且解释你的工作思路。你要有一个强有力的论据来坚持你的观点，但同时也要听取反馈。在建筑学院呆过一段时间后，你应该知道如何与他人进行有建设性的对话和辩论。


8、推销你自己和你的作品

如果你对你的作品和想法有一个清晰的理解，你就能够把你自己和你的技能推销给潜在的雇主/客户。在设计作品的过程中，建筑师花了大量的时间推敲设计，因此我们应当学着如何最好地将它描述给别人。事实上，当你去面试的时候，你基本上说的都是同样的话。以你的工作为荣，自信而智慧地谈论它，这会让你在生活和职业中获得更大的成就。

7. Defending Your Work and Your Opinions
With the above in mind, what you should not do is sell yourself short on review day. It’s a delicate balance, but you’ve put a lot of work into this project and are literally the chief expert on the topic of your design. If a reviewer questions your choices or motives, you should be able to answer the questions and explain your work clearly. Have a strong argument and hold to your opinions, but listen to feedback. This can be done without getting defensive. After spending time in architecture school, you should know how to have a constructive dialogue and debate about your work as well as someone else’s.

8. Marketing Yourself and Your Work
If you have a clear understanding of your work and your opinions, you will be able to market yourself and your skills to potential employers and/or clients with a cohesive argument. Through the process of making a design portfolio, architects and designers spend a lot of time with their work and therefore learn how best to describe it to others. In fact, by the time you get to a job interview, you’ve essentially practiced the same pitch more than once during studio reviews. Taking pride in your work and speaking confidently and intelligently about it can get you far in life and in your profession.

© Megan Fowler

9、公共演说/演讲技巧

演讲在职业技巧中不止一次地被提到，人们说熟能生巧，在建筑学院，你会得到大量的机会向公众阐述你的作品。无论你是在向怀疑者解释你的想法，还是试图说服你的教授，你都必须知道你在说什么，或如何在最后的审查中捍卫你的设计，建筑学院充满了大大小小的演示机会。一旦你能够坦然地在不同规模的人群面前讲话，你就可以将这个习惯带进以后的生活中，这对你的职业与生活都有益。


10、团队协作

在这一点上，我们都将建筑师视为孤独的天才，然而现实却是如果你在一家建筑设计院工作，那你必须与一个团队合作。值得庆幸的是，建筑学院允许你成组完成项目，虽然这可能听起来是一个充满挫折的过程，你要学习如何与其他人一起工作，这可能听起来像是老生常谈，但良好的团队合作技能是无价的。从实际意义上讲，如果你无法进行团队项目，那任何一个公司都可能不想雇佣你，即便你拥有独特的天赋和完美的品味，因为他们希望有人能和办公室其他人一起工作，并且把事情做好。如果你不能做到这一点，你的设计理念也会一文不值，而如果你能很好地合作并最终领导一个团队，你的所有其他技能也都将如虎添翼。


11、与其他学科的人一起工作

说到团队，实际建造的建筑需要的不仅仅是建筑师，事实上也不仅仅是一个设计团队，希望在你的建筑教育生涯中，你有机会加入一个跨学科的工作室或另一个领域的工作集体，因为如果你这样做，你会了解到建筑之外的生活。在建筑实践中，与承包商、分包商、工程师和客户沟通以及合作对于完成一个项目来说都至关重要。如果所有的结构工程师拒绝和你一起工作，那便是你的问题。除了学习建筑之外，学会在你的工作之外思考，真正聆听和学习他人的特点会让你的学习生活更加顺利。


12、跟随指令

这也许听起来很无聊，但设计建筑（和生活）往往有许多规则。许多建筑师被客户要求所阻碍，但底线是你的设计必须满足客户的需求（和生命安全）。虽然建筑学院往往不具有现实世界的限制，但建筑系学生仍然在一定的要求下学习工作。这直接适用于一般的生活技能，因为在各种生活场景中，你将在别人的规则下进行工作。你越快接受这一点，你就能越快进入最佳状态。


13、必要时违反规则

一旦你对规则的意图有了充分的了解，你就可以开始利用它们，甚至在能够解决问题的前提下打破它们。客户和老板不一定会同意，甚至建筑学院的教授也不一定会同意，但不可否认的事实是，如果你只认为规则是一个严格的屏障，而不是试图了解它们的真正目的，那么你将会磨灭许许多多优秀设计的可能性。并非所有的风险都会在设计或生活中成真，但如果你在冒险之前充分了解风险的后果和影响，那么你就有更好的生存机会，你也许能够找到真正的创新之路。

9. Public Speaking/Presentation Skills
It’s been alluded to more than once already in the list, but they say practice makes perfect and in architecture school you get a LOT of practice presenting your work. Whether you’re explaining your ideas to skeptical group members, trying to convince your professor that you know what you’re talking about, or defending your design in your final review, architecture school is full of presentations of all shapes and sizes. Once you become comfortable speaking or presenting in front of different-sized groups of people, that’s something you can take with you into your post-school life and the more often you’re forced to do it, the easier it will become.

10. Working With a Team
By this point, we’ve all been disillusioned by the architect-as-solitary-genius stereotype and the reality is that if you work in an architecture firm, you will be working with a team. Thankfully, architecture school allows you to practice this with group projects galore. Though it may be a process full of frustration, you are learning valuable lessons about how to work with (deal with) other people, and possibly how not to. It may sound like a cliché, but good teamwork skills are truly invaluable to employers. In a pragmatic sense, they likely aren’t interested in hiring you for your unique genius and flawless taste, but because they want someone who can work with the rest of the office to get things done. If you can’t do that, your design ideas are not worth much to them, whereas if you can work well with (and eventually lead) a team, all your other skills are just a fabulous bonus.

11. Working With People from Other Disciplines
Speaking of teams, getting a building actually built requires a lot more than just a designer, and in fact a lot more than just a design team. Hopefully in your architecture education you have the opportunity to branch out and possibly take an interdisciplinary studio or some classes in another field, because if you do you’ll be preparing yourself for life outside of the cloistered architecture bubble. In the practice of architecture, communicating and cooperating with contractors, subcontractors, engineers, and clients (to name a few) is vital to completing a project and also to building relationships. If all the structural engineers in town refuse to work with you, that’s going to be a problem. Beyond practicing architecture, learning to think outside of your box of experience and to really be willing to listen to and learn from others will make your entire life run more smoothly.

12. Following Instructions
It sounds terribly boring, but designing buildings (and life) often comes with rules. Many an architect has been discouraged by code requirements or a client’s program demands, but the bottom line is that your design has to function and meet the needs (and life safety requirements) of your client. While architecture school is often free of many of the constraints of the real world, architecture students nonetheless learn to work within a set of given parameters. This applies directly as a general life skill because in a variety of life scenarios, you will be working or functioning under someone else’s rules. The sooner you come to accept this, the sooner you can move on to the last skill on the list...

13. Breaking the Rules When Necessary
Once you have a full understanding of the intent of the rules, you can begin to bend and possibly even break them while still meeting the needs to solve the problem. Clients and bosses won’t always agree, just like architecture professors won’t always agree, but the undeniable fact is that if you only view rules as a strict barrier instead of trying to understand their greater purpose, you will suffocate as a designer. Not all risks pay off in design or in life, but if you understand the full extent and implications of the risk before you take the leap, you have a better chance of surviving the fall and you may just find your way to true innovation.


出处：本文译自www.archdaily.com/，转载请注明出处。