Architectural Education: Between the Discipline and the Profession

This paper will discuss the social role of the architectural education in the continuous reproduction of, not only the disciplinary knowledge, but also the ethos associated with the practices through which an individual utilizes their disciplinary training in placing their social standing. It will be argued that the need to re-evaluate the means and ends regarding the communication between the disciplinary knowledge and professional roles is especially compelling in the field of architecture, with the new agenda that the twenty-first century has introduced. In this frame, the significant historic contribution of the Bauhaus in the early twentieth century will be referred particularly in the critical form that this school had reformulated the triad of relationships taking place between the discipline, the professional and the society at large. Referring to the literature of sociology of professions as well as the Foucauldian concept of “discipline” and Bourdieu’s concept of “field”, it will be discussed that, just like social space itself, such relationships are also cohesive social products and are subject to constant change. It will be argued the knowledge content in a discipline may be translated into sustainable results on the professional’s social role and function specifically if such reforms is coupled with reforms on practices of introducing the renewed knowledge content to the student of the field.