Five Critical Reforms Needed in Architecture Education to Address Exploitation and Climate Crisis

It's a familiar refrain that architecture school doesn't prepare students for real life, but the truth may be more damning: it prepares them perfectly – for overwork, self-erasure, and the slow violence of a profession that consumes its young.

Architecture education must stop teaching architecture as a luxury service for the wealthy and instead focus on serving communities and addressing urgent social needs.

The culture of unpaid labor and exploitation in architecture education must end – students deserve fair compensation for their work and reasonable working hours.

We need to move beyond Eurocentric design paradigms and embrace diverse cultural perspectives and indigenous knowledge systems in architectural education.

Architecture education must urgently address the climate emergency by teaching regenerative design principles and sustainable building practices.