ABSTRACT
While technology is one of the most rapidly changing and frequently discussed subjects in the academy today, its meaning in architectural education, in other than a functional sense, has gone largely unexamined. Technological education should expand to become dually focused on both a socio-cultural approach to technology as well as cover the basics of function as it relates to design. In some architecture programs an inordinate amount of coursework is spent teaching the principles and conventions of traditional technology often under the guise of enabling the student to pass the licensing exam. This is not, however, what a university education is for. Technological literacy is more than passing a standard exam. Technologies change so rapidly that what is current one year may be obsolete the next. Something in addition to an instrumental approach to technology is called for if students are to have a deeper understanding of the technoscientific world they will face as professionals in the coming decades.
