ABSTRACT
While architectural education differs through European countries if we look at the hard skills making up various curricula, they appear to share a common trait of soft skills that give students a broader view of the world, an open mind and a method for analysing situations holistically and designing possible solutions. Combined data from both the preliminary and the complete Architecture’s Afterlife surveys, as well as the subsequent In–depth interviews, shows that architectural education appears to develop specific skills and abilities able to tackle global problems and challenges, not only related to the architectural field. Not surprisingly, in the survey of the exploratory study, spatial skills occupy the first place among the competences that graduates considered to have acquired very well through their architectural education (see figure 1), but also among the competences that they declare to use more often in their current job, including graduates that are not working in the architectural sector (see figure 2). What is more intriguing is that ‘design thinking’ occupies the third place both among the more often used competences and in the better-acquired ones. This result leads the main survey to attempt to define better and describe the competence of design thinking. Therefore a more detailed list of behavioural skills was submitted to the architectural graduates, organised into three thematic clusters. This study established that soft skills competencies acquired within an architecture degree were applicable in sectors beyond architecture. This set of skills configures a cross-boundary, transversal approach to very diverse contemporary challenges ranging from the ability of wide approach, vision, and critical thinking to the effects of emotion, endurance, and self-training coming to the attitude to decision-making, social responsibility, and caring approach. This common approach defines a ‘design method’, an intellectual process that architecture education teaches and that architecture graduates use. Its use is not limited to architecture but extends to architecture-related work, the creative industries, and fields outside of architecture.
