ABSTRACT
The location of American schools of architecture in the university system has steadily increased pressure on full-time career faculty to adopt university standards of achievement, which in all but a few rare cases preclude full-time practice. Schools of architecture are well positioned to reconsider the generative energies of community formation. The clearest expression of a general core mission is the list of student performance criteria produced by the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB). The current list of student performance criteria suggests a weakening commitment to content that addresses the concrete realities of building. The traditional authority of the architect issues in part from command over the relationship between the divisions of construction and the work as a whole, especially in respect to its symbolic meanings and ornamentation and in part from the privileged familiarity with the circumstances under which acts of construction begin, and with the root principles and antecedents that connect present work with history and past traditions.
