ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews three decades of scholarship to describe the cultural context of architectural education. Specifically, it identifies a set of contradictions at the heart of the field: between production and reproduction, academia and the profession, and “purifiers” and “simulators” (in the words of Robert Gutman). As the tension of these contradictions underpins the socialization processes running across architecture’s learning contexts, they structure the ways that aspiring architects experience professional education. In moving from student to practitioner, individuals develop strategies for navigating this landscape comprised of dialectical agendas and pluralistic identities.
