11503 Practice: The Profession

Warning: The information on this page is indicative. The subject outline for a particular session, location and mode of offering is the authoritative source of all information about the subject for that offering. Required texts, recommended texts and references in particular are likely to change. Students will be provided with a subject outline once they enrol in the subject.

Subject handbook information prior to 2025 is available in the Archives.

UTS: Design, Architecture and Building: Architecture
Credit points: 6 cp

Subject level:

Postgraduate

Result type: Grade and marks

Requisite(s): 144 credit points of completed study in spk(s): C10413 Bachelor of Design Architecture Master of Architecture
These requisites may not apply to students in certain courses.
There are course requisites for this subject. See access conditions.

Description

This is one of four core architectural practice subjects in the Master of Architecture (C04235). Students are required to complete all four architectural practice subjects to complete their degree. Together, the architectural practice subjects are aimed at preparing students for expanded practice in emerging new media and markets, contemporary business practice and global economies, and within complex and challenging social, environmental, political and regulatory contexts.

The architectural practice subjects prepare students for the broad roles and activities of the profession, as well as providing the critical skills through which they can contribute more broadly to the built environment through leadership, advocacy and research.

This subject addresses the role of the architect in history and the present, and explores trends indicative of potential roles and challenges for future architects. The formation of the profession and ideals of professionalism are investigated, as well as the process of professional regulation through registration, insurances and so on.

This subject is also concerned with individual pathways and careers through employment within the architectural industry and so addresses traditional and emerging models of practice and their potential impact a future career. The way that alternative offices work, from office management and staff issues to built environment leadership, leadership styles, managing teams across disciplines, internal communication; and power and politics in organisations is also considered in the context of contemporary and future practice models.

Subject learning objectives (SLOs)

On successful completion of this subject, students should be able to:

1.	gain an understanding of the complex and challenging social, ethical, environmental, political and regulatory contexts within which architectural practice is carried out
2.	demonstrate an awareness of the relationship of the discipline to the profession and how this relationship operates in contemporary practice
3.	recognise the diverse paths through which the disciplinary knowledge of architecture is deployed and demonstrate an understanding of the consequences of different practice structures
4.	demonstrate a detailed understanding of office structures, management process and human resource strategies and explore these issues through specific examples
5.	demonstrate insights about how practice design, management practices and outputs vary depending on their ambition and focus
6.	formulate a critical position towards the establishment, management and promotion of an expanded future architectural practice

Course intended learning outcomes (CILOs)

This subject also contributes to the following Course Intended Learning Outcomes:

Establish and develop an informed and ethical position towards social, technical and environmental issues and practices (A.1)
Recognise and appreciate local and global cultural diversities and values (A.2)
Work cooperatively and professionally as part of a team, initiate partnerships with others, take a leadership role when required, and constructively contribute to peer learning (C.1)
Communicate ideas professionally and effectively through a variety of mediums: oral, written, visual, physical and digital (C.2)
Produce inspirational responses that demonstrate the successful integration of sub-disciplinary areas of knowledge: history, theory, tectonics and/or practice (I.1)
Creatively use architectural media, technologies and materials (I.2)
Understand and challenge disciplinary conventions through an engagement with emergent forms of architectural practice, technologies and modes of production (P.1)
Independently analyse, synthesise and formulate complex ideas, arguments and rationales and use initiative to explore alternatives (R.3)

Contribution to the development of graduate attributes

The term CAPRI is used for the five Design, Architecture and Building graduate attribute categories where:
C = communication and group work
A = attitudes and values
P = practical and professional
R = research and critique
I = innovation and creativity
This subject encourages student learning to develop these graduate attributes. The course content, learning strategies and assessment structure is explicitly designed with these attributes in mind.

Teaching and learning strategies

An aim of this subject is to help you develop academic and professional language and communication skills to succeed at university and in the workplace. During the course of this subject, you will complete a milestone assessment task that will, in addition to assessing your subject-specific learning objectives, assess your English language proficiency.

Weekly 3-hour formal learning sessions comprising of lectures (2 hours) and tutorials (1 hour). The content delivered in the lectures is supported by readings, curated discussion and student groupwork within the tutorials that follow. The high synchronicity between lectures and tutorials is reflected in the format where students gather in their tutorial groups each week where they watch the lecture (delivered online) as a group and then continue the session in tutorial mode.

Students are expected to attend all lecture-tutorial sessions and engage in the self-directed online content provided on the UTS Online subject portal. Students are also encouraged to actively participate in the group discussions during the tutorials.

COLLABORATIVE LEARNING
UTS believe that collaborative peer learning enhances learning. You will be encouraged to engage in dynamic group discussions and also work in small teams throughout the tutorials however you will be individually assessed.

ONLINE LEARNING
The 11503 Architectural Practice: The Profession is committed to providing a quality education experience that offers students with self directed, self-paced and extended learning opportunities. All online content can be accessed via the UTS Online subject portal and includes:
- Readings
- Weblinks to interviews and articles related to the subject content

FEEDBACK
The subject provides a range of formative feedback strategies:
1. All assessments will be graded in UTS ReView. UTS ReView will be used as a formative feedback mechanism for all assessment.
2. The subject is designed around the tutorial led discussions that support the weekly lectures. Your engagement and participation in the tutorials is an assessable component of this subject, and specifically includes Assignment 2 where weekly summaries of readings are enacted in tutorials and where the reflection on these then informs both parts of Assignment 2. This will assist in how iterative development can be accessed and ultimately assessed.

It is the student’s responsibility to record any feedback given during tutorials.

Content (topics)

Subject areas may include:

a review and discussion of traditional and emerging models of practice
office management
managing service businesses
built environment leadership
leadership styles
managing teams across disciplines
internal communication
power and politics in organizations

Assessment

Assessment task 1: Practice Analysis - Present

Intent:

The intention of this assignment then is to engage students with exemplar practices that in some way help us to think through how practice might develop in the near future as students graduate and enter the workforce.

Objective(s):

This task addresses the following subject learning objectives:

1, 2, 3 and 4

This task also addresses the following course intended learning outcomes that are linked with a code to indicate one of the five CAPRI graduate attribute categories (e.g. C.1, A.3, P.4, etc.):

A.1, A.2, C.1 and I.2

Type:

Design/drawing/plan/sketch

Groupwork:

Group, individually assessed

Weight:

45%

Criteria linkages:

Criteria	Weight (%)	SLOs	CILOs
The sophistication with which you are able to contextualise your practice	25	4	C.1
The clarity, precision and inventiveness of your own diagrams, images	25	3	I.2
The depth and breadth of insights	35	1	A.1
The effectiveness of your presentation	15	2	A.2

SLOs: subject learning objectives
CILOs: course intended learning outcomes

Assessment task 2: Practice Analysis - Future Frameworks

Intent:

This task includes a milestone assessment component that evaluates English language proficiency. You may be guided to further language support after the completion of this subject if your results in this milestone task indicate you need more help with your language skills.

The purpose of this assignment is to make a claim for your future engagement in the profession, using the knowledge gained from your subject architect in Assignment 1 (and engagement with the others via the symposium) as a basis upon which you might construct a form of future practice that addresses both the realities of the economic, political and technological contexts as we can see them, in the near future, and your own skills, values and intentions regarding a life in architecture, or at least deploying an architectural education in a related field.

Objective(s):

This task addresses the following subject learning objectives:

2, 3, 4 and 6

This task also addresses the following course intended learning outcomes that are linked with a code to indicate one of the five CAPRI graduate attribute categories (e.g. C.1, A.3, P.4, etc.):

A.2, C.2, I.1, P.1 and R.3

Type:

Essay

Groupwork:

Individual

Weight:

55%

Criteria linkages:

Criteria	Weight (%)	SLOs	CILOs
Demonstration of knowledge about the way the profession is constructed	15	3	P.1
Your account of how your own specific skills, interests and ambitions might suggest a future form of practice	20	6	P.1
How you address questions of working with Country as part of your practice vision or structure	5	6	A.2
Appropriateness of the brief for your EOI given your practice ambitions	10	2	I.1
Quality of Responses to the EOI criteria and their alignment with your position (2A) and brief	40	4	R.3
Overall quality of writing, formatting and professional presentation of the EOI	10	6	C.2

SLOs: subject learning objectives
CILOs: course intended learning outcomes

Minimum requirements

The DAB attendance policy requires students to attend no less than 80% of formal teaching sessions (lectures and tutorials) for each class they are enrolled in to remain eligible for assessment. At each class you are to bring work as described in program.

References

This list has three components:

Resources to review before starting semester (in italic)

Core texts that form part of the tutorials and assignments (in bold)

Other texts that may be of interest

TO REVIEW

The Future for Architects, RIBA Building Futures Report

Change, Architecture, Discuss, ARB Report, 2016

Deep Dive into Systemic Risks, ARB/ARBV, 2024

Larson, M S. The Rise of Professionalism: Monopolies of Competance and Sheltered Markets, Routledge, NY, 2017.

CORE TEXTS

Arantes, P. The Rent of Form: Architecture and Labor in the Digital Age, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2019.

Deamer in Lahiji, Nadir, ed. Can Architecture be an Emancipatory Project?: Dialogues on Architecture and the Left, Zero Books, Alresford, 2016.

Harvey, P. Spaces of Hope, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2000.

Iturbe, E. Architecture and the Death of Carbon Modernity in LOG47: Overcoming Carbon Form, Anyone Corporation, NY, 2019.

Kaminer. Governance and the Climate Crisis in LOG47: Overcoming Carbon Form, Anyone Corporation, NY, 2019.

Page, A. Indigenous Placemaking in Building on Country, Thames and Hudson, Melbourne, 2021

Samuel, Flora. Why Architects Matter: Evidencing and Communicating the Value of Architects, Routledge, Oxon, 2018.

Schneider, Tatjana & Till, Jeremy ed. „Alternate Currents“ field, , 2008.

Self, Jack. The Self as Design Subject, Taylor and Francis, 2021.

Spencer, Douglas. The Architecture of Neoliberalism: How contemporary architecture became an instrument of control and compliance, Bloomsbury Academic, New York, 2016.

Soules, M. Icebergs, Zombies and the Ultra Thin, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2021.

Stratigakos, D. Where are the Women Architects, Princeton University Press, 2016

Wilson, Mabel O. Who Builds Your Architecture?

Van Schaik, Leon. Spatial Intelligence: New Futures for Architecture, John Wiley & Sons, Richmond, 2008.

OTHER

Awan, Nishat; Schneider, Tatjana & Till, Jeremy. Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture, Routledge, London, 2011.

Aureli, Pier Vittorio. The Project of Autonomy: Politics and Architecture within and against Capitalism. Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2008.

Benjamin, Andrew. Building, building in Jose Araguez (Editor). The Building. Lars Muller. Zurich. 2016

Burke, Anthony and Reinmuth, Gerard. Formations, Australian Institute of Architects, Canberra, 2012.

Cuff, D., Architecture: The Story of Practice MIT Press 1991

Deamer, Peggy. Architecture and Capitalism: 1845 to the present. Routledge (Taylor and Francis), New York, 2014.

Deamer, Peggy and Berstein, Phillip, eds. Building (in) the Future: Recasting Labor in Architecture, Princeton Architectural Press, New Haven, 2010

Fisher, Thomas. Ethics for Architects: 50 Dilemmas of Professional Practice, Princeton Architectural Press, 2010.

Lahiji, Nadir, ed. Architecture Against the Post-Political: Essays in Reclaiming the Critical Project, Routledge, Oxon,2014.

LeCavalier, Jesse. The Rule of Logistics: Walmart and the Architecture of Fulfillment

Pai, Hyungmin. The Portfolio and the Diagram: Architecture, Discourse and Modernity in America. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2002.

Swyngedouw, Erik. Civic City Cahier 5: Designing the Post Political City and the Swyngedouw, Civic City Cahier 5: Designing the Post Political City and the Insurgent Polis, Bedford press, London, 2013.

Swyngedouw , Erik. The Post-Political City, in Re-imagining Democracy in the Neo-Liberal City