I recently convened an urban studies summer school in a top university in Shanghai and asked the assembled class of architectural master’s students: ‘Who wants to be an architect?’ Not one hand was raised.
This was not the typical reticence of Chinese youngsters; this was a class of architectural students who have given up on architecture. They are all hoping to escape architectural education, so that they might progress to classes in AI, digital transformation or some other hi-tech sector where they believe jobs exist. For them, architecture is a dead end.
As my Chinese students are discovering, there are too few jobs in the sector, the pay is low and the work is unappealing. Notwithstanding the Norman Fosters and Zaha Hadids of this world, the same is largely true in the West, where the average salary for a five-year qualified architect in London is £45,000. But architecture retains its appeal in the West, in part because it is seen as a high-status profession, not a job.
Students have given up on building the physical world in the hope they’ll earn more in the virtual one
Architecture only emerged in China as a viable independent profession 25 years ago.
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