In the United States, we have seemingly very little language governance. We have freedom of speech. We have freedom of the press. We have no official language.. We do not have official censors, we have editors for publications. Our most common language, English, is not even our own. So when we have extensive and intensive examinations of language and codes as gate keeping factors, as a restrictive force governing over professional licensure and practice, in a field such as architecture, especially where language is not the main idea or matter, it strikes me as very very weird.
Honestly, even though it is keeping me from working and earning a living in the profession, I know and trust that is temporary, and i really have nothing against the process; I can see some benefits to this system of vetting architects and their reading skills, potentially, it just seems entirely strange when contemplated or given any thought, whatsoever.
Of course, architects need to communicate verbally, with their clients and colleagues, I am not recommending inarticulate means or have any problem with language, whatsoever. My thoughts on the product of this, the muted and inarticulate architecture that is getting widely over produced, by our verbose system, however, is another story.
My takeaways from the extensive professional vetting of reading skills required to work as an architect, amount to a lesson in scale. We need to be adept at scales of reading and processing information. While our readings may be codes and guides, here is how scales work in reading of fiction. They go from the macro scale of whole genres to individual authors to finite works to chapters to paragraphs to sentences to phrases to words to letters and their interactions. We could go further in scale to fonts and serifs, or farther still into what may be beyond that.
There is a certain scale of reading that goes well in common practice, something like how 1/4” =1’ does well in drafting. We just need to recognize that it is the short paragraph region of focus and concentrate on that, as required.
We need to read very quickly at times and very carefully at others. It may be burdensome but we have to be ready to read through 2000 page computer generated manuals or specifications when required, and at other times, at a “fine print” level, line by line, and all the while we may not (as they say) “read into it”. To be able to work and survive we need to be aware of this and pay attention throughout. The dilemma is real.
drdrr.work 