We in the design professions think of ourselves as being able to contribute in a meaningful way to a better quality of daily life, and many of us feel continually marginalized by forces against which we often feel we can not compete – primarily the forces of capital and the larger forces they often serve, motivations toward consumption and display.

We often feel that we could make better places for people if they understood the real values that the design professions can offer, that their understanding those values would lead to their holding them. These values include, in part, public/private spatial relationships which enrich both public and private life and the connections between them, design which encourages delight in the environmental systems which we inhabit, and an understanding of the physical and moral implications of material choices with their global impact. These are the issues that we so readily take up in design education, that most often underlie our criticisms of the common methods of spatial production, and that we hold up as the highest of goals to which we aspire.

Yet, if one looks at what is demanded of an intern through the IDP process, one has to ask if these are priorities that the profession holds in its forms of practice. The preceding charts illustrate this question better than it can be described in words. Were one a philosopher king and looking for a profession to guide the production of social space toward the goals mentioned above, would one choose a profession that required for entry the completion of the pie charts on the previous sheet? I think not.

This is not to say that professional competence should not be a part of internship, but should we not also expect a level of social engagement more significant than ten days spread out over three years? If, as a profession, we would engage in the production of space at a social level, must we not also as a profession engage society in a more meaningful way in our modes of training? Would it not be more meaningful to require every intern to complete a community enhancement project? And would it not be appropriate that this be done partly on ‘company time’ – if, after all, the design professions are social arts as our criticisms of current modes of
social spatial practice imply?

The current IDP system inflects the careers of interns toward either serving the forces against which we commonly argue – primarily consumption and display – or attempting to compete with them on their own terms. What is here proposed is that, as a profession, we compete more openly with the forces which are currently controlling the production of space in our society and challenge the assumptions on which those social forces rest. To achieve this, we must, in part, engage in the preparation of individuals for roles of responsibility in architecture as a social practice.