Musicality seems to go hand-in-hand with architectural creativity as many aspiring classmates were often in conflict over whether to pursue highly successful popular music careers or dedicate themselves to their design studies.

It seems the AA offers an alternative pathway to registration and practice to the RIBA Part 3:

“The AA Examination is recognised by the Architects Registration Board (ARB) for
exemption from Part 3 and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) as the final
qualifying examination for obtaining registered status in the UK and professional
membership respectively.”

Sorry I don’t know about famous non-architect AA graduates, except for Janet Street Porter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Street-Porter and the industrial designer Ron Arad I think, some pop stars and some graphic designers. Nor am I sure when the RIBA stopped refusing to recognize the AA as an enrty route the RIBA.

‘Most famous architects have been here (sooner or later)’
And they have. AA alumni have been a powerful presence among the leading architects of their generation since the school was set up. Even a brief trawl through the last century brings up the likes of Charles Jencks, Elia Zenghelis, Peter Cook, Dalibor Vesely, Joseph Rykwert, Daniel Libeskind, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, Bernard Tschumi, Nigel Coates, Cedric Price, Nicholas Grimshaw … and many more.

So it may be that the ones who do go into practice do spectacularly well and many more contribute significantly to architectural education worldwide.

I am wondering what other careers they have gone to? Are you aware of some famous AA graduates in other professions?

I recently heard the comment (and do not know if it is true) that a surprisingly low proportion of graduates from from the Architectural Association AA course become architects. I think this is very healthy for the other careers they go to, because an architect’s education is much more useful than many of the vacuous subjects they persuade young people to go into debt to learn (sociology seems especially useless to me, even if it is interesting). Architects learn a great many ‘transferrable skills’, including the analysis of problems, drawing, software, problem-solving and budgeting to name but a few. Also, the AA is in wonderful example of the benefits of diversity in architectural education. I just wish they learned a bit more about the relationship between emptiness and form!

The problem in diversification would be to ensure or assist the right peg into the right hole – so as not to have the classic square peg in the round hole syndrome – which happened to my artistic friend.

Also as people become more aware of other aspects of industries and professions it is quite likely that they may want to grow in different directions in their careers and this is good also in my view. For example, a builder who becomes an architect brings a very informed mind to the process of making and the full potential of craft participation etc.

True none of the participants are venal or stupid, they all have a different aspect of the industry task as their focus of attention and the better they are able to communicate with and understand each other the richer we all are.

My enthusiasm is for diversification and my concern is that regulation militates against diversity. Perhaps this belief comes from my hippy past but it was given focus by Donald Schon’s 1970 Reith Lectures. See http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/radio4/transcripts/1970_reith2.pdf for his analysis of the development of the continuous-aim naval gun and also his analysis of the American building industry. When a government official discovered that he was doing useful research on the industry he came to shut down the programme. ‘We interpreted this as amusing bravado until he proceeded to do exactly that. In doing so, however, he revealed a great deal about the dynamics and structure of that organism which is the American building industry. The industry includes contractors and building suppliers, people who make iron, steel , bricks and lumber. It includes architects and engineers and their associations. It includes craft labour unions, at the national level and particularly at the local level. It includes speculative developers, building-code inspectors, government purchasing age nts; it includes bankers and financiers, active and diversified building journal s, and a few crosscutting bodies such as the Building Research Advisory Board. …….These are all strategies of dynamic conservatism. They’re not, I think, to be put down as venal or stupid: they are central to the life and survival of organisations.’

One friend didn’t do well at a technical university because she made a model with buttons in the river, but she did very well at art college, St Martins in the Feild. She was a loss to the profession because the academics there didn’t understand art.

Which regulators are you proposing to educate – educational theorists or education regulators?
[ http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169204602000646 ] or
[ http://monash.edu/legal/legislation/ ] Or are you proposing to send them to re-education camps – to draw, draught, study philosophy, meditate and produce crafted works – where they experience the life of the landscape architecture student for themselves and so have a better idea of the process of learning?

There could be substantial improvements to architectural, and landscape, education if the process was de-regulated. If the academic staff do not know how to run an educational programme then they should be put out to grass. But I think they DO know what to do. So we should educate the regulators – if they can’t be sacked. Some of them should become artists (not draughtsmen, which I expect they already are), some should study philosophy, some should go on retreat (eg to Vulture Peak) and many of them should become craft workers.

The architectural model is one way of doing this – but like all methods it is not a guarantee of great architecture. [ http://www.0lll.com/architecture-exhibitions/gallery16/001.jpg ]

Inter-cultural design is an interesting area of practice.

Indigenous client participation by drawing and models is another way of designing, using a differing client/designer relationship. [ http://www.crc-rep.com/research/enterprise-development/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-art-economies ] It can be more interactive and participatory than the traditional client/architect relationship.

Aboriginal Australia had/has an cultural environment designed in such a way that it is almost invisible to most.

But if modern workplace health and safety is getting in the way of the best results, shouldn’t it be re-considered? Frei Otto’s approach to tented structures was developed my making tents, in a POW camp and then in a laboratory-experimental research institute. It is a pity that it seems to have been forgotten. I think his planning of the Munich Olympics, and its integration with landscape design, was of a far higher standard than anything else ever done for an Olympic event. I am still, slightly, reserving judgment on the 2012 London Olympic Park but my initial conclusion is that it looks like a collision between a Garden Festival and an airport.
Is the painting on http://www.sacredarchitecture.org/articles/barcelona_catechism/ definitely by Gaudi? Not too much can be concluded from his working methods because of the advantage he had over other designers, which you mention: he was a genius. But he also had an ability to reach out the constraints of professionalised architecture AND one could see this as an exploration of the principle that form is emptiness and emptiness is form.