Becoming an Architect: Narratives of Architectural Education

Abstract

This dissertation examines the personal narratives of several aspiring architects to investigate the emergence of “occupational identities”—or how individuals navigate their education to construct a sense of themselves within the architectural community. By interpreting the content of these narratives in relation to several relevant strains of contemporary discourse, this project exposes and foregrounds features of architectural education rarely considered by educators and scholars in the field. Becoming an architect is presented as a holistic experience that requires psychological resilience and meaning-making strategies in the face of various challenges that undermine personal investment a..