Does it make a difference when an architect learns his craft?

[Peter Pallotta]

One architect may have grown up since childhood playing great old courses, and entered the profession almost as a given/a birthright. Another may have done his undergraduate LA studies and then, in his early 20s, travelled to study these same great old courses before joining a firm for a few years but eventually going out on his own. A third may have done some formal studies, but then dropped out and mostly worked his way up in a busy company, finally getting a chance at his first design when he's almost 40 and, in preparation, only then visiting those great old courses to see what he can learn. Do you think that, playing a golf course from each of those three architects, you could tell which one designed which? If so, what would be the giveaway?
Peter

[Joe Hancock]

I wonder if the methodology of HOW to build a golf course vs. how to DESIGN a golf course matters more to the end product. Either way, the individuals mentor(s) matter a whole lot.

[Jaeger Kovich]

All the working architects/shapers I know would fall into categories 2 and 3. There are a lot more of these at the top of their field than guy #1.




... I can think of 1 exception.




 

[Tom_Doak]

Peter:


I don't know that it holds true for others, but I have often felt very lucky that I was able to study the world's courses for myself before I was indoctrinated on design by working for a big firm.  I had a total of one summer's construction experience before my seminal trip to the UK in 1982-83, and I'd seen a lot of the best American courses even before that.  The main thing was that I accepted that those courses worked and tried to sort out WHY they worked, instead of thinking they were inferior to modern products [as Tom Fazio thinks].


Incidentally, I don't think you could describe Pete Dye when I worked for him as a "big firm" in any way.  It was not set up for guys to work there for 10-20 years and establish seniority and pass their way of doing things on to the next generation; there was just Pete, and a bunch of young guys working long hours.

[RJ_Daley]

Pietro, so whilst you didn't name names, I take it the first guy is a Jones Bros.  The second is some version of Doak, and the third is one of many perhaps Ian Andrew (I am not sure of Ian's actual career ladder - just a guess).

But, I think the point is that it depends on what the archie learns and why to incorporate ideas and designed features along the way no matter what the path.  There is a such thing as golf course construction technique in addition to design flair, style, whatever you wish to call familiar looking features by this archie or that.  But, learning how to do it, resulting in how final shaping and grassing schemes work is like handwriting, me thinks.  When it comes to writing, we all learn how to form the general letters, and some learn in parochial schools in the old days, and some learn now on a computer.  The styles change with implements from pen and ink quill, to varied leaded pencils, to flick your Bic ball point, to computer formed and generated characters.  But, a great novel can still be written in all those forms...

[paul cowley]

Peter


I think that those in the first category...sons/daughters of architects and successful golf pro/turned architects...have a golden ticket to enter the profession, and have a base knowledge and exposure to golf that is passed down to them from their peers.....but that's where it starts or stops depending on their talent and if they can produce a product of value.


The second and third categories are more morphed. Both have to earn their golden tickets any way they can, with the marketplace being the ultimate judge of their success or failure.

[Peter Pallotta]

Thanks, gents.
I wrote my OP badly. I included 'details' that were more confusing than helpful. Basically, I wanted to ask about the different ways we learn, at different stages in our lives. I know that as a youngster I learned to read and write and ride a bike in a much different way than I do, now, in trying to learn to play good golf or play the saxophone as an adult. If I had anyone in mind, I was thinking more of say: Donald Ross, growing up in Dornoch; and Dr MacKenzie, Cambridge graduate and medical doctor, who after the war took up design, or CB MacDonald, with the means and opportunity to study the great courses as a young man; and say, Pete Dye, an insurance salesman until, as an adult, he took up the profession. Using my own experience, I imagined that Ross must've learned about design in a different way than did Mac and Macdonald and Dye, and that MacDonald differently than Dye etc. If so, does this manifest in their courses?
Peter

[Mike_Young]

Peter,
I'm glad you referred to it as a craft.  I don't think it matters how he learned it as long as he has a passion for continuing to learn it.  I also don't think you can count years in an office as being more valuable than months on an actual job site working to build the product.   As I have mentioned before, there has been a concerted effort for the last 65-70 years to convince the committee man or the developer or whomever that it is a profession more than a craft.  Today we see an abundance of guys who worked in the office of a signature and were let go in the downturn and had no idea what it took to actually land a project.  Sitting in an office producing plans does not one an architect make.  These may be some good guys but being trained in a sig office and coming up in the dirt do not produce the same designer.  Now having said all of the above, IMHO one only really learns their craft when it is their own project and they take the credits or the blame without being able to hide behind a principal.  Architect is not really the proper word for those of us in the business of creating golf courses.