By Dayo Adesulu

RENOWNED Architect, Festus Adebayo Fawohunre, has charged elders in the architectural profession to stand firm on mentorship of young architects, because there was more practical knowledge lacking in them.

Fawohunre who stated this during Caleb University’s lecture on town and gown interaction event said, “elders in architecture must stand firm on genuine training of young ones. Let them engage in self-examination with sincerity of purpose of who they really are in architecture.”

The architech who spoke while delivering the lecture titled: ‘Finding your place in Architecture’, urged every student and practising architects to endeavour to find their places in the profession.

According to him, there was no way an architectural graduate can learn if he did not go to someone who was ahead of him in the profession, adding that “to reduce your mistakes, stress and have a direction as young architect, you need mentorship.”.

Explaining reasons for collapse buildings in our society, Fawohunre posited that collapse of building was a combination of three things. He asked: “Did they do enough investigation in the site they want to build. Are the client building according to the drawing. I can give you a two storey building and you may end up making it three storey. Do owners of buildings give the job to sound structured engineers to work on it or to quacks?

“Are contractors of those buildings doing engineering work and surveyor together? 75 percent of what people do is based on assumption. Do they have engineers, professionals on site to combine their imagination to become reality. Above all, are the contractors or builders using quality materials and quality method of construction?

“Whenever you see a bill board or  a construction site going on, ask who is the architect? At least there was an architect that started the drawing for its approval. Go to the architect and ask who did the design. It is her duty to do a follow up to reduce danger.”

Stressing the need for an architect to supervise a building project, he said that what many builders do is 90 percent of assumption because they don’t know the soil. He said, “Thay are only giving a survey plan and don’t know what is under the soil. There could be source of water under. It is when you get to the site you discover a lot of things and make adjustments. That is why there is need for an architect to supervise a building project.”

On his part,  Head, School of Architecture, and Acting Dean, College of  Environmental Sciences, Caleb University, Dr. Oladipo Dare Abel, said that the main purpose of the lecture was to bring people who have made impact in practice to the university, so that they can interact with them  and share  their experience over the years.

“This is because we are producing students who are going to work outside the university as very few of them will work in the university. So we are bringing in people who have made it outside the shores of the university to tell us what it takes to succeed.