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I chose the subjects I enjoyed and probably did better because of it.
Thanks for the feedback. From my (dim and distant) experience ^ this is spot on.
Core subjects should be fine (as long as he gets his arse in gear) - your point about the different thinking involved in more creative subjects is good though.
Poor kid is not even 14 and already seeing his future mapped out...will probably end up teaching yoga in a commune instead at this rate!
villa-ru
Most (maybe all? haven't checked lately) do not specifically require Art as a subject at GCSE or A-level, but all do require a portfolio.
He can make his own portfolio in his own time (if D&T involves making a portfolio, this is unlikely to be sufficient - he should add to it with his own work) and it will be looked at accordingly. By that I mean, they will understand the difference between a self-taught portolio and one that's been produced as part of an A-level. In the distant past, I recall my conditional offer being that I had to get an A in A-level Art because I was taking it - but that you didn't have to do Art at all. Does that make sense?
Some schools may require maths at A-level - haven't checked lately but I think Bath did, as they are quite engineering-heavy.
This is where it gets very much IMO -
GCSE choices only matter in as much as they lead to A-level/GNVQ/HND/BTEC etc subject choices. All Architecture courses will require Maths and English at least Grade C at GCSE (and quite a lot of jobs in general) so how well you do in core subjects does matter.
I think Art A-level is really valuable because it is intellectually/conceptually quite different from other subjects at school - including other makey/practical stuff like D&T - and can be an important foundation for Architecture at university. All science plus pragmatic subjects doesn't prepare you very well for the theory/concept/critical onslaught in first year.
When I was 18 I thought I was going to be doing something which I now realise would have been called something like Architectural Technology and Technical Drawing. I was very wrong.
The wider usefulness of Art A-level is very much dependent on how Art is taught at your son's school - although all should result in substantial portfolios, put together with the benefit of support and feedback from teachers. It's easier than doing it by yourself. But sure you could also do Art GCSE to get a grounding and then just put your own portfolio together for university applications. Amongst my peers most but not all had done art - maybe 8 out of 10. For the other subjects I was at the sciencey end (double maths, physics, art) and some others had done all humanities and not science/maths at all. Pros and cons. I do sometimes wonder whether I'd have fared better for doing English or Philosophy or something like that at A-level, but I chose the subjects I enjoyed and probably did better because of it.