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Future School of Architectures (F-SA)

there were these posts in other thread concerning the future of architecture as an industry to get in.
i thought this might generate a good discussion on how future architecture education holds. since there are teachers and students alike in this forum, let's hear it.
my initial platform is as is below. the idea is not new but not discussed that much. at least not here.

one my goals in the future, is to gather a multi disciplinary workshop in a school to look into architecture. i don't care how many times it has been done before, all the better for studying the models.

Orhan Ayyüce;
nice thing about architecture is, while having its roots and educational structure around fine arts, its realm reaches almost everywhere else.
so it will never be unneccessary to study it. it will be more like "what you want to do with it," in the future like in italy*.;.)

* i never seen as many diversified architects as i saw in italy in the 80's. like you go to a place and there are bunch of people doing all kinds of things who studied architecture in school. it is a great education for in depth understanding of how things work. we need more architects in every field. politics, business, media, local and international organizations.
i even will say, make architecture a minor for other studies. it would be great to see a biology or a business student minoring in your studio.
wide open the field.
like;
"school of architectures"


le bossman:
yes that would be amazing. i had a second year studio once with a student taking it as a cognate. but i think you are right on; architecture can't exist in a vacuum, neither should architectural education. architecture is at it's best when it is at the intersection of other professions; the best projects are great because they aren't "buildings," but spatial adaptations of other ideas.


school after school i visit on my travels, i see the same student with spray can and dust mask making a topo model or refining a rendering. pretty limiting.

any thoughts on the FS-A and its curriculum?





 
Nov 20, 07 5:31 pm
nonarchitect

I agree with the 'school of architectures'. If I run an architecture school I would hire people like Mark Penn ( Hillary's campaign adviser ), Damien Hirst and some boring "Architect" with a capital "A". And I would run studios like how to get medicine or food aid to places like Mali or Darfur, and I would not care whether the students build anything or 'design' anything at all...though if the solution is some "bicycle" contraption it would be fine too. evaluation would be based on how well the solution addresses the problems, and its side benefits...I would also co-ordinate technical courses based on students' interests. I think in the end all education should be about enabling students to contribute to the world...Our current education has had much of the opposite effect, making students feel either unsophisticated because they've never read Foucault or too air headed to know how to put together a simple shed or open a bank account....

Nov 20, 07 5:57 pm  · 
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mdler

if I had to run an architecture school, i would try to intigrate it into the other programs in the university. I would try to make each project contain a colaborative element - bring in business students, engineering students, political studies students, etc.

I would stress colaboration and make most of the projects group projects.

Nov 20, 07 7:06 pm  · 
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treekiller

Cameron Sinclair is creating an Architecture For Humanity University - stay tuned for further info.

guess that's where nonarchitect should go...


I'm starting to see Rural Studio or Taliesin as the future of architectural education (just loose the worshiping of FllW and the 30 degree angle) where it is hands on, building for the community. So lets get a detroit (or philly) urban equivalent to change our cities!

Nov 20, 07 8:47 pm  · 
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brian buchalski

Well, it's been a few years since I was a student and although I used to have a tin of ideas regarding architecture, I'm probably a bit rusty at this point, anyhow...

One of the best classes that I had (actually I took two classes in the sequence during grad school) was actually a real estate course within the business school. The class was probably 50% mba students with the rest as a combination of urban planning students, law students, public policy majors...just about everybody...and of course even some architects were involved. Interestingly enough, the architects were especially popular because they could draw...and this mattered because almost all of the work was conducted by students in a teamwork effort. Moreover, the class was heavily invested in the local community. We had speakers from the community on class on a weekly basis, often several in a given evening and they might very well have opposing views on an issue (at times, literally the the "developer" vs. "green' hippie nature lover"). This was almost the perfect class in my opinion...it was based on teamwork with multi-disciplinary players and was heavily involved in local community. My only real beef was that it was not in some way integrated with studio culture. That is, it was a 3 credit class that as an architecture student you would take as an elective while you were also taking a 6 credit studio class. It could have been very powerful to have brought the business students and others into the studio to actually see the dedication of the architects. I did make that suggestion but I'm sure my business prof was fighting an uphill battle to get the architects to recognize the value.

For as muvh as people might complain about developers, I think that many of us might actually be surprised by just how engaged in the community these people often are. And I'm not just talking about their engagement with bankers, politicians and other memebers of country club set...but also just as likely the homeless guy or idiosyncratic nutcase who just seems to show up at every public hearing /meeting (even though nobody knows what this guy does for a living).

In short, I think it's important for students to develop an activist streak that inckudes involvement in the larger community. my best projects came from this type of thinking and as I've alluded to above, that type of thinking for me developed much more strongly in business school than in architecture school.

In fact, to offer an example that I'm sure some of you are familiar with, I think the groose pointe breuer designed library is a perfect example. Last winter when myself and some other archinecters were trying to figure out how to make a difference in that project, I often found myself referring to the lessons of business school (much more so than any role architecture school had).

For some unfortunate reason, architecture has long had a habit of attracting an insular individual who might very well be adept at drawing but itherwise lack some necessary social skills. It's easy to sit in at a desk and draw up your fantasy world...it's much harder to work with others to craft an environment of inclusivity and compromise. Bottom line for me is that architecture as a profession has too often failed to attract people with characteristics of leadership. And because of that I'm not surprised that the major crisis within the profession these days is often the lack of control when faced against, developers/business people/politicians and whatnot.

Nov 20, 07 8:50 pm  · 
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brian buchalski

Treekiller, I think I?e already proposed a di-arc (detroit institute of architecture) and I believe that classes are to be held in jafidler's basement...does anybody remember which thread that was?

I'm posting from blackberry again and my eyes & thunbs are about to explode...bedtime for me!

Nov 20, 07 8:54 pm  · 
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minimalicious

oooh a self-referential quote...neat!

Nov 21, 07 10:16 am  · 
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what about a semester with no drawings or any object making activity?

did anybody tried that? taking the pressure out of students to design things that they quite understand and just get them to talk and listen and write and read.
i liked to hear that from people who have done it.
we came close but it was again making some drawings during the last week.

we are just talking here.

Nov 21, 07 11:23 am  · 
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brian buchalski

actually, i didn't make much of anything during grad school beyond photoshoped powerpoint presentations...and that includes studio courses.

Nov 21, 07 11:36 am  · 
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treekiller

better keep them writing, reading, and rithmatic for that semester of no drawing!

Nov 21, 07 11:37 am  · 
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won and done williams

puddles, i've cleaned out a corner of my basement to host classes for di-arc. so far aren't you the dean and le bossman and i are on faculty?

i was tempted to post di-arc on the experimental schools thread, but i'm not sure we're quite far enough along to start accepting students.

Nov 21, 07 12:43 pm  · 
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brian buchalski

that's right, i'm the dean...which is why i'm never seen on campus (i'm "fundraising") and i get a ton of ridiculous email. i think that you and bossman need to submit course syllabuses soon for approval.

Nov 21, 07 12:55 pm  · 
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mdler

dont give grades. The competition between students is detrimental to the development of the ideas in studio

Nov 21, 07 12:57 pm  · 
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another inject;
it would be very helpful to students if there were some contractors in the faculty.
i had one in community college where i start to study design and his class was very helpful in understanding some materials and methods.
wait, that was the exact name of his class.
'materials and methods for construction'

Nov 21, 07 1:01 pm  · 
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treekiller

just have the students vote every week to kick a student off the island.

Nov 21, 07 5:53 pm  · 
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among the educators at architecture schools, usually there are two different teaching methods discussed;
individuality based education
and,
curriculum based education

individuality based systems naturally requiring bigger budgets and therefore raising the tiution bar. it has a more organic structure with the ability to faster adopt and include various currents and trends. more dynamic, in other words, but exclusive.
curriculum based education is usually a city or state or a large foundation based and it is more quantifiable/accountable.
people's version of architectural education. however, this comes with a price, that is, less dynamism and experimental platforms that breeds new discoveries and changes.

with different budgetary considerations, we are getting into, finances of architectural departments including the private schools. the workings of financial models to run the institution. if change is needed, this is where it is going to start. the architecture schools are mainly there for supplying the demand. they are a direct response to conditions of construction industry.
sorry, there is no chicken or the egg here. there is the demands of construction industry and its peripherals and there is the schools that supply the work force to be part of that economy as architects, engineers.
they are part of the team that builds the house, the mall, the church, the banks and the condos to name a few.
the industry says "i need x number of architects in next five years."
that is where it starts and ends. schools are largely supplying talent into fairly conservative industry.

architecture en masse, is a curriculum based profession. the supply that arrive from individual based educational places, usually digested by the profession and eventually neutralized.

i like the potentiality of democratic element in curriculum based system as it can reach more people via the lesser cost and eventually raising the knowledge about architecture and what it can do for the public.

how do you come up with a different method that combines the advantages of both methods of teaching?
making experimental and more dynamically responsive teaching systems available to bigger interest pools.





Nov 21, 07 6:18 pm  · 
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treekiller

beyond those two approaches, there are two other polarities that all american architecture schools seem to fall between (with a few exceptions)

Bauhaus ---------------------------------------------------Beaux Arts

for example Notre Dame is the last Beaux Arts school. Most other programs are aligned towards a bauhaus pedagogy. The exceptions include taliesin, rural studio, and di-arc which all defy this categorization...

the other axis that most schools can be placed on is between practice and academics, where most state schools fall on the practice end and most ivies skew towards academics... exceptions do exist, but the easiest litmus test is how far the graduates scatter after graduation with schools serving the local market again skewing towards practice.

Nov 21, 07 6:26 pm  · 
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brian buchalski

well as dean of di-arc...I most admit that I'm pleased to hear of it spoken on such complimentary terms. Thank you!

Orhan, I agree with your assessment of schools (especially larger state schools) as essentially business entities. However I disagree with your suggestion that they are responsive to the supply-and- demand cycle of the construction/building industry. I would argue that the schools have cast their gaze at the other end of the pipline and are primarily interested in the supply-and-demand dynamics of incoming students rather than outgoing graduates. That is, more enrolled students = more revenue for the universities. And in today's marketplace even poor students are eligible for gov loans and in the school's eyes that is still revenue to them (even if it might saddle the student with years worth of debt). In the past fifty years schools have become very adept at growing revenues by continually expanding in both enrollments and facilities.

This has also had the unfortunate side effect of flooding the marketplace with more graduates than the industry really needs, ergo the continuing litany of complaints from young architects that jobs are often difficult to find, under-paying and with relatively stagnant increases in salaries until the recent grad has weathered the competitive battle storm of their early post grad years and managed to outlast their less durable young colleagues.

In some of her later writings, jane jacobs was critical of the expansive growth of universities. She had also written of fundamental moral differences in the cultures of commercial enterprise versus guardian entities. In short, she probably would have argued that "guardian" entities such as a profession (e.g., architecture) and it's school should not be driven by the values of commercial enterprises. In other words, when schools are run by "ceo's" rather than educators...that is probably not a good thing. I'd expand on that by basically saying that the schools are collectively failing in their role as gatekeepers and facilitating the weeding out process necessary for profesional exclusive. No wonder the profession has needed the rise of an increasingly challenging idp and are period with which to weed out the lesser souls hoping to be architects.

Trouble is that this recalibration of entry requirements to the esteemed professional ranks of "architect" now favors those individuals with patience, persistence, and possibly extensive financual resources rather than actual design/professional talent.

to return to the founding impetus of di-arc...we felt strongly enough that our critique above required something different. That is why di-arc is different. Mooney is not the driving factor in the size of our student body. we search for talented students. young people who should be architects regardless of the circumstances of their (and our own) existence. from there we work to use our resources to improve the strenght of these individuals as they prepare for the challenges they'll face during the arc of their careers. Ours is an exclusive program and we are only concerned with the quality of the development in student work. Nobody simply "skates by" here...and students are not passed simply because they worked hard, sacrificed lots of personal time and produced a large number of drawinga and or models. The goal is quality work regardless of whether student can produce that in one hour or 100 hours...in fact, we encourage students to figure out what they are capably of doing well and then developing practices that will allow them to conduct their work in a manner that will allow them to otherwise lead healhty & balanced lives. It's unfortunate that so many other schools are so racked with their own personal guilt for "selling out" that they would rather subject their students to the senseless practice of self-sacrifice in the name of bad art than make an hoest assessment of the student's strenghts & weaknesses.

we currently have a very,very small enrollment...but we feel supremely confident in the long term results of our quality-over -quantity approach to pedagogy.

Nov 21, 07 9:37 pm  · 
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"It's easy to sit in at a desk and draw up your fantasy world (like di-arc?)...it's much harder to work with others to craft an environment of inclusivity and compromise."

Future School of Ironies, right?

otherwise

just face the fact that (architectural) education is now something bought, thus be smart and 'design' the best product. Personally, I'd buy low pulp plus calcium whatever brand is on sale.

Nov 22, 07 11:20 am  · 
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Lauf, you should teach history at di-arc.

puddles, is di-arc pass/fail? I agree with mdler about pass/fail, and none of this 'high pass', 'low pass' BS like they've got at the GSD, please.

Need a drawing teacher?

Nov 22, 07 1:32 pm  · 
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bowling_ball

I only have a minute before I have to get to class, but I will say that I'm doing my first arch studio right now, and I haven't built a damn thing. The semester's over in two weeks and I would be surprised if more than 20% of my classmates (that would be 2 of 10) have any sort of spatial model built. My school is accredited but is probably more theoretical than most (with a healthy dose of structures classes), probably partly thanks to our dept. head, who took over a couple of years ago and has by all means changed the entire structure of the school.

More later, I'm going to be late!

Nov 22, 07 3:23 pm  · 
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brian buchalski

we do offer grades for our courses using the lucky charms methodolgy. there are no "A" or "B" grades with their preconeived notions of heirarchy...instead we grant "blue moons", "red balloons", "purple horeshoes", etc.

it's completely arbitrary. some years have more of one grade than another, but they don't really mean anything. of course, it's interesting to see how track over time...

the grading topic was actually explored in an earlier thread on studio grades in fact, here's the grades that were lightheartedly distributed at that time...

archinthecity - purple shamrock

vado retro - yellow moon for messing up the picture post

cameron sinclair - orange star

rationalist - orange star

manama - purple shamrock

jump - blue diamond

kissy_face - blue diamond

ochona - orange star

myriam - pink heart

agfa8x - blue diamond

melquiades - blue diamond

adso - purple shamrock

typetpmark - blue diamond

io35pep - blue diamond

jumpy - pink heart

hasselhof - blue diamond

momentum - pink heart

j -blue diamond

and everybody else (who didn't post to this thread) gets one of those lame oats.

Nov 22, 07 3:36 pm  · 
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