02/24/09 @ 07:40:16 am, Categories: Grad School, 522 words  

We had our first review of the semester yesterday.

I realized that a large part of my frustration and disillusion with this project stemmed from the fact that there was a fundamental difference in what I though the assignment was…and what the critics thought the assignment was.

And I didn’t realize this until late in the review.

I had been operating from the idea that we were supposed to build a structure out of brick with certain programmatic elements (a stair, a bench, a portal.)

Which is what I did. I had a house design I came up with about a year ago that I liked very much, so I isolated the staircase and further developed it within the confines of this assignment. I looked at certain historical precedents, such as the ancient Roman hypocausts and Asplund’s Little Chapel and used certain elements to refine my project. I was pleased. I could imagine myself and my friends sitting on its wide platforms, comfortably warm as the masonry slowly released the heat from the two-flue fireplace that punctured the structure. Perhaps we would have a few drinks. Perhaps a couple would descend the stairs and make their way to the intimate bench hidden in the structure to cuddle by the enclosed fireplace below.

(At one preliminary pin-up, I was told that my narrative was not helpful.)

But as we progressed in the project, I became steadily aware that something was terribly, terribly wrong. My classmates were designing things that made me wonder: How will that stand up? What if a strong wind comes along? How can a person actually use your stair when the treads are so tiny? How can a person be at all comfortable sitting on that?

I was further dismayed by the displeasure the critics took in my project. One even remarked, “It looks like that could be built tomorrow.” As though that were a bad thing.

I asked my critic about it later. Is it a bad thing to design something that looks like it could be built tomorrow?

Her answer astonished and disturbed me:

“In practice, no. In academia, yes.”

(I think I hate you, academia.)

I just didn’t get it…until late in the review.

The assignment, it finally dawned on me, was not to actually build something that would be comfortable to use. It wasn’t necessarily to design something that could even be built.

The assignment was to see what crazy tricks I could make a brick do. Really. That was it. So simple. It was, essentially, not at all about designing something with firmness and commodity, but rather, just mental masturbation.

Our next project will again concern designing with a particular material (so we’ve been told). This raises the question: do I play along? Do I make – what? Vinyl siding? – twist into funny convuluted shapes and make a pretty rendering of it for Review Day? What? Really?

Or do I design something that people would enjoy using, that serves some actual purpose…and get executed for it before a firing squad of academics?

I know the answer. Hand me my last cigarette.

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02/17/09 @ 08:41:14 pm, Categories: Architects, Grad School, 366 words  

I just want to know.

Why does making a study of architecture = staring at a computer all day?

Why does it mean placing your entire life, your relationships, your friendships, your hobbies, your meals, your sleeping, your sanity, everything on hold?

My classmates stay up most of the night, every night, staring like zombies at their computer screens, contorting their spines into curious shapes in order to accomodate the low-to-the-desk screens of their laptops. Everyone looks pale and sick. We all look like hell.

I am on Day Two of my boycott against the insanity.

You know what I did instead?

I went outside. Gasp! Into the sunlight and fresh air!

And then later I delighted myself by taking photographs of beautiful old brick buildings here in Boston.

And then later I pleasured myself by paging through a book about tree houses around the world!

Oh architecture, I still love you. I continued to be fascinated by you and your ways. I still want to learn to speak your language so that I can utter your terribly beautiful poetry.

But this pedagogy is making me lose my mind!

The other day, I was describing our current project to my boyfriend.

He asked, “But, aren’t you supposed to be designing something *real*?”

His comment frustrated me.

It frustrated me because I agree with him. I think we should be doing “something real.” I think we should be outside building. Talking to people. Seeing how we can improve their lives. We should be talking to real architects. We should be going to planning and zoning meetings. We should be out in the community gaining first hand experience. Changing lives. Being brilliant. You know, all the things we came here to do.

Instead, all of our hours are filled with staring at our computer screens, cut off from humanity, working in a state of exhaustion, frustration, and panic.

Is this the best way to teach the next generation of architects? Really?

(Is this why our school goes by the name Graduate School of Divorce?)

(And is this why so many people who get a degree in architecture go into another field altogether after graduation?)

I just want to know.

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02/07/09 @ 11:09:37 am, Categories: Books, 558 words  

In my last post I quoted a book I just read about Jersey Devil called Jersey Devil: Design/Build Book by Michael Crosbie.

This morning I finished another, called Devil’s Workshop by Susan Piedmont-Palladino and Mark Alden Branch, which likewise has a quote about the place of architectural education that continues to be relevant.

The question of whether it is theory or practical experience that forms the primary knowledge base of architecture has remained one of the central dilemmas of architectural practice and education since the Renaissance. During the nineteenth century, France and England exemplified this dilemma in the divergent ways in which they educated architects. France, where architects were educated at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, considered theory primary; England, where education tended to rely on apprenticeships, considered practical knowledge primary and thought of architecture as a trade than as a learned profession. For most of the nineteenth century the United States followed the English model, as it had during the colonial era. American architecture in the eighteenth century had relied on pattern books written expressly for the owner-craftsman who found himself “in the remote parts of the Country where little or no assistance for Design can be procured.” While the more theoretical treaties of Vitruvius or Palladio were available in colonies, they were expensive. The pattern books were popular and contained details, elements, and entire buildings that could be “executed by any Workman who understands Lines…” Over the course of the nineteenth century, however, American education abandoned its craft-based tradition and turned toward the Beaux Arts model as the path to professional legitimacy. Consequently, the values of apprenticeship, such as construction and craft, were marginalized by a curriculum that emphasized delineation, history, geometry, and engineering principles. The knowledge gained from making buildings became peripheral to the professional definition of the architect, and so remains today.

The professional internship, which would seem at first glance to redress the division between theory and practice, in fact reinforces it. The internship derives from the recognition that a theory-based education has certain limits, yet even here the novice architect is rarely offered field experience, and never actual construction experience, but rather the chance to apply to a “real” project the same abstract design skills learned in the academy. Those design skills, developed and refined on monumental and idealized studio projects, are more often than not applied to the proverbial fire stair and bathroom details. Students who look to the internship as the time to learn finally “how things go together” find that budget and expedience often conspire to limit their access to the construction process. More than that, however, the segregation of the architect from the activities if the building is endemic to a professional culture in which practice is defined as the rendering of a service, The internship is dedicated to training, some might say indoctrinating, new professionals in the “how” of serving the client, rather than the “how” of building the building. The perceived loss of respect for architects throughout the construction industry can be seen as one of the inevitable results of this situation. The increasing interest in design-build in the part of many architecture students (and the media) might be said to be another, though the design-build studios now offered by a number of academic programs are still seen largely as supplements to a theory-based education.

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02/07/09 @ 10:35:21 am, Categories: Books, 429 words  

For our first studio project of the spring semester here at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, we’re to design a structure that relies on compression. It should include a portal and a place for two people to sit. And it should be made completely out of brick.

Michael Meredith, who is leading studio this semester, supplied us with copious pdfs of precedents.

But I find myself turning to Jersey Devil for inspiration.

I checked out both books on Jersey Devil from our library, and in each I was struck by how well their ethos resonated with me.

This is how Michael Crosbie, author of Jersey Devil: Design/Build Book describes it:

Much of early America was built by architects who operated similarly to Jersey Devil. They were called “architect/builders” and often traveled through a region designing and building houses, churches, stores, and schools. They too would begin with some basic assumptions about the building required, develop designs, and then execute them, making adjustments to meet the demands of the site, materials, program, and climate.

It was during the Industrial Revolution that this relationship between architect and architecture began to disintegrate. Mechanized production, the division of labor, and the sheer demand to build more structures faster affected architecture by forcing a wedge between designer and builder. Architects set themselves apart as a professional class that was quite different than mere tradesmen. Buildings were (and still are) designed in their entirety down tot he last detail before ground was broken. Then drawn and written instructions were given to the people who would assemble the structure – the builders – who were required by law not to deviate from the plans in any way without express permission from the architect. Any changes necessary were communicated back from the building site to the architect in the office.

This divorce was ultimately institutionalized by the American Institute of Architects, which, in 1909, adopted a code of ethics that explicitly forbade architects from engaging in building construction. Thus the hand and the mind were severed in the creation of the built environment. Certain trends in architecture today reflect the malignancy of this separation. Technological advancements is bittersweet: it often makes our lives easier by placing buffers between us and the real world of raw experience. The fabrication of built reality fir the architect is not unlike eating synthetic food or engaging in telephone sex. Meanwhile, the ethics of architects who chose to build their own designs are suspect while others receive public acclaim for their unbuilt (if not unbuildable) designs. We live in strange times.

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