I’m reading a book called The Most Beautiful House in the World by Witold Rybczynski. Interspersed with his retelling of building himself a shed for his boat, he relates a history of architectural practice.

This is interesting because I am learning at the GSD, if nothing else, that we are being trained to practice architecture in a particular kind of way. I constantly find myself questioning the pedagogy. I wonder if it at all fits in with the kind of architect I want to be.

I am a big fan of vernacular architecture, or, more accurately, of “primitive” yet effective built solutions to mitigate certain climate conditions. I have read Architecture without Architects a few times. In a nutshell, this is my observation: how did these so-called “primative” people build such beautiful and useful buildings, and if that knowledge, talent, and skill exists, then why do so many so-called highly trained and educated architects of our era build such ugly pieces of trash? Some famous starchitects build things that look as though a monster has chewed its way through metropolis and then puked it all up.

(Do you know who I’m talking about? Can you think of several famous contemporary architects of whom I might be speaking?)

And so, imagine my delight when I came across the following footnote in The Most Beautiful House in the World:

The two giants of late-nineteenth-century American architecture, Louis Sullivan and HH Richarson, both studied at the Beaux-Arts, but without completing the degree requirements. The great Victorian architect Edwin Lutyens studied at an art school for only two years, did not finish the course, and two years later established his practice, at the precocious age of twenty. Not one of the three best-known architects of the twentieth century – Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier – recieved a formal architectural education.