Architecture Addiction, The Official Blog of

Yesterday I discussed my disappointments with Harvard’s Graduate School of Design with Curtis B Wayne on his radio program, Burning Down the House.

Also on the show were Prof Roderick L Knox of Cooper Union and the architect Matthew Arnold.

You can listen to the show right on the Heritage Radio Network.

To prepare for the show, I was asked to be ready to tell about some of the bullshit I experienced at the GSD. I wrote up about 6 pages of notes. I only got to use a couple of my tales. I thought I’d share the rest with you. Think of it as a behind the scenes treat.

NUMBER ONE

They have a weird way of wanting us to be creative. The way I work, is I feed my brain. I get my brain drunk on the things that interest me, that delight me. I travel. I read things that fascinate me. I talk to interesting people. I try to keep my brain satiated. Then, when I have a design challenge, I give my brain the problem, and then I go about my business, and usually by the next day, or even in the middle of the night, my brain says, “Okay, here’s a solution.” And it will show me the entire idea in detail. It will zoom in and zoom out. It will pan and rotate. And then I draw it up, or design it in the computer, or make models. And in every art class, or design class, I’ve ever taken, I was the best. It was such a wonderful feeling to create such delightful things so easily. It felt so good to walk into my studio at the University of Idaho on pin-up days, and it was like, “What did Katy do this time?”

How they want you to create at the GSD is very different. They want you to sit at your desk and labor as long as it takes, methodically working out every iteration of an idea that you can until you can’t see straight and your legs go numb from sitting so long. I hated it. If I try to pull an idea out of my subconscious, it essentially aborts the idea, and a partially-cooked idea is no good to me.

I remember talking to a few classmates first semester about this, and one girl told me that this isn’t the way she likes to create either, but hey, we’re at Harvard, so let’s just try it their way and try to learn something from it.

So okay, that’s a good point. I tried it their way. I didn’t like it. I wasn’t happy with my work. I felt like I was accomplishing a small percentage of what I could be accomplishing, but I’m also thinking, okay, maybe this will teach me something useful.

The problem is, this method requires copious amounts of output, but leaves little time for input, what I called feeding my brain. After a while, it’s like trying to squeeze blood from a turnip.

I keep at this until maybe about mid-semester of the Spring. I have a heart to heart with myself, and I’m like, this method just is not working for me. I really want to go back to my usual way of creating. And the way I had to do that was to feed my brain. So I took the day off from my 7-day-a-week school schedule and I walked into Boston. I took pictures of some buildings that I liked. I love Boston, and I just focused on enjoying myself. That’s it. And in the late afternoon, I felt pretty good, so I went home, started up AutoCAD, and just like that, drew up plans, sections, and elevations for a project that I had been stuck on. I was more productive in 4 hours – four hours of easy work – than I had been in my entire time at the GSD.

I plotted it all out the next morning in time for studio, and my critic was very happy with what I had done. So I think to myself, ah, we’re getting somewhere. So I told her about my method. She called it the Boston Method, and she encouraged me to keep doing it. I was elated. And I had the best review of my time at the GSD.

But you know what, when I did it again a couple of weeks later for our final project, she was upset with me for missing class. When we started this final project, despite how happy she was how it worked out on the other project, she continued to want me to draw out every iteration of the idea as it progressed. Even though my method works, she insisted that I go back to this laborious way of doing things.

So when I missed class again so that I could simply, easily, and quickly move forward on this project, she was upset, she told me I was behind, that I wouldn’t finish in time, and without any input on my part, had decided that she was going to give me an Incomplete and that I could finish studio at the end of Summer. Which means that the few weeks I had left to complete the project would be stretched out for another 3 and a half months.

NUMBER TWO

The first studio project of my Harvard experience was the Odd Fellows Hall in Cambridge. We were supposed in insert an elevator into this building, so I thought it would be a good idea to go take a look at it and see where the best place would be. I found the building, and my reaction was: there should NOT be an elevator in this building! It had the most beautiful staircases I’d ever seen. On the right side of the building, the stairs start by circling up clockwise. You get a couple of stories up, and the stairs reverse direction, so that now you’re ascending counter-clockwise. And on the left side of the building, you’ve got the mirror image of another staircase. They’re absolutely beautiful. And when you look at the plans, all of the rooms fit together so intelligently, it seemed like a shame to disturb any of that with an elevator.

Back at the GSD, our critic told us to “go crazy.” He even suggested knocking out all the walls and starting over.

The way they wanted us to do our drawings, they kept telling us to “diagram” things. I still don’t know what that means. My classmates did diagrams by, for example, drawing lines on the plans connecting the midpoint of every window together, you know, that kind of thing. Some totally arbitrary thing that reduces the complexity of the building down to some meaningless lines. And then they would use those lines to generate a new set of plans that had only a tenuous relationship to the actual building.

My classmates came up with some pretty crazy designs, alright. It looked like they were designing spaces that would be used to psychologically torture inmates. And I just couldn’t do it. I had visited the building, and it made me heartsick that we were supposed to destroy it just for a stupid elevator.

I didn’t see the point of doing these diagrams, and it seemed like a really ridiculous way to design, but I was also under a lot of pressure to make a set of diagrams anyway. So I diagrammed a person’s movement through the building, which is not in straight lines, nor is it possible to predict a person’s precise movement through the space. It shouldn’t be. But because my diagram diagrammed something arbitrary and unpredictable instead of arbitrary and unchanging, the critics gave me a lot of grief during the final review. And they equally berated me over my drawings in which I carefully positioned the elevator so as to cause the least amount of disturbance possible. I felt like they wanted me to be crazy and ridiculous for the sake of being crazy and ridiculous. I walked away thinking, Man, this place is really fucked up.

NUMBER THREE
I attended GreenBuild 2008 in Boston, and I went to a panel discussion on architectural education. In short, I was outraged. RMJM Hillier polled 20 of the top architecture schools. The research found that students wanted to learn about green design…and professors thought they were doing a GREAT job in teaching green design…and the firms that hired the graduates though that these grads knew very little about green design.

NUMBER FOUR

Partway through spring semester, we students were having a discussion in studio. One student raised the point that the things that drew him to be an architect were not the things that were being taught in our program. A few others agreed. It was true for me as well.

I often felt that the only way that I could learn what I went to the GSD to learn was if I skipped class – in order to create time – and went to the library to read about the topics that actually interested me. And whenever I did this, I was mad. I couldn’t help but think, “I am getting tens of thousands of dollars in debt when I could’ve just bought a couple of books.”

Anyway, our critic came into the studio, and we shared our concern with her. She laughed and said, “You’ll spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of your life before you ever do what you want to do.” REALLY???

NUMBER FIVE

I actually liked my Energy, Technology, & Building class a lot because I am very interested in designing climate-appropriate houses. As a treat for the last day of class, we got to take a field trip to an old building that had been restored and was being used as an office building. It had some level of LEED certification. And you know I’m not a big fan of LEED, but it was really nice, really educational, to walk around inside a building that got it’s daylighting and natural ventilation right. It was great. I thought it was simply the most useful thing we had done all semester – well actually it was a half-semester course. And I told our professor that we should have a class that was nothing but field trips to buildings. He agreed with me – he thought was a great idea, but he seemed to say something along the lines that such a class wouldn’t work.

NUMBER SIX

We had five studio projects fall semester, and as an afterthought, they thought maybe that was too much. So spring semester we had three, and two of those were libraries. The first project, we had to design a structure out of brick.

It turned out that the project was NOT about building something that could rest securely on a foundation of firmness, commodity, and delight. It turned out the project was about seeing what kind of ridiculous things you could make a brick do.

NUMBER SEVEN

Spring semester we had this intolerable class called Scripting. It’s full name was Digital Design: Algorithms & Scripts. It was three hours every Tuesday night. It’s essentially a class where we were to learn to program 3D modeling software such that it would automatically create architectural form. Sounds cool, no? The problem was, the professor tried to teach us how to do this by showing us Power Point slides of what the code looked like, in tiny, tiny font.

I learned HTML & CSS at the University of Idaho, and though that was about 10 years ago, I learned it well enough that I still know how to do it, and I have made money off from these skills. Those classes were taught in a very different way: the professor, Frank Cronk, would spend about 20 minutes sitting with each student, guiding us, talking about life, talking about all the great things we would one day do, and answering our questions.

For this scripting class at the GSD, the entire first year class – about 60 students – took the class at once. Partway through the class, we had a special study session led by an older student. We were all so lost. One of my classmates said, “This is a foreign language, and it’s like you’re trying to teach us sentences. We haven’t even learned the letters yet.”

I got one question right on the midterm, and I don’t know what I got on the final. I do know, however, that the final exams were due the day after the deadline for final grades. I passed the class.

NUMBER EIGHT

We had twenty credit’s worth of required classes each semester. For fun (irony? cruelty?) they hosted a sleep expert to come in and tell us how important, how vitally, critically important it was for us to get regular, adequate sleep. He told us all about how unhealthy and psychologically damaging it was to be habitually sleep-deprived. No matter, we still had twenty credit’s worth of required classes each semester.

On this week’s episode of Burning Down the House we discussed a sociological study of architectural education.

Here it is!

How Architecture Schools Neuter their Students

I’ll be on Curtis B Wayne’s radio program, Burning Down the House tomorrow, Wednesday August 18th at 4 pm PST / 7 pm EST to discuss my experience with graduate level architectural education, and the broader issue of the ineffectiveness of a lecture-based pedagogy.

I advocate a hands-on approach to learning architecture. You can learn more about my ideas for a new architecture school.

I was listening a podcast of Curtis B Wayne’s radio program, Burning Down the House, Episode 3, last night. Towards the end, they started talking about LEED.

I think anything that uses “points” as a system of determining quality or value is a bunch of crap. For example, school grades, SAT scores, GRE scores are all crap. I wish I had known that before I went through all the trouble of making sure I got high grades and high scores. But I digress.

Curtis said he thinks it’s crap too. Guest Gennaro Brooks-Church rejoined by saying that he was a LEED AP…

…but that he too thought it was crap. “I think it’s a good starting point. It’s better than not building…”

Curtis: “As a consciousness-raising…”

Gennaro: “No. If you’re a total moron developer, who has no scruples, I think if you gave him a LEED checklist, it would make a better building. But if you’re a green builder I think it’s a useful reference.”

He also mentioned Henry Gifford who did a study of LEED-certified homes. Turns out that they tend to use MORE energy than a non-LEED-certified home.

I did you the favor of finding the article for you.

http://www.finehomebuilding.com/item/5872/is-the-leed-program-a-fraud

The LEED rating system is “a tragedy,” according to Henry Gifford, resulting in buildings that use more energy, not less, and “a fraud perpetrated on U.S. consumers trying their best to achieve true environmental friendliness.” Henry is a mechanical systems specialist in New York City and, apparently, a vocal critic of the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE

You can listen to Episode 12 of Burning Down the House to hear Henry Gifford.

And here’s Henry Gifford’s personal blog.

I just finished a graphic book called Architecture for Beginners by Louis Hellman. It’s great. I love it. You should read it.

I particularly wanted to share a couple of pages with you about early 20th-century German architecture:

My sister Lila shared this with me. Yes. The time has come.

ROUND PRE FAB!

Because of its unique shape and the generous natural light from the roof dome, the ‘Pod’ actually looks bigger on the inside than the outside.

Read More!

I want to know more about what YOU want in architecture school.

So I made a survey.

It’s on the right side of this page and down a little.

Please take it. And have your friends take it. I’m using this information to help design a new kind of architecture school, and I need your honest input. I’m not sure how long I’ll keep the survey open, but I will post the results from time to time.

Thanks!

In northern Alberta a giant rampaging beaver has devastated local communities. While the local military has made several attempts to no avail, local communities are at a standstill as its giant pancake style tail flattens buildings and maims children….

That is what this article should have began like. However, both disappointing and fascinating at the same time is a giant beaver dam that can be seen from space. While tracking permafrost in Wood Buffalo National Park in northern Alberta, researcher Jean Thie stumbled upon the massive beaver dam. Originally found in 2007 using satellites and google Earth the beaver dam was discovered 190km north of Fort McMurray in Alberta.

Working since the 1970s these creatures don’t disappoint their “busy beaver” moniker having several generations hard at work constructing the 850m structure (2800 feet). Normally these dams reach roughly 10 - 100m and rarely do they ever get bigger.

“Several generations of beavers worked on it and it’s still growing,” Jean told AFP in Ottawa.

According to Geostrategis.com the actual search strategy was based on analysing hundreds of dams across Canada and using broad characteristics, certain areas were considered having the highest probability of high density beaver dam landscapes. Using Canada’s national Air Photo Library in Ottawa and Google Earth images the new dam was found and would have remained hidden without such technology.

Beavers were hunted extensively for their pelts for many centuries throughout north america. Thie also describes how they are not only repopulating areas but even “re-engineering the landscape,". Beavers use these dams to create deep water which allows the them to be more mobile and they are an essential part of creating Canada’s wetland habitat. With all the trees it took, I think we can rest with that whole “who ruined the environment” search we’ve all been on.

Source

Christopher Thompson wrote in to tell us about Cabin Fever. They design and manufactur prefab cabins and cottages out of Florida.

We make a range of smart, stylish, and affordable prefabs, and I just thought you might be interested in our newest product. We call it the ZipCabin and it is a very exciting SIP and wood-frame hybrid that is designed as a small-scale, easy-to-build structure for use as a backyard accessory building or small getaway camp. They make perfect pool cabanas, yoga rooms, home offices, and art studios.

The standard ZipCabin is 10′x12′, permit-exempt in many areas, and has an optional 6′x12′ covered deck. The whole structure sits on a robust platform raised on steel feet for easy installation on any surface.

Our first two ZipCabins were recently shipped to Alaska.

Check out their website www.cabinfever.us.com to see their other prefab products, including our flagship model, the curved-roof Maxwell.

Architect Curtis B Wayne has a radio program especially for architecture enthusiasts called Burning Down the House.

Which was my favorite song in 1984, BTW.

Architecture is the laser focus of Burning Down the House, a weekly discourse on all things built, destroyed, admired, and despised. Each week Curtis B. Wayne, your Tudor tutor, invites a posse of authors, critics, builders, designers, and other architecture fiends to reflect on various topics related to perhaps the most functional of art forms.

Curtis B Wayne is a graduate of the Cooper Union in New York City and of Harvard Design School. He has designed and built projects ranging from the Bridgehampton National Bank Headquarters to restoration of the torch of the Statue of Liberty.

For more info, take a look at http://burningdownthehouse-radioarchitecture.blogspot.com

Curtis and I are going to talk about the main problem with architecture: architects don’t know how to build!

Listen live on Wednesday 18th August at 7ET/4PT on Burning Down the House

You will also be able to download the podcast from iTunes.

As you may know from reading the box to your right and down a little called “places where you could probably learn more about designing and building in just a few days than I did after a year of grad school,” I am starting my own architecture school.

And I need your help coming up with a name.

I have a few ideas. Tell me what you like. Tell me what you don’t like. And if you have some ideas of your own, I’d love to hear them. You can also vote and post your ideas directly on our Facebook page.

My ideas so far:

• Hands-On School of Domestic Architecture (or HOSODA for short)
• Hands-On School of Residential Architecture (or HOSORA for short)
• Design/Build School of Domestic Architecture (or DBSODA for short)
• Design/Build School of Residential Architecture (or DBSORA for short)

UPDATE!

I have named the school.

It’s name is VERB. Because architecture is a VERB, not a NOUN!

Yes, I totally stole this from drewprops.

Students of Architecture intimately know the meaning of the term “all-nighter” and as an alumnus of Georgia Tech’s architecture program I feel that it is important that I share with you, my internet pals, each of the various stages that you pass through during an all-nighter so that you might better navigate the dicey straits of educationally-induced sleep deprivation if ever you chance to find yourself staring down the barrel of an 8:30am class deadline. What follows is a typical night before the deadline for a typical architecture student….

STAGE ONE – 6PM
You have officially entered into evening. The studio is half full and you begin to feel the tug of “quitting time” as you see students with other majors walking back to their dorms. Some of your fellow students drift out to grab some dinner. Go ahead and join them, you might as well have something in your stomach for all that’s about to follow.

STAGE TWO – 8PM
Welcome back to the studio! You’re full of food, full of spirit and full of commitment to make it home in time to get some sleep. With the feeling that you currently possess there’s a good chance that you might finish by Midnight and head home to get a great night’s sleep, shouting “So long suckers!!!” at your classmates on your way out the door. Now: where’d you put your 45 degree triangle?

STAGE THREE – 9PM
Hmm, still going strong… but you just remembered that you need to do a bird’s eye view of the project and you haven’t touched the rough pencil-lined version you made about a week ago…. crap, your professor just HAD to go and “help” you “radically improve the design” two days ago. Man that chump just added two hours to your schedule. Still, making it out of here by 2am isn’t bad. Hey, did somebody just take your electric eraser?

STAGE FOUR – 10:37:04PM
Wow. You just had a really calm moment just now, but then you kind of forgot what you were drawing. The Morissey coming out of Stephen’s boombox ten feet to your left just mixed with the Billy Bragg coming out of Laurie’s boombox ten feet to the right and made MollyBraggissey right in the middle of your head… and who’s going to clean that muck up?? Still, the little jib-jib-jab-jab of sad Brits is creating a noise cancellation zone right in the middle of your soul and it’s helping you to make those short little tick marks for the brick pattern you’re drawing. Love the brick pattern, hate to ink it. How much farther to go? Let’s see… hey, two rows finished!! Out of.. mumble, mumble, carry the three, mumble,mumble…. oh crud. This is going to take a bit longer than you thought. What time did you say you’d be getting out of here? No I can’t remember either. Anyway, it’s coming up pretty soon now. Just keep drawing.

STAGE FIVE – 11:15PM
Okay, time to stand up and stretch. Heck, get up go downstairs to the vending machine and treat yourself to some Ho Ho’s – after all, you didn’t eat dessert while you were at Wendy’s. On your way through the studio take notice of exactly how many boomboxes are actually playing now; lots of them. The noise blends from step to step to step.

STAGE SIX – 11:50PM
Wow, Midnight is almost here and you’re not nearly as finished as you told yourself you’d be. Do you always overestimate like this? Work, work, work. Put your head down and work. Hey, you have to work on your model some…..

STAGE SEVEN – 12:46AM
Did you feel that? Your consciousness just sort of ‘rippled’ for a split-second. I think your body is wondering why you’re not laying in bed watching TV right now. What are you supposed to be doing right now? Oh yeah, a model. Well it’s not so bad now, that ripple was nothing. The model? Yeah, yeah, yeah I’m ON IT.

STAGE EIGHT – 1:00AM
Feelin’ pretty good now. Two drawings are 85 percent finished and the model is looking pretty darned sweet. That tower is like, the coolest thing going. Maybe it could use another X-Acto blade poking out of its roof. It’s looking so good that you’d best turn your attention back to the…… the…. um, oh yeah, the third drawing.

STAGE NINE – 2:17AM
Well, that clock sure did spin around pretty quickly – but look at what you have to show for it! Your watercolor isn’t really the best you’ve ever done but the blue sky really sets off the area that you masked off so you could ink in the details of your drawing. You know, you never really figured out what’s happening on this end of the building.. but that’s okay, Carey’s designing a building made entirely out of men’s stand-up urinals – who’s going to notice an undetailed wall when your sky looks this good!

STAGE TEN – 3:02AM
Okay, just five hours until you have to be done. You’re getting close to getting out of here on your schedule…. wait, no, that would’ve meant you’d have left the studio an hour ago and that didn’t happen did it? Did it?

STAGE ELEVEN – 3:30AM
Time for coffee and maybe some chocksalot donuts. Heh, did you just say “chocksalot” instead of “chocolate”? Heheheh, that’s kind of funny. And hey, Magnus just walked by with a piece of toilet paper stuck to his foot….hehehe – oh my gosh, Joel’s drawing looks like a giant robot penis and Mike just stuck his X-Acto in his hand AGAIN!! AAHHH HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!! Wooooooo, this is the most amazing moment you’ve ever experienced in your entire life!! Color are brighter, sounds are lush, the fugue rolling around in your head is exhilarating and you are the funniest you’ve ever been in your LIFE!!

STAGE TWELVE – 3:32AM
Who ARE these people around you and why are they all so gosh-darned LOUD!!!! Oh my GOD they’re so damned loud!! Can’t they see that you’re trying to…. to DO something with these things in front of you…. with a pen maybe, or… some glue?

STAGE THIRTEEN – 3:59AM
Hey, your model isn’t done yet and there’s another thing you need to do…. what was it? Maybe if you lay down under your drafting table for a five minute nap you’d be able to remember what that thing was?

STAGE FOURTEEN 4:01AM
All about you is carnage, you’re going to die alone. Why is Erica yelling at Chris? Why is Chris curling up on the floor? Did you just see Tony walk past you with red marker streaks all over his face? Channing just took his drafting stool apart and glued it to his model. Oh shit. The model, did you do it yet? DID YOU!!!?? Hey, Andy just showed up and started doing his first drawing!

STAGE FIFTEEN 5:15AM
Screw the drawings, they’re as done as you’re going to do them and if that fat-head professor has anything to say to you about it you’ll drag his smarmy ass out into the parking lot and beat the ever-lovin’ puddin’ out of him with your electric eraser and HEY you found your electric eraser!!! And you’re staring at your outstretched hand like a one year old. Snap out of it.

STAGE SIXTEEN 5:43AM
Okay, your model needed that coat of black spray paint – it really gave it that certain “ummph” that the white spray paint didn’t have (especially since there was a coat of candy apple red spray paint under that). Whenever you have time you need to ask somebody how long you should wait between coats of paint because it’s looking kind of…. kind of “saggy”.

STAGE SEVENTEEN 5:44AM
No WONDER the tower in your model looked so BIG!!! It’s the wrong damned scale!! Who’s going to build a thirty story turret on a community library anyway!!??? Just don’t…. okay, tell me you didn’t just touch the tower because — alright, tell me that you didn’t just lean on your rendering, you know, the one with the really nice blue sky??

STAGE EIGHTEEN 6:20AM
Okay your model repair is halfway decent, thank goodness that Tim had an extra piece of wood that he was decent enough to let you have. Nevermind that your model is made of paper that looks like it was intentionally spray painted to look like lava. Next time remember to a) hold the spray paint tip more than ONE INCH away from your target, and b) don’t touch what you spray paint within TWO SECONDS of the paint hitting it. What’s left to fix? Nothing? Wait, no, something.

STAGE NINETEEN 6:25AM
Bloody Hell, the bird’s eye view drawing – you haven’t even touched it yet. No time for drawing perspective lines now, this has got to be finished BY HAND. What could possibly go wrong?

STAGE TWENTY 6:54AM
Curses, the sun is rising. Why are you STILL here?? Oh no, is that nausea that you’re feeling? Is your head a little swimmy? For real, you need to go throw up. You just watched the sun go down a little while ago – this isn’t natural.

STAGE TWENTY ONE 7:30AM
Serenity. You have lived through a night of horrors, your drawings are as done as they could possibly be, the model has been repaired, there is nothing but the sound of working – the music has faded to silence. Life: it’s for the living – you’re a survivor. There’s a Zen to being Zenned out in Zen-ness and you are the still point of that Zenninnity.

STAGE TWENTY TWO 8:25AM
The professors just showed up and announced that your class can have another six hours to finish your projects. You just thought of something you can do with that extra X-Acto knife blade… and it involves car tires.

I just saw this on Architizer about famous architects that make the cover of Time.

What would the Time magazine cover look like with YOUR face on the front?

Post your Time cover on our Facebook Page.

Here are a few precedents to get you started:

R. Buckminster Fuller, Jan 10, 1964 by Boris Artzybasheff via Time

Le Corbusier, May 5, 1961, by Boris Chaliapin via Time

Philip Johnson, Jan. 8th, 1979 by Ted Thai via Time

Eero Saarinen, July 2, 1956 by Boris Artzybasheff via Time