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U.S. Design Publications :: Architecture
Education Study, Volume I CAPTIVE
OF LOVE AND IGNORANCE: ARCHITECTURE
EDUCATION PRACTICE pp.
775-801 By
Alan Balfour 1. INTRODUCTION The
main question considered in this essay is the nature of the influence which
studio teaching has on shaping architectural attitudes and roles. The corollary
question, examined in general terms, is the relationship between design
education and the practice of architecture. The
evidence, which forms the basis for the work is from interviews and observations
made in a single design studio in each of three university schools of
architecture over the course of one semester. Although
the material provides one of the most detailed records of design teaching yet
made from the point of view of understanding the preparation for practice
implicit in the educational process, it still provides only a limited
description from a very narrow and particular sample. The
school material contains, in addition to the structured interviews, recordings
of the many aspects of the teaching process, individual criticism, class
reviews, and discussions involving staff and students, both together and
individually. The evidence covers not only intentions but actions and reactions
and adjustments over time. The
author of this paper has intentionally cast a broad net over the material to
sort out major characteristics and to simplify the contradictions in the
evidence. The objective has been to find robust explanations for the methods of
design teaching in relationship to architecture and to the profession, the
metaphor for this rationale being that the trajectory of a career is
permanently influenced by its launching. 2.
ON PROGRAM An
important general finding is that, although the schools studied were
geographically far apart and different in character, there were striking
similarities in the way studio programs were run and design taught. For
example, given that design programs could have specific educational goals which
could be typically methodological, programmatic, technical, or professional, in
the settings studied, the manipulation of architectural forms was the dominant
and almost sole concern of the teachers. To achieve this focus, a fictional
program was used in each case as the vehicle for each teacher's particular theoretical
or attitudinal position. In
each case, the teacher used a particular fiction within the program and
achieved his/her objectives in part by deceit or confusion. For example, one
program was presented to the students as concerned with making a social
contribution to a minority neighborhood. The deceit in this case was that the
teacher, at the onset, implied that the project would show how architecture
could be an instrument for social change. It is hoped that the center will become a focus of
activity for the (minority) community and in addition to its daily uses, the
design... will encourage its use for festivals, exhibitions parties and
neighborhood political activity. However,
in discussions later the teacher admitted to the interviewer that: They (minority group) don't have very much to do
with it, but mixed use has. That makes the problem. To a certain extent it has
to do with urban design; the character of the place, the freeway, scale
relationships with senior citizen housing, and things like that. The
teacher appears to have practiced this deceit unconsciously, but during the
exercise, no attempt was made to consider the characteristics of the particular
minority group. He may not have thought through weather or not he intended to
imply that architecture could be an instrument of social change, only to then
deny the student the opportunity of exploring this position. Further evidence
of educational ambiguity is illustrated in one teacher's claim that his project
was developed in line with the official state education program only to have
this claim disapproved by state educationalists at the mid-term review. Teacher:
I thought that the Children's center...is only preschool. Expert:
No, it is not, in the city it's not, or at any place in the state for that
matter. Perhaps
the students had recognized the unreality of the exercise from the beginning
since they were untroubled to discover their designs were based on false
inadequate information. In
another case, the program was on urban redevelopment. The project involved the
relocation of a state agency combined with a complex mix of other uses, all to
be situated on a politically sensitive area. The students were given no brief,
the assumption being that formal manipulation would be the guide to content.
The teacher explained: Although the program is undetermined except in
general terms, the intention is to make the civic center a functionally
cohesive unit, and more importantly, an active urban place where the potentials
existing in the area are linked into a whole network with new overall symbolic
meaning. This
was an exercise in which, through formal invention derived from metaphor or
analogy, the content would be implicit. The deceit here arose from the stated
intention of running the studio exactly as if it were an urban designing
practice. This transformed the metaphor seeking process from a pedagogical
device into a professional technique, although the practice analogy seems to
have been promoted mainly to allow the teacher to take the students through a
series of constrained drawing exercises. During the exercise, the students did
not attempt team work, and at no time was there discussion of the relevance of
spatial manipulation skills to urban design. The
teacher, however, was confident of the importance of special manipulation. In
reply to the question, "can programming skills be taught?" he argued that: No, I don't think they can be taught literally. I
think it is a mistake to make a course deal with the problem, you...only
categorize and compound the problem. They (programming skills) can be taught
implicitly in the studio, and it ought to be the objective of every teacher. And
later: The primary import is for the physical forms and
circumstances to generate the program. I find that more rewarding in the end,
in terms of building up resources to do architecture later on, than playing the
game of programming...which is all verbal except for charts and graphics. Although
subjects and approaches varied, all three situations were consistent in making
the design exercise primarily a vehicle for the teachers' formal interests. The
program was, in every case, a fiction which claimed some basis in fact. 3.
ON SKILLS With
regard to skill teaching, the evidence indicates that the teachers had little
or no interest in the development of any of the obvious professional skills.
Obvious skills, in areas such as technology, construction, management, were
rarely discussed and when they were, teachers tended to demean and discount
their relevance. The teachers were conscious of their down-playing of the
technology and the most articulate and rigorous among them argued that his was
a reaction against the legacy of the Bauhaus: Answers to architecture were supposed to be derived
from a very systematic scientific, or "scientistic" rather, approach... that
ultimately can be summed up...(by) Hannes Meyer at the Bauhaus, in the drawing
that he did which is called \0x2018the plan calculates itself out of the following
factors,' and then comes sun, light and all of this. Well, no such thing, the
plan doesn't calculate itself out of anything. In
two other situations, the teachers argued that they were reacting against the
rationalism and over-intellectualism of the 60's. The hot things around here (in the late 60's) were
a lot of non-design activities, and the design studios have taken a sort of
anti-physical, at least anti-visual, appearance, and design work in the school
tended to be very analytical and there was almost nothing of visual image kind
of idea about architecture. At the same time, all over the world except in this
building went on this kind of fashion stuff; the fascination with crazy images
and visual things. So it seemed quite interesting to do at that time in this ...
school, take and make a critique for fancy pictorial and elegant stuff... It
doesn't seem to at the time, but then it (was a) very subversive thing to do.
It was very daring and the students put incredible energy into this, they were
sort of starved for the stuff. The attitude toward technology produced by the
reaction against rationalism is illustrated in the following exchange: Student: By the way, with
respect to glass, have we observed the Federal Heat Loss and Energy
Conservation Act for Buildings? Teacher: Go ahead. I don't
understand it, but if you know what it means, do it. The teacher then adds: The fact that you know this
little technical detail and want to solve the problem with it doesn't mean that
you have a solution to the problem, or even a viable idea. In another situation, the teacher argued against
the type of education in the 60's which had produced people who: Can
identify issues and talk well but when it comes to traditional skills of the
architect \0x2013 to manipulate
built form \0x2013 they are not only grossly inadequate but hostile to it... A lot of skills
have been lost... and people are operating so high on the intellectual ladder
that they
consider those to be the things that are trivial and unimportant. To
this teacher, manipulating built form appeared to have no relation to
construction, or program. The ability to manipulate built form in an abstract,
totally unconstrained setting, was for him the essential architectural skill,
and to this all other skills tended to be secondary or ignored. To summarize, the student was taught to discount
the relevance of technical skills. He as acculturated into a process which
simplified architectural problem-setting and problem solving and made such
fundamentals as the program and skills secondary to abstract special manipulation.
4.
ON INTENTIONS Everything
in these settings was subordinated to the manipulation of built form,
apparently as an end itself. This was achieved by encouraging the student into
a "willing suspension of disbelief." The
"willing suspension of disbelief" was a phrase coincidentally used by two of
the teachers. In the first case, the teacher described the attitude he desired
from the student in this way: ...the
student relationship was to be at least willing, in Coleridge's term, to (a) willing
suspension
of disbelief. To try something, to pick up a suggestion, and give
it a chance in
as objective terms as he knows how. The
second teacher said: You
are always simulating something which is not real... There has to be a level at
which the
student is willing to suspend disbelief... a kind of elaborate pretense...
suspending disbelief
is really very important. One of the great difficulties
that many students have is
their imagination... does not allow them to fantasize
sufficiently to believe in what they are
doing. And
later: Coleridge's
definition of art \0x2018art is the willing suspension of disbelief'... There is no
right way
to do it, and there is no wrong way to do it, so you can't put it in terms of
right and wrong. The
only way you can really state it is a willingness on the part of the beholder
to suspend
disbelief.
And it is true of education, particularly of education in a creative field,
because there
is no way you can educate someone without their willing suspension of their disbelief.
They have to be able to take something on faith
up to a certain point. They have
to sort of say \0x2018well even though I don't understand
what I am doing, or don't know why
I am doing this, I take on faith that it will produce something worthwhile. The
third setting also provided confirmation of what appeared to be a jointly
shared need by the teachers to have the students suspend "disbelief," or more
accurately, perhaps, suspend their critical judgment, "Do what I say, don't ask
me why, but let me take you into a world of pleasure without reason." So
the student, it appears, was primarily being groomed in a process called
\0x2018manipulation of built form', in order to develop a poetic sensitivity to
architecture. This process did not connect with any other tangible skills,
professional or otherwise, save those needed to support the manipulation. The
student was asked to suspend his critical judgment and be led by the teacher
into a poignant visual reawakening. This transformation in the way of looking
at the world was presented to the student, in every case, as based on form
without content. This
position produced some strange justifications on the part of the teachers. On
one setting, a teacher who introduced the "modern movement" to the
students in a slide show
accompanied by fragmentary and often incorrect comments, confided privately to
the interviewer that: I believe
that there is a collective process, a collective thing called the \0x2018modern
movement', that is worth something and that students in this school seem to
have a contempt towards. Maybe, in reaction, I overemphasize, deliberately, a
kind of reverence toward that, because I think it is worth something. I think
it is vastly underemphasized. I think it is important... that they start to
acquire a kind of literacy and knowledge. Later, this same teacher, discussing his method of
evaluation said: I put them on the wall and say which are good and
bad. The
interviewer asked the teacher if he had given any criteria at the beginning of
the course. The teacher replied: No, I did not... the student know what this is all
about. Maybe that is something which evolves over time. I don't think I am a
mystery to them. A lot of the skill in being an architect is achieving an
internal logic vis-\0x00E0-vis any kind of criteria, it doesn't matter what that is. In
all settings, it was the intention to develop the student's feeling of sensual
pleasure towards "high architecture", irrespective of relevance. One teacher
summarized the character of the students he was shaping through his teaching: A real sensitivity to the relationship between a
user and a space\0x2014behavior correlations\0x2014has not been a very high point in
evaluation (here). They think it is really important that (a building) looks a
certain way... and takes certain attitudes towards style and imagery. How all the
elements and spaces are put together , in what relation, and what sort of
architectural meaning they convey are given a higher priority than whether the
spaces are well thought out as to their use. Any
focus other than the sensual delight in past architecture was discounted: In the statements by both Gropius...actually all the
big guys except for Alvar Aalto...architecture is looked at as the instrument of
social change...it has proven not to be so, except in isolated cases, and to some
degree in a negative kind of way. In one extreme example, a teacher denied the
relevance of building use and function to architecture: Interviewer: (In this school) No one talks of the
social conditions under which the environment
is being changed...no discussion of the social implications of different...roles
and so on. No discussion of how a
user's relation to a space
may be achieved through any other medium that the manipulation of form
and color. Never discussion about
the relationship through ownership or
through control of the design process.
Teacher: The one would say, \0x2018Why are you in a
school or architecture?' Interviewer: I think that is about architecture...you
see it is about how people use built
space. Teacher: Well, I think that before we get to
know how people use built space, we have
to (address) the issue of how to build space. Interviewer: But you must address both. Teacher: Of course, but I believe for a time
they must be separated. In arguing that the student must begin by learning
"how to build the space," the teacher meant by having the sensual experience of
manipulating form. Another teacher, the most formalistic of all, who
had previously argued that his teaching program was, in part, a reaction
against the pseudo-science of Gropius and the Bauhaus-Harvard legacy which he
believed had separated architecture from life, argued that his program had the
objective of promoting the reunion of architecture with life: (The
legacy of the pseudo-rational approach to architecture characterized by the
Bauhaus) produced an estrangement of architecture from other layers of life. And through metaphor, through the
appeal to associations, analogies, even
fantasies, I am trying to reinclude other layers of experience, other layers
of life into it. This teacher had developed by far the most
persuasive intellectual defense of his program. He argued that, far from being detached from content, the
process he advocated introduced the students to the most profound basis of
architectural content: the legacy of several millennia of evolutionary
development in human settlement in which content is encapsulated in the most
complex fashion in a set of universal architectural forms. He viewed his teaching mission as one
in which he carefully nurtured the student to become familiar with these
essential forms. The content was implicit,
the architect merely the agent. His argument, however, seemed to have as much pseudo-rationalism
as the approach he was rejecting: The
aim will be to demonstrate and explain principles of design which are true
for different cultures and different building purposes, because they derive
their meaning from basic human biological and psychological traits as well
as from inherent, and thus stable formal characteristics. I
am appealing to deep structure, and feeling, for tolerance of the surface, which
may take any form on a given day, and expect the same tolerance the other
way around. In support of his teaching objective, he had
prepared an extensive classification of significant formal universals in
buildings. They were presented as
having meaning unto themselves, though it was never made clear how in their use
or in the use of metaphor, architecture reinvigorated anything other than
architectural life. This problem is whether the student, in being
seduced essentially to accept these varied but similar positions, was left with
enough free will to be able to adapt to someone else's different needs, or to
realize that his pleasure in the most elegantly handled format universals might
not be shared by everyone, particularly if they are not understood and he can't
explain them. The effects of such a focus, it could be argued,
are potentially very destructive to a novice architect. One teacher did seem to realize the
pain and frustration implicit in the cultivation of esoteric pleasure connected
to nothing but itself. When the
interviewer thanked the teacher for talking with him, and expressed with wish
that this teacher had taught him architecture, the teacher replied: Well,
you wouldn't be doing what you are doing now. You wouldn't be half so happy. The argument so far then, is that teachers prepare
the students for the practice of architecture by imposing upon then a fictional
program which made some pretense at simulating reality but was in fact a thinly
disguised vehicle for the advancement and inculcation of the teacher's
architectural theories. These
theories focused on the sensual manipulation of built form, often based on
unexplained though selective "high art" precedence. In all the examples, to a greater or lesser degree, this
approach could be seen as a leading to a view of architectural form as independent
from building or program content, not as being entirely separate in an unequal
coexistence in which form and content developed out of separate rules, but in
which the romantically deduced formal principles governed. At this point the argument could go one of two
ways: we could condemn all this teaching as form without conscience, and
propose the need for revision to retrieve architectural education from sliding
further into ignorance and confusion; or we could look behind the incompetence
and blind romance, and argue that, for all their uncertainty, they reflect the
teachers' honest attempts to prepare people to deal with architecture, not
through dogma or borrowed methodology, but through responding, tacitly, to
architecture's irrationality and its complexity: that teachers were educating
students to recognize the architect, not as master of the situation, but as a
sensitive medium accepting his limitations, nevertheless, fully informed about
what is purely architectural, namely, a pleasure in the shape of
buildings. What is clear from the
evidence, but unacknowledged by either teacher or student, is that it is the
cultivation of pleasure in architectural form, the cultivation of an
unreasonable poetic conscience, that is the basis for the novice architect's
belief in his/her superior knowledge and \0x2018higher calling' and the formative
component of his/her professional make-up. Although imperfect, the programs of these teachers
may represent, in broad terms, the only means of nurturing in the architect
that sensual feeling for the shape of buildings which had always been the basis
for the architect's belief in his higher calling. It is the imperfections, therefore, which are of interest
here. 5. ON BEAUTY The preoccupation with form detached from content,
the apparent disinterest in any values besides elegance and sensual pleasure in
the object, seems to reflect a major shift from the rationalism and romanticism
functionalism of the \0x201850's and \0x201860's.
Architecture, in settings studied, is no longer seen as being an
instrument of social change, but merely as something which is pleasure
enhancing. In describing his
favorite buildings one teacher said: They
all have one thing in common, a relationship between form and space...the
other quality I admire is the way they deal with ambiguity...(they)
are somehow subjective to a whole range of experiences that
are life-enriching. This shift in values can be viewed in two
ways. This idealist may see it as
a way of opting out of revolutionary social responsibility with the battle only
half won. But both the romantic
and the realist may appreciate in this shift a recognition of architecture's
unreliability in promoting social change and of the difficulty of trying to
induce stable meaning in architecture.
One may speculate that limiting architecture to being enjoyable may
remove it from the manipulation of ideologies and re-establish it as a service
of society, if only to provide the content the architects have lost. In these studies, students were taught how to make
enjoyable architecture, not through the understanding of any physiological or
environmental principles, nor through considering popular preference, but
through tacitly accepting the importance of a selected set of models and metaphors
often based on historical precedents, which the students were led to believe
contained the essence of architectural beauty and strength: the significant
form. The nurturing of a working
appreciation of beauty dominated or underlay the creative interchange between
teacher and student. In cultivating passion and empathy for a
\0x2018significant form' the teachers claimed that content was implicit. They did not help the student to
understand the content, only to love it.
Common to all settings was the encouragement of
unfettered invention, of fantasy, derived from any source or metaphor, coupled
with the ability to derive the essence of the concept and display it in graphic
ways. The student's ability to
diagram the essential idea was viewed by all teachers as fundamental to
learning and communication in the studio.
But beauty or elegance, rather than function or need, were the critical
references for design development. I
regard as a good student (one) who picks up to my diagrams and is able to come
up with an extrapolation
in a new form...to convert for himself...then there
is dialogue which can develop and without dialogue you cannot teach. Communication between teacher and students and
students and students was filled with talk of \0x2018graphic finesse.' Comments like \0x2018(that) God damn scheme
is nice,' the space is exquisite,' \0x2018elegant arrangement,' peppered the
discussions and offered the students the only measure against which to judge
their progress. Often, this proved
to be a most unsatisfactory measure, and certainly a paradoxical one in its
confusion between form and use. As
one teacher expressed it: The
hardest guy to deal with, intelligent, articulate, comes up with something that
works, but architecturally it is horrible. Now what do I do?... He is the kind
of guy who precipitates the weakest kind of response, because he has not
internalized some of the covert things... I come and say \0x2018Look, that is horrible,'
and he says, \0x2018What is horrible about it?', and he just feels good and
reasonable and suggests, \0x2018Look how reasonable I am, it works, where and
why is it horrible?' The student who thought he had solved the problem
found he had solved nothing. He,
perforce, had to enter into the quest for beauty and elegance demanded by the
teacher or the teacher could not teach, and the student would fail. The student had to learn to produce
what another teacher describing his favorite scheme, called "lovely sequence of
spaces that are surprising," and added, as an afterthought, "that work." The teacher quoted below seemed to recognize, if
not the irrationality of such a process, its unpredictability. He views the process of acquiring a
sense of elegance as being similar to that of acquiring wisdom, a process which
is not teachable. A sense of
elegance is developed slowly, and only to the receptive mind and eye. When
you experience it finally, how often do you wonder why, no matter how
familiar you are with it, through its history, lectures, slides, books, publications\0x2014when
you finally experience it, you
think why didn't anything that
I have ever seen tell me what suddenly turns out to be the most crucial thing
about it? I
do believe that intuition is the basis of it...The intuitions (in school) become more
informed, they are developed to be able to be tuned more readily to dealing
with certain kinds of problems, it is not just a skill, has to do with acquiring
ways to look at things. Once a student was engaged in this quest, he was
forced to suspend not only disbelief, but common sense. The discussions between teachers and
students were filled not only with talk of elegance and sensual pleasure, but
with abstruse and often inchoate attempts by the teacher to stimulate the
student's vision: Student: Wait a minute, now. Let's get our prejudices clear. What am I supposed to like
about the big one? Teacher: About the big one? Well, what I like is the way the little
thing pulls out of the
big thing, and it lies...you know...grows into all kinds of things going around
the corner. The
thing I don't like about the left one is that it just, it's almost, it could be
any
old ice cream parlor. The process clearly called for not only the willing
suspension of disbelief and an emotional predisposition to the matter, but an
emotional and intellectual surrender to the teacher's game, and only the
teacher's game. Said one teacher: It
is a pedagogical objective to turn them on to architecture on a number of levels;
the formal, the social, or whatever...you the teacher have that job, but
without personality, you can do nothing,
but best curriculum, without personality,
won't work, while no curriculum, with personality, will. This game pleasantly lulled the student who
accepted its rules, but turned serious when he became its captive, as evidenced
by the harsh remarks made in a final crit at the end of a hard worked
semester. There
are a number of schemes...really involved with a love and passion, of a
kind of involvement of what the student saw and felt. In your case, it is stillborn,
it is blind, it is a kind of mathematical exercise that you have gone through
in order to get a grade... Perhaps
all architectural theories are Procrustean in some respect. The search for significant form has
always been present; but when it lacks any acknowledged relationship to
objective criteria (be it social change, giving pleasure, or whatever), and
when it is dependant on the unexplained values of models, metaphors and
unrelated historical examples, it appears to hat the compound effect on the
students of both stimulating their senses with the headiest stuff of the
architectural experience, while depriving then of any objective criteria with
which to assess their actions.
They have no escape. They
are double captives of love and ignorance. Given
all the unevenness and shortcomings aforementioned, it is a remarkable aspect
of the process that teachers and students jointly succeeded in producing, in
all three settings, attractive, excited buildings, when judged subjectively; as
well as elegant drawings showing charmed invention, formal competency. And as no other criteria was given
against which to judge the results, one must, in respect to its primary
intention, pronounce the process effective. Whether this view would be shared by those outside the
architectural culture may be questionable. A
process which can produce charming, witty (if unwitting) architectural
jugglers, ready to entertain and brighten any life by some magic they don't
quite understand but are very passionate about, might well have value, provided
they can find an audience. 6.
CONCLUSION One
limitation of the study is that in all the settings teachers and students
appeared to be doing roughly the same kind of thing. We have no evidence based on what happens when a studio
claims to offer some tougher architectural theory\0x2014scientific, technical or
social. The
teaching appeared to have had the effect of constraining the minds and behavior
o the students. They became, in a
sense, captives fo a poetic vision.
They were taught to be dissatisfied with commonplace, to treat the past
selectively, and to disregard context.
Although the poetic vision may be seen to form the basis for the students' future belief in
their higher calling as professional architects, because it was used in a
seemingly manipulative way and clouded with disguised objectives and uncertain
values, the students remained unaware of it, or of its underlying moral
principle. The
cultivation of poetic vision may have had to effect of keeping the student a
novice throughout his/her education.
The evidence indicates that because the vision offered changed with each
studio teacher, the evolution of the student's personal vision was a fragile,
continually interrupted and redirected process. The students, year after year, appeared to have subjected
their emotions and their intellect to a process that, for all they knew, might
be circular and which at no time confirmed that they reached an acceptable
level of competency or of understanding.
Nor were the gains that they may have felt in themselves ever reinforced
and confirmed. One
can speculate that this failure in helping students to establish competence
prevented them from, at any time, taking competence for granted and learning
ways of manipulating it in professional and social contexts. Every year the students were only as
good as their last studio, and the process was only as productive as the
students' emotional relationship with the teacher. This presumably would be true every year, right to the end. With
regard to the use of models and metaphors, despite the undoubted importance of
the architectural models used by the teachers, habituating students to such
styles and to seductive formal language might be expected to cause them later
frustration in a world which does not share these pleasures (much as architects
have it otherwise, they are still pleasures shared by very few). In any case the process offered no
means for critically assessing the effect on others of the \0x2018language' and there
is no evidence of the teachers addressing the implications of architectural
styles and their relevance to popular or informed taste. The
use of models and metaphors appears to represent a major shift in architectural
theory, from design determined through rational principle with its emphasis on
originality, to a recognition of the body of knowledge contained in
architecture from all times.
Perhaps a major problem facing the teachers was the complexity of this
newly discovered knowledge, its uncertain relation to rationalism, and the
difficulties if talking about it in other than intuitive terms. As
to the professional implications of the process, in none of the settings was
there a direct attempt to cultivate professional responsibility, either towards
man or society. Ethical and moral
issues were not discussed, nor were they raised by the students. The issue of architecture, as an
instrument of social change, was raised in two of the settings, but with
unresolved ambiguity. There was no
political discussion. The process
was paradoxical: the teachers
viewed the students as empty vessels to be filled, yet offered them
architectural forms without content.
The process was to be primarily concerned with developing a manipulative
pleasure in architectural form, independent of value; the design issue was
merely a clothes horse for their concern.
In other words, although unacknowledged by teacher or student, each of
the processes, in their own way, was dedicated to architectural romance, the
search for the sublime. Given
that architects have always closely aligned themselves with sources of money of
power, public or private, and that their role has, most often, been to identify
with, and clarify, the tastes or the aspirations of the rich and/or powerful
(singly or in mass), it is surprising that the teachers focused on
architectural style as a primary concern rather than on the users. In the conduct of the program, there
was little interest in the role of the client. All clients were public agencies, and in two cases, the
studio teachers made it quite clear that nothing could be learned from talking
with them. The process appeared to
be based on the conviction that the architectural forms being manipulated had
transcendent value and universal significance. While
the process aimed at stimulating the sensitivities of the individual, it seemed
to nurture an arrogant disregard for the implications of his/her actions on
others. Architecture appeared to
be taught, not as a social art, but as a personal indulgence. The process seemed to be based on the
premise that architects' super knowledge comes not from an assimilation of
external information, by wholly from an internal dialogue between the
individual and his inner self. The
argument could be made, of course, that what appears to the observer as a
matter of personal indulgence was, to the student, a moral struggle. In every design problem the student was
confronted with finding a solution which was either right or wrong; he/she
might feel keenly the right order of architectural form, but only rarely
achieve it. When he or she failed,
the failure was considered to be one of character. 7.
REFLECTIONS The
following speculative reflections offer what might best be described as an
anthropological description of the architectural profession, attempting to
explain the role of the architect's poetic consciousness. These reflections tend to parallel
Ruskin's view of architecture as "decorative construction," though Ruskin
viewed such decoration as an essentially humanizing element which converted
mere construction into architecture by displaying the values and ideologies of
the culture. Though surviving in
popular culture, architectural culture often appears unwilling to acknowledge
the influence of romance on reason, or of the eclectic mature of architecture's
body of knowledge. The
process of matching style with demand, perception with desire, is important to
the development of the material culture.
There is no law that guarantees support anywhere for any one architect's
interpretation of reality. When,
at the conclusion of their educational engagement, young architects go in
search of a client or a problem, there can be no guarantee that they will find
one, and even less that they will find one that is satisfactory. The match between a surplus of talent
and a limited amount of opportunities places the young architect, and indeed
architecture at large, in an evolutionary battle in which only the fit can survive
and where fitness is judged, not in terms of the quality of architectural
perception or proven ability, but in a random and irrational process. The stress on the professional is
profound, not in terms of job security\0x2014there has never been job security in the
profession\0x2014but in the erosion of principle. In
the end, the influential forces in the culture buy what they want, not what
architects offer, and architects and architecture adapt. The simplest and strongest defense of
the cultivation of poetic vision and an empty love of beauty could be that it
supplies architects who have a stimulated sensitivity, who are arrogant in the
belief of their superiority, ignorant enough, or open enough to adapt their
creative inventions to whatever problems are offered. In this role, the architect is the receiver of the culture's
complex transmissions, and as such, does not, or cannot, be over concerned with
the reality. The concern is with
the future, even if, in representing the popular future, the architect merely
promotes the affection of an elite.
Architects tend not to distinguish, in their enjoyment of architecture,
between buildings that serve some lofty purpose and those that satisfy the whim
of an individual. Bad
architecture, to architects, is that which, from their point of view, is dull;
which fails to fully milk the emotional possibilities of the situation. (If Le
Corbusier had designed a sewage treatment plant in the middle of Albania, the
faithful would find some way of getting there). The
oversupply of architects, whatever their notions, means that the tastemakers, the resource controllers, and the image
conscious, at every level, can find something to suit every need; architecture
as an instrument of social change, architecture as a stimulus for jaded
palates. To some, the architect is
no more, and no less, than a dress designer; to others he is the liberator, the
enhancer of revolution. An oversupply
will satisfy all these. A concern
for form without content, will make the architect ever ready to glorify and
enhance the whims and needs of any situation, providing he/she doesn't take
his/her forms too seriously. According
to this view, the architect, captivated by poetic vision, arrogant and
self-sufficient through a sense of superior knowledge, fails to see him/herself
as merely the agent of society, and society benefits in avoiding past confusion
between architect's dreams and social reality. The architect, in this interpretation, is the scribe, and
the aspirations of society provide the text. Architecture may have a coherent language; the architect may
be least able to understand it. The
growth, the change, the evolution of society is not an explicit process, does
not conform to expectations, is not controllable, but it is influenced by the
structures we build. We enter
tomorrow in the fancy dress of the past or the expediency of the present, or,
the careless or foolish interpretations of the future. None is guaranteed to succeed, but all
will have influence. The architect
is a crucial link to this future.
If he is unable to dream, then the future promises of any age may never
be fully realized. If he is unable
to represent the need for an accommodation of the spirit, architecture becomes
merely an expedient accommodation to necessity. Perhaps the architect can defend the romantic, the elegant,
the unusual, only for their own sake.
Perhaps, in such a situation, the only morality the architect should
recognize is the rightness or wrongness of the building form, and what may
appear a moral vacuum from the viewpoint of society, becomes an intense moral
debate from the viewpoint of architecture. Maybe
the specifics of the education of the architect don't matter: merely providing the opportunity for
free-ranging, highly stimulated, intelligent exploration may be enough, and the
only deficiency in the settings studied was the failure to recognize, or admit,
what was being transacted. » back to top | ||