Last year, architect Peter Zellner announced his plans of a new, tuition-free educational institution dubbed the Free School of Architecture. Held at the Container Yard in Los Angeles, the school made its debut over the summer, launching on June 1st, 2017 with a class of 30 post-graduate students and a faculty of 22 teachers engaging in 12 courses over the span of 6 weeks.
With the first year now complete, we got the chance to talk to Zellner about the outcome of its inaugural program as well as the goals for the school going forward.
You founded the Free School of Architecture (FSA) a year ago. Since then the School welcomed its first cohort of students. Could you tell us how many students were part of the first cohort and where they were coming from?
Originally the ambition was to invite 10 to 12 students, then it grew to 20, and finally to 30, due to unforeseen demand. 36 students were accepted from a pool of 60, and 30 attended. There were six standby positions that were opened up because of additional demand. In terms of the first cohort’s make up it was fairly diverse and global. There was a European contingent. There was a Latin American group as well as an Australasian and New Zealand group. A large portion came from both coasts as well as the middle of North America and Canada.
It was clear from the response received that FSA had reached far more interested individuals than it could accommodate. At a minimum, this confirms the need for alternative forms of architectural education. To address this demand, it is conceivable that other chapters could be established outside of Los Angeles to reach those who were not able to attend because of travel costs or ongoing work commitments.
Were the majority of students enrolled in other architecture schools during the school year?
Initially, one of the enrollment requirements was that applicants had to at least hold an undergraduate or graduate degree. FSA also accepted individuals in their final year undergraduate study. I believe we had 11 currently enrolled students apply. The rest of the group was made of postgraduates and young professionals, recently graduated from architecture school and now working or between jobs. We had some people with backgrounds in art, and I think one with a literature background. If you were ‘architecture adjacent’—meaning landscape, art, urban design or city planning—that also counted towards entry.
How many faculty members were part of the school? How were they selected?
FSA put out a call for applications from both students and for faculty. The concept was a blind review requiring prospective students to submit a one page statement without any identifying information. Faculty were encouraged to do the same. For students it worked out pretty well, if a little unpredictable, but for faculty it ended up being a combination of individuals who applied, many of whom were not known to me, and several people who were in the Los Angeles area, such as Mimi Zeiger who taught a great class and has been very supportive of the effort. So, the faculty ended up being a mix of friends and strangers.
Can you tell us a little bit more about the classes that they taught?
The design of the curriculum was fairly conventional. Initially, the classes were broken into traditional topics like architectural history in theory, design and aesthetic theory. Practical and vocational topics and philosophy were also included. This was an artificial way of allowing the various teaching proposals, which came in from structural engineers, artists, poets, urban activists, writers, traditional architects, to find a reasonable location in the curriculum. One thing that was really emphasized was that there would be no design teaching, no studios and no work product.
The course sequence generally followed the instructors’ availability and this created a somewhat haphazard staging of classes. The upshot was a strange and beautiful collage of pedagogical agendas, areas of expertise and teaching styles. Disciplinary concepts rubbed up against social activism, theories of architectural representation set off an exposition on land acquisition strategies. A hands-on inclusionary planning workshop dancing around Latinx identity issues and gentrification led by James Rojas followed a straight forward structural design course. Mimi Zieger led a thought provoking class and workshop on architectural writing, developer João Anacleto Huang taught a brief but comprehensive introduction to real estate finance and development and Duygun Inal conducted a class on architectural representation and misrepresentation. Australian-French father and son team Robert Grace and Linus Gruzewski led a free-wheeling workshop on “architecting” that included song, dance and some drinking. Nicola Montuschi obsessed about concrete brutalist LA. Christopher Michlig, an artist, spoke to the “Semiotics of Slime” while Åsa Bjerndell, Karl Landin, Victoria Percovich Gutierrez and Emilia Thurin Melin, a group of planners and architects from Malmö, explained how to move an entire city. Seth Ellsworth guided a class on form following purpose. Harriet Harriss led a course on gendered spatial practices. Benjamin Farnsworth led a hallucinatory talk on the wiggle (as in wiggle room) in architecture at the home studio of Edwin Chan. Jordan Squires guided a thoughtfully meandering talk on bubble diagrams and Aspen Arnthors expounded on how architects write, from the prescriptive to the quixotic. Jennifer Meakins taught a course on wearing architecture as in the history and practice of textiles and architecture, artist Yunhee Min toured FSA through the LA art scene, Anthony Morey taught narrative architecture and Amelia Taylor-Hochberg dissected rhetorical strategies in light of the Alt-Right, post Trump in 2016. The students led several of their own workshops as well including a great one organized by Harsha Royyuru on identity, gender and race in architecture.
Alongside the ongoing coursework, FSA was graced by several guest talks. Australian architects Kevin O’Brien and Jamie Russell spoke to issues of Aboriginal identity and architecture, craft and the self-built. New York based Mexican architect Alfonso Medina introduced the school to his efforts as an architect and a developer while Edwin Chan showed none of his remarkable work, turning the usual lecture format upside down. In Culver City artist Edgar Arcenaux gave a talk about racial identity on the national political stage in the midst of his multi-medium installation and a little later FSA toured Morphosis where Partner Eui Sung Yi laid bare the rewards and pitfalls of running a global design practice. KCRW design powerhouse Frances Anderson addressed design and civic life while sharing her evolution from architect to journalist to public figure. The six week period concluded with a student led symposium and exhibition that attempted to heroically assess, analyze and prognosticate simultaneously. It was celebratory, ludic, out of control and sad all at once.
And what was your role in the school over the summer?
Coordinator, psychotherapist, nurse, doctor. I don't know… unwilling ringleader, and also I had my own nervous breakdown through the process, so probably trauma victim.
You mentioned there were no designs studios. How much of the education was devoted to practice and how much to theory?
Right. That was intentional because the majority of the participants had already gone through the design studio process. I didn’t see a need to repeat that experience, good or bad. Therefore, a number of the classes had more to do with a collective reflection on architecture as a practice, and self-reflection as individual architects on figuring out what unique practices could be. Rather than see training only in terms of production, FSA had more to do with thinking about politics, both communal and personal, and how that might affect the way individuals conceptualize their own design work.
One of the things that I was really interested in, and I think FSA had some success with, was that the experience led many of the attendees to deeply rethink their own interests and activities. Several quit their jobs to start their own practices after FSA and a few took a break from working to re-calibrate. One FSA “graduate” may be leaving the field altogether to do something very different. So really, what FSA meant by practice was personal practice. In other words, how could you be something like a citizen architect rather than just a worker or a part of the labor force?
The training was not so much vocational in the traditional sense, which is that it would be intended to prepare you to be a good architect or a good employee, as much as it was structured around asking questions like, “What is the purpose of architecture?” And, “How as either an individual or as a group could we make a difference?” I suspect that those are not always questions that are asked in schools given the focus on technically driven artistry and professional training.
Here, my hope was that the concept was really to be more broad and “free” about allowing the “students,” who would later became self declared “members,” to help formulate an agenda for themselves as a group and as a collective. The first FSA cohort got to work on this quickly by starting an FSA charter for themselves. Much of that work will go forward in the school’s next iteration.
Did you keep the typical model of the assignments and receiving feedback from professors?
Absolutely not. FSA was established specifically not to produce student work for faculty assessment. This was really a key point of differentiation for the school. The idea was that traditional models of labor in education, which require submitting work for review and assessment, would not be applied at FSA. Specifically, this was because the goal was to eliminate the power play between students and teachers based on the carrot and stick method of education that we see in most schools. So there was no work made.
Architecture schools tend to produce individualists who are remarkably conformist
That was a very risky and controversial position to take because at the end of the experiment there was no evidence of what was actually done. I am not certain now that some form of competitive or cooperative assessment wouldn’t hurt moving forward. It may have been a mistake but it seemed to me at the moment that the opportunity for FSA, by not being a traditional school, was to remove assessment from the process of education altogether and from there to see what effect that would have on learning.
I also suspect that a more rigorous enrollment process and a smaller group of students might better focus the effort in the future but simultaneously it might dilute diversity and alternate points of view. Architecture schools tend to produce individualists who are remarkably conformist so perhaps an open enrollment may still mitigate that phenomenon.
From the school's Instagram account it seems like the students went on a lot of fields trips. Can you tell us where they went and why?
Some field trips were very specific and traditional at least for architects. The trips mostly had to do with getting out of the classroom and into the world. As noted, we visited Morphosis and we had a discussion with one of the principals Eui Sung Yi, about how a global practice is run. He shared several stories about his own evolution from student intern to designer to partner. On the same day we also went and met with Edgar Arcenaux, an artist and activist. Edgar’s work focuses on identity, race and politics, and so that was a different sort of conversation, obviously adjacent to architecture, but largely unaddressed. The students also self-organized other trips. Many of them were traditional visits to significant sites and architectural masterworks in Los Angeles. Other trips were maybe more typically touristic: Joshua Tree, the Salk Institute and the like. Nicola Montuschi and I did a walking tour of some pieces of brutalist architecture from the 70s in downtown Los Angeles.
What do you think was the biggest achievement of the inaugural year of the school?
Well I think, very simply, it is that it happened at all. I think there was a lot of skepticism that something like FSA could be pulled off without any infrastructure and without administrators and with no money. We did have the generous donation of space by the Container Yard, which was a godsend and I am ever grateful to owner Ash Chan for stepping in to accommodate us.
FSA also did this with the guidance of an incredible advisory board: Edgar Arceneaux, Nicholas Boyarsky, Marie-Hélène Fabre, Eva Franch, Viviana Franco, Jorge Gracia, Harriet Harriss, Alfonso Medina, William Menking, Yunhee Min, Paul Preissner, Mohamed Sharif, Stephen Slaughter, Mabel O. Wilson, and Mimi Zeiger. Many of these individuals are continuing to work with the first cohort on plans for the school’s next year.
Convening simply for the purpose of having a conversation about architecture
So, as an achievement it ended up being essentially 70 some odd people over the course of six weeks convening simply for the purpose of having a conversation about architecture, at a moment in time when things seem so politically fraught and conversation is so difficult. That alone, for me, was a kind of spectacular achievement.
I think also as a demonstration of what is possible, FSA offered a viable alternative model of post-professional education. Its primary success would certainly be that there's a group of highly committed individuals who are now willing to move this thing forward. FSA Year one graduates Karina Andreeva, Lili Carr, Elisha Cohen, Tessa Forde, Philippine Wright and others are now evolving the concept for 2018. And so what delights me most about the result of the first year’s experiment is that the concept will be embraced as a collective effort that will host future generations of participants. I think FSA now has room to expand and grow. That’s pretty exciting.
This first year experiment was hosted by the Container Yard in downtown Los Angeles. Do you plan to use this venue again for future editions of the new School?
How FSA will reconvene next year in Los Angeles is something that's being worked on currently by members of the first cohort. How it may get established in other locations is something that could also be developed. I have a hunch that if it can be done in smaller chapter formats, say 5-10 people pop-ups, as opposed to large format 30 person events, then the subject of real estate becomes a little bit easier to address because FSA could pop-up, conceivably, in someone’s backyard or at a bookstore. Expect press releases soon about the plans that are afoot.
FSA could pop-up, conceivably, in someone’s backyard or at a bookstore
My hope is that ultimately, the Free School of Architecture can start to operate a little bit like a free wheeling community group, in which a functional chapter would only need, at a minimum, 3 people to kick off—a rotating Chair, a rotating Secretary/Treasurer and an inter-group member to put each chapter in touch with other chapters. The subject of space and of a campus could be eliminated because with this format small chapters might be able to afford space on a case by case, class by class, night by night or morning by morning basis. In its most simple and pure format the FSA is something that could be easily replicated in other locations. It might be possible to have several chapters in one city. Again, it might be somebody’s house or the back of a restaurant, since all that it needs are some chairs, a digital projector, a laptop and a presentation and time to talk. That’s the beauty of it, it is light and portable.
I also think where it could go next has more to do with the convening of the conversation in a temporary way. The kind of genius of such a light and provisional approach is that FSA could be staged as a distributed model in which these conversations could be held online. Hypothetically, it would be possible for the Manchester group to speak to Melbourne group or Mexico City to conference with Malmo chapter and that is how FSA might remotely distribute knowledge. That’s pretty radical. It could also be the case that rather than seeing physical space as the ultimate repository of what FSA does, it might very well be that space is actually an adjunct issue, and that the primary ambition for the school would be the free and easily distributed sharing of architectural knowledge.
When will the new school year start?
As you may know it happened in the summer because it was between semesters. In the future it could happen over the course of an entire year. As the project evolves conceptually, it may be the case that it is an ongoing school and is not something limited to a particular time frame or season. Look out for more on this front as well.
How will your role will be changing in the next editions of the school?
My role will be changing significantly. I have stated to the year one group and also the advisory board that my intention is to fully hand over the organization, meaning the website, literature, and the school protocols to them. That will happen this month. By January 2018, I will fully transition to being a neutral participant and/or a silent observer. Next year’s program is now being developed independently and without my direct input which I think is tremendous. FSA is transitioning into being a fully member run organization. I may eventually stay on in an advisory role as a supporter, observer, and/or critic if its wanted. I will continue to publicly speak about my experiences founding FSA from time to time but, for the moment I will be fully removing myself from the role of founder at the beginning of next year.
This may seem oddly perverse or unwise or maybe erratic and premature but I think the move is consistent with the ambitions I set out for the school originally. When I originally wrote my piece in the Architect’s Newspaper, “Architectural education is broken—here's how to fix it,” one of the things I spelled out was my personal concerns and criticisms of the typical models of patriarchal shaped leadership found within most architecture schools: these outdated academic models that inevitably require a figurehead or guru to synthesize the needs of the faculty and student groups.
Through the process of building the school, I really came to several conclusions at the end of the summer about FSA’s future. Firstly, I really don’t believe we need to perpetuate antique organizational models anymore. Look at what a lack of new forms of leadership is doing for the country, for universities and in the culture industry in general. You don’t need to connect too many dots to get the sense that entrenched patriarchy and thoughtless leadership in culture, education, entertainment and politics is failing horribly. On the educational front, we need to start looking at student-teacher led educational models which would be horizontally organized.
It grew from a hermetic and perhaps unnecessarily combative position to a resilient form of distributed education
One other conclusion I came to was that as the nominal leader of the organization, my role was actually diminishing as the student group started to take ownership of the project. Beautifully, something not quite planned unfolded. As FSA advanced, my role as instigator-in-chief or chief antagonist was ending. FSA transitioned from being something formed out of a tightly held personal position into something led collectively and without a centralized form of guidance or direction. It grew from a hermetic and perhaps unnecessarily combative position to a resilient form of distributed education vested in shared and not curated (and therefore exclusive) knowledge.
So, I'm committed now to not turning this into a personal or cult project only because I've seen these things devolve from an ideal state to a more institutional or worse quasi-religious state and that's something that I really would hope would not happen to FSA. My guess is that not only will the school survive now without me, it will thrive. We will see that other leaders can emerge from FSA and leadership will be shared. To realize a student/teacher led school would be a huge step forward for new forms of architectural pedagogy.
Is there anything else you'd like to add to the conversation?
I think what's really important to emphasize, at least to my mind, is that FSA should ultimately be understood as a kind of working process or work in progress rather than a finished concept. It’s a cliché but an important thing here is that the process is more significant, ultimately, than the outcome. If it succeeds it will grow and if it fails it will spawn other entities. Of that I am sure.
On final reflection, the biggest outcome for me, is that when you eliminate many of the traditional pedagogical structures that are set up within architecture education and you replace them with opportunities for open and free conversation, you can quickly get to a place of rethinking the philosophical issues that drive education in the first place. I'm hopeful that the impact of the school will be a little broader and that the individuals who are involved now and those in the future will go out and teach or practice, so they can disseminate the principles that were brought up over the course of last summer, promoting new ways of learning, new ways of being architects.
The real opportunity is to use FSA as a space to reflect on architecture and then to bring those reflections—whether they're political, social, aesthetic, cultural, technical, or financial—to bear on an individual and collective practice. I think it very easy and a bit obvious to write FSA off as a very idealistic and naïve attempt to reset things in the academy. Fully conscious of the hard work that will be required both individually and collectively to achieve some of the goals set out for FSA, I remain very hopeful about its future prospects because I only see a need for closure with the current models.
Peter Zellner will join Nelly Ben Hayoun and Benjamin H. Bratton at the The Metropolitan Museum’s A Year of Architecture in a Day on Dec 9th as part of an afternoon panel discussion focused on new models for architecture and design education moderated by The Met’s Chairman of Education, Sandra Jackson-Dumont.
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