Sep '06 - Aug '08
This is an open invite for all to please join us for the SCI-Arc Graduate Thesis presentations on September 15 + 16, 2007
Sept. 15 Saturday
9am–12:30pm
2pm–5:30pm
Sept. 16 Sunday
10am–1:30pm
Thesis projects will be on view throughout the school from September 15–19.
960 East 3rd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90013 // 213.613.2200
...or for a more a cryptic invitation from our director:
Greetings and Welcome to Los Angeles and to Sci Arc…
Sci Arc has shifted its Graduate Thesis to the Fall. The critical discourse that heretofore concluded 3 years of graduate study now serves to energize, to stimulate, and to provoke the next intellectual chapter at Sci Arc which may confirm or contest its predecessor in that on-going narritive.
We will carefully examine the progenitors of the present thesis, one progenitor at a time; then pass that debate student by student, teacher by teacher, single-minded or nuanced, on to the successors who are carefully listening.
Our goal is to continue to adjust our goals, thoughtfully, and we appreciate your willingness to assist in the process of re-constituting the Sci Arc pedagogy.
The Graduate Thesis debate is our epiphany and our synopsis: where we were or imagined we were as a school, as advocates of architecture and city making, over the last year [or years], and whether our point of departure for ’07 – ’08 will confirm a previous thesis, require an antithesis, or synthesize the two.
Thank you for agreeing to help us – students and faculty -- to scrutinize our premises and ourselves.
There’s nothing in the Sci Arc discourse [past or present] that’s sacrosanct, as many of you have come to know. No particular politics are required. The discussion is wide and [hopefully] probing. Every premise, conceptual strategy, technical means, presentation technique, and theoretical conclusion is open to challenge or to confirmation. We prize both the unequivocal pronouncement and the nuanced critique.
Sci Arc is always and forever a venue for debate on the movement of ideas over time. How does misfit become fit and again misfit? How does the once radical become the conservative? How does the edge [often imperceptibly] move to the center? And can one, can an institution, perpetually inhabit the edge, or is the edge itself in danger of becoming a commonplace?
Sci Arc is a place for testing ideas without inculcating allegiances. The promulgation of a particular ideological predilection [vis a vis alternative prospects] confirms a belief in/acceptance of an idea or postion. In practical terms students are entitled to a particular belief [for the moment], but the institution qua institution remains an institution of non-believers. We are not the progenitors of the “how to be a radical architect” pro forma, because there is no such pro forma.
Sci Arc should be the Institute for Non-allegiance. We like to dig without a guarantee we’ll arrive at the bottom.
Thank you for agreeing to pick up a shovel.
Please get comfortable being uncomfortable. We love conviction, and simultaneously, we love to challenge that conviction. The student must commit, and simultaneously understand that, ipso facto, something other, something essential has been omitted.
“Let us go then, you and I”, and “make a visit” [apologies to Mr. Eliot].
Thank you for conserving Sci Arc’s process of becoming.
We welcome your presence, your energy, your comments, your criticism.
All the best,
Eric
......................
Eric Owen Moss
Director, SCI-Arc
5 Comments
I'm sorry but that was just a bunch of mindless babble.
I don't know, it sounds like an interesting way to describe thesis reviews. And I liked this line, "We like to dig without a guarantee we’ll arrive at the bottom."
Not sure about the J.Alfred Prufrock quote, but hey, why not. Multivalent speech seems fine.
But what exactly are the progenitors? Are they the projects from the last go around, or are the more similar to precedents being used by the current students? This is an end of the thesis review, no?
Anyway, sounds cool.
so...why the change form january?
the great thing about the january reviews was that anyone not presenting a thesis was fresh meat, rested over the holiday and ready to help out. you also had the whole school to the thesis class to really get stuff done during the winter break...
OTOH - you really get a jump on the other MArch's from USC and UCLA looking for jobs....
kab, yeah, in this case, the progenitors would be the preceding students from the years before, although oddly, this year there was no single outstanding thesis to take the school's direction/trajectory to the next level so to speak, but good projects overall some good projects.
el jeffe, summer thesis means a whole school and whole semester's worth of fresh meat :)
since i am currently photographically challenged, i am not able to report more on this, my second experience with thesis presentation, but i'll try to collect some pictures for a brief recap of this past weekend's events.
i cannot believe you wasted so much $ on Sci-arch......
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.