Marissa Mortarana: I have a final question. What advice do you have for students once they leave SCI-Arc and start in the real world?

Coy Howard: Get a hobby. You have to have a hobby. It’s really important. By a hobby I mean something that can keep your sensibilities alive, because if you go to work in an office you essentially put your ego at the service of somebody else. You need to have something that you can do for yourself that you can control – evenings, weekends – that you always have the right to disagree, and you always have the right to find something in that that is yours and not theirsfeeds your soul and helps you develop your own sensibility. It’s really important. Photography, making small objects, collages – any number of things that you can do that can keep and develop your sensibility that is the most important thing. The second thing is, never work for a star, because if you work for a star you will sell your soul to his/her aesthetic. The time when you’re most delicate, is the time right after you leave school. In that period of time, if you put yourself in the service of somebody that has a really strong aesthetic then you will, essentially, subvert and develop into that aesthetic. That is a very natural and easy thing to do, because you can be learning all of the techniques about how that office is ran, how that office presents its work. You need to be studying and figuring out these things for yourself. My advice is: Get a hobby, work in a small office where you get to do a lot of the full range of the work, work on the side and develop your own aesthetic sensibility. Those are really important things.

Any other questions?

Ana Gras Samaranch: Do you recommend students get a hobby after school or while they’re in school?

As soon as you can. Do it.

I mean, at least for me…under my point of view – I come from Spain and I see that people here… when they are working, they are working and they don’t have space in their mind for anything else. I think it’s healthy to have something that makes you wait. I don’t have time to exercise, myself – that’s not true. You always have some You have to have the instinct to play.time. I see a lot of it here. Nobody exercises, nobody takes care of themselves. For me, at least, Los Angeles has the best weather. It’s the best place, and I’m doing more things than I was doing back there.

I think there’s always time. I don’t mean in the same sense you do. Let’s say you’ve got a really demanding studio schedule. You’ve got a really demanding instructor who’s got a really strong point of view, and he wants you to do particular kinds of things. I think you always have the right to disagree, and you always have the right to find something in that that is yours and not theirs, whatever that thing is. You can be working on the computer and you can be doing some sophisticated modeling – all you have to do is change your perception, look at it differently and not see what you’re supposed to be seeing. See something else and say, “That’s something interesting. I want to explore that!” You take a little time, explore it, and you develop something else rather than what’s the main task.

the computer can be problematic, it doesn’t service your soul very much.For myself, I do everything by hand, and it’s the smudges, the mistakes that somehow take me someplace totally different, like making the Drawls and the Grafthings – “What’s that piece of metal doing there? It looks really great with that color wood and…Whoa! Damn! Why hadn’t I thought about that before?” Play. You have to have the instinct to play. I think so much of the education here, which is so driven by the computer, is also driven by…because so much of the faculty here is a young faculty, they’re really driven to make the work reflects their interest. They don’t really give the students a broad range of options in many cases. Now, that changes at the level of thesis. Thesis tends to, in some cases, disprove what I’m saying, because the students tend to have a broader range of expression when they do their thesis, when they get free.

MM: What was your biggest mistake?

Biggest mistake? You mean professionally? 

Yeah.

Well, it was a mistake and I have regrets about it, but I couldn’t have done it any other way. I was on a trajectory. At a certain point, I just didn’t like it. I was sitting on a podium in a symposium with some rather famous East Coast architects and I thought, “These guys are describing a world and a set of values that I can’t relate too. I don’t want my life to be like this.” So I changed paths.

What did it cost?

A lot of times I just tell students, “Why don’t you just fail. Why do this if you don’t like this? If you’re not happy with this, just fail and do something else.”I didn’t get work. I stopped publishing. I just stopped doing everything that was carrying me along that particular path. It was a mistake professionally, but it was who I was, who I am. I couldn’t do anything else. While I have regrets, it was a good thing for me to do.

AGS: After all these years, after working with the students, is it easy to read the students, to quickly understand who they are? For example, you start studio, you meet the students, is it very easy for you to know, more or less, how they are, or do you need the whole studio time to realize how they are?

I know pretty much their psychologies pretty fast. You know the ones that are insecure. You know the ones that are shy. You know the ones that are basically arrogant and are going to fight you. You know these things pretty easy. I just figure out ways to deal with them in the most productive way, but I enjoy that part. I enjoy the part of trying to…

Help?

Help, and figure out what’s really important. A lot of times I just tell students, “Why don’t you just fail. Why do this if you don’t like this? If you’re not happy with this, just fail and do something else.” That always shocks them. I say, ‘Well, that might be the best thing for you to do, is just to fail.” That frees them up and takes the pressure off. I try to be a real person in class. I don’t try to hold myself aloof in any way. I mean, I’m a teacher. I have ideas. I think that can be helpful, but I also try to relate to each student in a really direct, normal way. I don’t think I’m any different right now than I am in my studio. I’m not any different when I’m talking to a client. I try to be pretty consistent and authentic in terms of who I am.

Patrice Jin Jin Chang: Do you think if you have a sensibility it’s possible to lose that sensibility? Because…before SCI-Arc I was going to be a music major, and I used to be very hands on – muscle memory and everything. I haven’t lost it, but it’s changed. Even through technology there’s a disconnect that I feel – just clicking a mouse and what I see on the screen.

I don’t think one loses it. I think with muscle memory you have to practice all the time to keep the memory, but I think it’s there. I think it’s everybody’s responsibility to hold on to that part of it. Most of the faculty that’s heard me say this disagrees, but I basically say, ‘our students are more sensitive before they come here than when they leave.’ That basically each of you is more individual, and each of you has more unique interests when you come Education is basically about instilling a set of values and instilling a sense of history and understanding and a particular point of view.into the school than when you leave the school. Now, having said that, that’s the purpose of education. Education is basically about instilling a set of values and instilling a sense of history and understanding and a particular point of view. Whether it’s history or economics, it’s a natural thing; but I think within a school that is oriented toward creativity, a really big part of it should be drawing out that unique aspect of everyone. I think it can be lost, but you can nurture it back.

You’re right – the computer can be problematic, it doesn’t service your soul very much. A lot of it has to do with the interfaces, the colors for example and the line qualities are always perfect. It imposes a kind of perfection that’s realer than real. It’s not natural, so you have to take control of it. You have to play it like a violin. I just finished a project that Marissa has seen. It’s a book, The Thickening of Time. It’s all computer graphics and I didn’t do them. I had a former student of mine who worked with me daily, and I’d just sit there with him at the computer. The task was to basically put some soul into the work because the computer doesn’t really have that, and I think I was pretty successful at doing that. I would say to him, “We’re trying to do things this machine doesn’t want to do.” It does, it just doesn’t do it easily. So, nobody disagrees with me? You just let me answer?

Andrew Cheu: I think it’s just refreshing.

Why?

AC: I feel, personally, that I need to start thinking the way you are describing, especially going into thesis right now. I do feel that I get lost. Not in a routine, but forcing myself to embrace processes and points of view as if that is the way I want to work versus figuring out how I really personally want to work. That’s why I asked the question about the high wire, because I’m really interested in what you meant by being able to negotiate the “clock” and ”cloud” and what that really means to an individual working. There’s a lot to think about for Thesis.

That’s good.

[Everyone]: Thank you.

My pleasure.

This is the final installment of a three-part transcription of Coy Howard's interview by SCI-Arc students. You can read all parts here.

"The Thickening of Time" (2015) is available now. Find out more about the book here.