In “Honor your mistakes”, the introductory essay to the first issue of The Metropolitan Laboratory Magazine, Lukas Feireiss looks at a history of heroic failures, quoting everyone from Buckminster Fuller to Samuel Beckett. “If you want to learn how a process works, or develop a new one yourself,” he writes, “the scientific method demands that you try, fail, and try again.”the scientific method demands that you try, fail, and try again

The Metropolitan Laboratory Magazine is the product of the Aedes Metropolitan Laboratory, a physical and intellectual space founded in 2009 in Berlin that investigates the “inseparable interplay between urban form and social life”.  For the inaugural issue of their magazine, entitled "Education: Trial and Error", they hone in on the role of highly progressive pedagogy in architectural culture, with a critical focus on the importance of failures and setbacks.

Our featured excerpt for Screen/Print is “Honor Your Mistakes” by Lukas Feireiss. With its focus on how an architectural education takes form, the essay is a perfect match for Archinect’s special theme for September, Learning.This inaugural issue was also designed and edited by Studio Lukas Feireiss.

Honor Your Mistakes

By Lukas Feireiss

In 1898, the America psychologist Edward Lee Thorndike placed in his now classic experiment a hungry cat inside a puzzle box, and a piece of fish outside the box. In order to escape from the box and get the fish as reward, the cat had to pull a loop in order to open the door. With increasing trials, the cat eventually learned the trick and as soon as it was put in the box again, it immediately pulled the loop to escape for its well-deserved reward. The gradual reduction of errors over trials that Thorndike observed in his experiment gave name to this method of learning: trial-and-error.without failures, how would we learn and know what we had to work on?

We are surely no cat in a box, but what holds true for Thorndike’s cat, applies to some degree to us as well. Indeed many forms of human learning, are achieved through a very similar process. Learning to walk, to swim, or to ride a bicycle is based on trial-and-error. But not only the learning of sensory-motor skills follows a trial-and-error process. Also emotional, creative and intellectual endeavors seems to follow comparable patterns in our lives. With each successful or failed relationship we learn more about ourselves and others, with each action we perform again and again – no matter what this might be –  we cumulatively learn from our trials and errors. At least we have the opportunity to do so. "Errare humanum set“ (To err is human), says a well known Latin phrase. However "to persist in error", as the quote continues, "is diabolical". The dramatic diction here is surely very extreme, since the persistence in error is in most cases rather due to ignorance and stupidity than devilish intent. Nonetheless, it becomes evident that the latin figure of speech is actually a deliberate call for action to learn from our mistakes. Errors clearly show us what needs improvement. And without failures, how would we learn and know what we had to work on? Sure, not everyone who searches for and misses India discovers America, but mistakes can nevertheless become, as Irish novelist and poet James Joyce tellingly put it, "the portals to discovery." 

In the sciences the very concept of failure actually represents a fundamental part of all experimentation, and trial and error stands as it’s primary method of solving problems. If you want to learn how a process works, or develop a new one yourself, the scientific method demands that you try, fail, and try again. Fundamental to its success here is variation and repetition. According to Irish playwright Samuel Beckett’s most famous quote, the same accounts for the arts: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” there is no such thing as a failed experiment, only experiments with unexpected outcomesBeing an artist to him literally means to fail, "as no other dare to fail". In the same line of thought, many creatives from different artistic disciplines have expressed their appreciation of the trial-and-error method of learning. American architect and inventor Buckminster Fuller for example famously said, that "there is no such thing as a failed experiment, only experiments with unexpected outcomes". American writer Steward Brand, founder of the legendary Whole Earth Catalogue, describes the trial-and-error principle as a "fiasco-by-fiasco-approach to perfection." English composer and musician Brian Eno calls on us to "honor your mistake as hidden intention" and Canadian designer Bruce Mau encourages in his Incomplete Manifesto of Growth (pp X-X) to "allow yourself the fun of failure every day." "Experiment, iteration, attempts, trials and errors – they are all essential and unavoidable elements of creative and intellectual growth.

Against this backdrop, the first issue of The Metropolitan Laboratory  at hand looks at the topic of artistic and architectural education under the title Education: Trial and Error. The numerous critical contributions from our friends, partners and colleagues from around the world have made this issue a truly inspiring survey of highly progressive pedagogical approaches, that question the role of artistic and architectural education today, and that learn from educational strategies of the past for the future. Inherent to all of them is a profound apprehension of the positive surplus of unsolicited changes, uninvited irritants, un-anticipated setbacks and failures as the future seeds of human achievement and progress. So, if anything can be learned from this issue currently at hand, it is that at times detours only broaden one's knowledge of a place. In other words, if we don't get lost every now and then, we haven't moved enough.

List of contributors to "Education: Trial and Error":

Histoshi Abe, Ai Weiwei, Cristobal Amunategui, Ricardo Abuauad, Pedro Aparicio, Archipreneur, Matias Bechtold, Luis Berrios-Negrón, Kate Cahill, Beatriz Colomina, Hans-Jürgen Commerell, Peter Cook, Kate Davies, Odile Decq, Iñaki Echeverría, Olafur Eliasson, Eric Ellingsen, Ludwig Engel, David Erixon, Emily Fahlén, Kristin Feireiss, Lukas Feireiss, Andreas Gehrke, Christoph Geisler, Rainer Hehl, David Helbich, Will Hunter, Erik Kessels, Mathias Klotz, Anna Kostreva, Annette Jael Lehmann, Fabrizio Leoni, Jan Liesegang, Winy Maas, Namik Mackic, Bruce Mau, Thom Mayne, Corinna Morandi, Joan Ockmann, OMA × AMO, Manuel Osterholt, Henk Ovink, Constantin Petcou, Diona Petrescu, Dagmar Richter, Andrea Rolando, Matthias Sauerbruch, Tatjana Schneider, Julia Schulz-Dornburg, Anastassia Smirnova, Paul Thek, Katya Tylevich, Urban-Think Tank, German Valenzuela, Xavier Vendrell, Jan Verwoert, Anna-Lena Werner, and Liam Young. 

Screen/Print is an experiment in translation across media, featuring a close-up digital look at printed architectural writing. Divorcing content from the physical page, the series lends a new perspective to nuanced architectural thought.

For this issue, we featured The Metropolitan Laboratory Magazine 1, "Education: Trial and Error".

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More on the ins and outs of architectural pedagogy will be added here, as part of our special September editorial theme, Learning.