pedagogy
|ˈpedəˌɡäjē|
noun (plural pedagogies) the method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept: the relationship between applied linguistics and language pedagogy | subject-based pedagogies.
Pedagogy, a term that has become common jargon for the cloaking of actions within the architectural circle of deans, chairs, and directors; a means to imply some sense of credibility or respectability to the whims and desires of their philosophical declarations.
As we find ourselves surrounded by pedagogical frameworks that are supported by empty philosophies and by misconstrued levels of respect for so-called leaders of the field, we sit idly by while they are ripping ideas, concepts, and techniques from naïve apprentices who unknowingly and undeservingly give them away for free, summer after summer.
The urging question arises: how then can pedagogy, or it's implied historical potency and auratic pull, progress in a system that allows its leaders to tear any contemporary idea from its pool of pupils if only to delay their own diminishing relevancy or role in architecture’s rhizomatic germination while simultaneously facilitating their personal hurried—often undeserved—rise to faux starchedemics.
What becomes of a system when those who lead it waste no thought to compensate or pay their underlings that make, do not make themselves, and much worse, profess the complete opposite? With these players—chairs, deans, and directors—being traded like sports stars, changing their views with the new jerseys they don, proclaiming the relevancy of their new institution’s views and yet continuously turning a blind eye to the system’s explicit failure as a sustainable safe haven for pupils to explore, what are we to expect but the perpetuation of the state in which we find ourselves today? It should come as no surprise that we can no longer debate or declare positions as it is impossible to declare positions on positions we have appropriated with zero consequence, capable to throw away with even less consideration.
Pupils walk away from such a system with their techniques stolen, an insurmountable level of debt, and an inability to participate in the profession as fully recognized members
Pupils walk away from such a system with their techniques stolen, an insurmountable level of debt, and an inability to participate in the profession as fully recognized members before completing a gauntlet of exams that tie them to the deadlocked system for years to come.
There exists a fine line between the pedagogical stance of a school and that of the body of work of its leaders. Today, that line is blurred more than ever before. Institutions once prided themselves on holding a collection of ideas, stances, and provocations as a key to their survival and continued growth. Those were places of solace, where certain concepts, trajectories, philosophies, and tendencies were used as a means of exploration of one’s self, as a means of producing a collection of tools to be used in the discipline. Instead, now, institutions are a place of faux stances, self-fulfilling philosophies used as empty solidifiers of objectively obsolete observations.
Our institutions are riddled with programs within programs, within programs, all aimed at exploiting the chaotic nature of the discipline they manifest within, producing a freshly accessible pool of untapped resources for those that lead them, instead of producing an accessible pool of untapped resources for those who are educated at them.
Today’s architectural pedagogical framework is incapable of taking on the discipline that has erupted from it.
Today’s architectural pedagogical framework is incapable of taking on the discipline that has erupted from it. The concept of autonomy has been misconstrued into the idea of insularity. We then have fostered educational frameworks that reinforce an isolated and non-polemical standpoint.
We have academic programs that are completely disconnected from the practice, vice-versa a practice with no texts close enough to have any effect, and voices in charge that no longer understand the tools at hand. We have allowed ourselves to believe that routes of discovery could pose as origins in their own right, allowed desires and intuition to become disciplinary genres. The concept of contemporary criticism does not imply constant breakages from all, nor does it imply a sense of tabula rasa at a daily rate, rather the criticality needed in today’s environment depends on a subversion of known meanings and on the production of knowledge itself. It calls for an active negation, an active cross breeding, not from the exterior, but from the interior.
How can the generations of the future learn to declare, position, and understand their role within the discipline if the hallways they walk to discover its elements have lost their depth, made the means to achieve a self-positioning unreachable or more frightfully, have lost knowledge of their own declarations, positions, and roles?
Architecture may be disseminated through its pedagogical implementations but those means must also be understood, taught themselves and revitalized for contemporary issues and environments in which our discipline exists.
With social media, websites, and endless means of display mushrooming, and with new disciplines erupting from such instable debris, moments of breakthrough are possible.
The current modes of architectural production, dissemination, and public engagement have begun to display miniscule cracks in this impenetrable wall of pedagogues attempting to solidify power. With social media, websites, and endless means of display mushrooming, and with new disciplines erupting from such instable debris, moments of breakthrough are possible.
What is pedagogy today? It is nothing short of a curated social media race for followers, likes, and comments that reaffirm a certain self-importance and existence; something that has shifted more rapidly from juries, hallways, and critical projects and that has now become a set of endless reposting aimed at producing an energy that is utterly vacant in the hallways it once aimed to represent.
In the end, what is pedagogy? It seems to have shifted from institutions, ideas, and theory to people, and yet, is it the right group of people? Where is pedagogy? Is it toward the people on the right side of the academic wall?
This Cross-Talk series implores a selection of six contributors spanning those within pedagogy, those who study pedagogy, those who create it, and those who are a product of it. The interest of Cross-Talk is not to theorize the pedagogy of yesterday, or its changes through the years, or the decades and the simultaneous shifting of endless chairs, deans, and programs that have erupted from it, but instead to begin to understand what is at stake in the practice of pedagogy, not its multitude of methods.
Cross-Talk is a new recurring series on Archinect that endeavors to bring architectural polemics and debate up-to-date and up-to-speed with the pace of cultural production today. Each installation will feature four responses by four writers to a single topic. For this week's iteration, the topic is 'pedagogy'.
Anthony Morey is a Los Angeles based designer, curator, educator, and lecturer of experimental methods of art, design and architectural biases. Morey concentrates in the formulation and fostering of new modes of disciplinary engagement, public dissemination, and cultural cultivation. Morey is the ...
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Anthony, can you clarify some of these claims by providing specific examples? Also, I'm curious to know where you are getting your information.... stolen techniques, insurmountable levels of debt, and students that are unable to participate in the profession. Is this your personal experience? I've been teaching for almost a decade now. Year after year I find that students are happy to conceive of and develop new design strategies and techniques together with their instructors, making a contribution to the broader discourse within which they are developing their personal interests and skills. I've also found that students are pretty creative and resourceful at finding ways to "participate in the profession," taking full advantage of both the general nature of an architectural education and the specificity of the post-professional "programs" that you seem troubled by.
Regarding pedagogy, I see a tremendous amount of work being done to develop new formats for teaching design and new modes of communication between our institutions, with the profession, and with the general public. For example, Practice Sessions at Michigan, summer design studios in New York City for Syracuse students, interdisciplinary workshops at UI-C, the Baumer Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ohio State, UCLA's Suprastudio, and a handful of others. All of these initiatives not only impact and challenge conventions surrounding traditional teaching methods, but also strive to bridge the gap between academia and practice, engaging professionals in unconventional and unprecedented ways. What programs are you claiming to be completely disconnected from practice?
Who are these Deans, chairs and directors that you think are hijacking their institutions for personal gain? And who among them have changed their value systems so flagrantly after shifting schools? I just don't see it. To name a few... Michael Speaks has maintained his commitment to intelligence, building performance, and engaging the market, Monica Ponce de Leon to building design and construction technology, and Jonathan Massey to architecture's ability to perform socially. If anything, the nature of the shifting role of the academic leader has moved them further away from controlling curriculum and course content. The keys have been handed over to faculty committees, which I find to have stronger governance than decades ago when the directions of schools were more commonly positioned in relation the the particular ideology of the figure head. I've found a welcomed growing divide between the individual tendencies and predilections of academic leaders and the curricular goals pursued within their schools. At what specific schools is this problematic for you?
With a forum as popular as Archinect, I would encourage you to validate your claims by providing evidence before projecting such hostility towards institutions that have given both of us (and just about everyone we call colleagues) such tremendous opportunity and personal freedom. Without specificity and clarity, this piece reads like a rant from a disgruntled graduate student.
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The architectural academies of old generated inside their walls self-referential pedagogies. God forbid the layman being able to understand anything you said in this article. It could be a good thing that some written texts be left to a like or dislike. If architects spoke with simple terms and were understandable, the audience on the other side of the wall might click “like”. Then again, that might be a stretch, since most architects have never worked in their medium of study. Architecture is a theoretical and virtual craft. The occasional walk on a job site doesn’t fully fill the gap between construing about building and the actual tangible act of making a building. Hence, most likes are not going to come from the contractors or engineers. So, maybe it’s a good thing that layman and their heuristic judgments can be made with a simple click.
Wow something I actually agree with on Archinect. I'll tell you what generates out of this sort of empty pedagogy: a distrust for discourse. The rhetoric of OOO or messy speculative sketches or body image and structures of power in architecture does absolutely nothing for graduating students, and only serves to satisfy the power competition among faculty. Whether you like it or not, it is a fact that society quantifies the value of an idea or project in dollars. Contemporary architects are paid so little despite massive student debt for a master's degree because at this moment architecture does not contribute anything of value to society, just empty words and useless pretension. We need to stop telling the world how to think about buildings, and start listening.
Anthony, can you clarify some of these claims by providing specific examples? Also, I'm curious to know where you are getting your information.... stolen techniques, insurmountable levels of debt, and students that are unable to participate in the profession. Is this your personal experience? I've been teaching for almost a decade now. Year after year I find that students are happy to conceive of and develop new design strategies and techniques together with their instructors, making a contribution to the broader discourse within which they are developing their personal interests and skills. I've also found that students are pretty creative and resourceful at finding ways to "participate in the profession," taking full advantage of both the general nature of an architectural education and the specificity of the post-professional "programs" that you seem troubled by.
Regarding pedagogy, I see a tremendous amount of work being done to develop new formats for teaching design and new modes of communication between our institutions, with the profession, and with the general public. For example, Practice Sessions at Michigan, summer design studios in New York City for Syracuse students, interdisciplinary workshops at UI-C, the Baumer Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ohio State, UCLA's Suprastudio, and a handful of others. All of these initiatives not only impact and challenge conventions surrounding traditional teaching methods, but also strive to bridge the gap between academia and practice, engaging professionals in unconventional and unprecedented ways. What programs are you claiming to be completely disconnected from practice?
Who are these Deans, chairs and directors that you think are hijacking their institutions for personal gain? And who among them have changed their value systems so flagrantly after shifting schools? I just don't see it. To name a few... Michael Speaks has maintained his commitment to intelligence, building performance, and engaging the market, Monica Ponce de Leon to building design and construction technology, and Jonathan Massey to architecture's ability to perform socially. If anything, the nature of the shifting role of the academic leader has moved them further away from controlling curriculum and course content. The keys have been handed over to faculty committees, which I find to have stronger governance than decades ago when the directions of schools were more commonly positioned in relation the the particular ideology of the figure head. I've found a welcomed growing divide between the individual tendencies and predilections of academic leaders and the curricular goals pursued within their schools. At what specific schools is this problematic for you?
With a forum as popular as Archinect, I would encourage you to validate your claims by providing evidence before projecting such hostility towards institutions that have given both of us (and just about everyone we call colleagues) such tremendous opportunity and personal freedom. Without specificity and clarity, this piece reads like a rant from a disgruntled graduate student.
You realize he was trying to be polite by not singling any one person or school out, right? What is the economic success rate of students from any of the programs you mentioned? How much are interns being compensated by any of the members of Possible Mediums?
Kyle,
Thank you for the feedback, comments, and personal opinion.
Without wanting to give in and falter with excuses, let me sketch out, again, the ideas behind the forum of Cross Talk and the aim of the series, which desires to push, extend, and attempt to understand the possibility of exploring critical topics in Architecture—in this era of proliferated social media relevance that extends beyond the walls of academic institutions or their grasp.
However, although provocation becomes an immediate way to solicit reactions—successful at that, evidently—Cross Talk in no way aims to incite a defense mechanism, anger, or provide the platform for any implication of personal attacks to be made, unless productive and within courteous dimensions. This series on Archinect merely acts as a match strike. The format of Cross Talk is to allow for quick, emotion packed, and off the cuff conversations; it is in no way a directed attack.
If you return to the first iteration of the Cross Talk series and follow a few lines in, you will find that the series' introduction itself is based on the notion of agonism and that the aim, theatricality, and approach to the topics were meant to foster conversation. (I have copied the pertinent section below for ease of reading)
"For the first installment of Cross-Talk, four writers will delve into the topic of “agonism”—or the political theory popularized in recent years by Chantal Mouffe that stresses the positive aspects of conflict. Eschewing consensus-driven politics, agonism embraces struggle as an integral component in the formation of discourse. Here, democracy is understood as a process of respectful conflict, in which the other is accepted as foundationally different rather than forced to conform. How can this theory be adapted to architecture? Should it be?"
Does that mean that any disrespect is given or implied? Absolutely not. Does that mean I am attacking anyone specifically? No. Yet am I attempting to call out one or two members of the discipline? Again, no. Am I saying that the dedication and focus of Monica's and Michael's work is not appreciated or flawed? Ultimately, no!
All Cross Talk means to evoke is a necessary re-examination of the status quo, to have such work conversed about in—how you put it—a public forum. Archinect reaches corners of the world that you, I, or any collection of individuals possibly could not. As such, Archinect gives us an opportunity to bring these contemporary issues and themes to the forefront. It would be a disservice to our discipline to merely allow it to cover the newest awards, events, and utopian projections of where we stand—the "good times."
I am incredibly appreciative of what the discipline has given me, all those that have helped me and all those that are a part of it at large. Without them I would not be here today, none of us would be. It is only through this appreciation that such a project like Cross Talk grows, it grows from an urge to find new ways to explore, connect, and disseminate contemporary issues and themes.
This iteration focused on Pedagogy, is a pure call to attention to a topic that is extremely current, relevant, and provocative to our discipline and one that—I know—you find yourself right in the center of.
It is one that many here may not directly be a part of because of their geographic location, their inability to attend individual workshops or any combination of a number of reasons.
Does that mean that I am "projecting hostility"? Absolutely not.
In the same manner in which Instagram allows for insurmountable jumps to be taken in logic, reason, and "fact," Cross Talk attempts to do the same with text.
When was the last time you were provoked to take a good while out of your busy schedule to respond to the newest refresh feed on Instagram in the manner just reflected?
Again, without apologizing or seeing the need to verify my polemic introduction with accumulated data or "relevant sources," I want to make sure that what is reflected in my introduction is an attempt to open up a conversation that is current at the Dean, Chair, and Director level of universities and that can be expanded to the students they command; to allow the audience to expand and gain previously unheard voices, pertinent ones. The goal of this series is to allow for individuals to create stances, positions, and talk—the operative word in Cross Talk being talk.
If the initial introduction agitated, good; then maybe through agitation we can begin to understand our current position and start talking, constructively?!
Should that not be allowed?
Is such questioning not the main ingredient of any change?
Did SCI-Arc not start from such?
Did Gropius not demand the same?
If feathers have to be ruffled for progress, so be it. Has our discipline not had a long, extensive and productive history of such attempts?
Cross Talk attempts, maybe abruptly, I will admit, to understand a new medium of communication and find one or many ways through its possibilities and implications as a critical tool.
As you mentioned, this is a public forum aimed at productive conversation, not an opportunity for personal attacks or to spread insulting comments directed at anyone specifically, and such behavior is expected not only from the authors on this platform but from anyone that is talking back, no matter their standing or tenure.
Through conversation, heated, passionate, or any other variation, respect should be given, and if I am to understand your rebuttal, you feel the same.
Thank you
A colleague.
Based on the range of the polemic, I assume you are aware pedagogy is not some mystical term or jargon, well at least not in the humanities, a branch of learning that architecture long tried to ally itself with. As a noun it is seen as a form of branding, often in a negative sense.But as something that is actually deployed, it is quite a valuable thing. To be redundant, it’s a position regarding what should be taught, and how it should be taught. It’s a way of identifying initiatives and alignments that benefit individuals, programs, departments, and institutions. Pedagogy is the thing that makes students excited about what they learned. This is not to say that it is not abused as a term, but in a period when there is only more expectation for accreditation through accountability it takes on a number of burdens.
Briefly, it eases the burden of describing what happens in a program to those on the outside. And by that, I mean other departments and provosts, and national accreditation boards that certify the institution (NAAB requires this, but only as a part of larger expectations being placed on institutions). And to get back to the institution itself, as architecture programs are having a harder time operating autonomously within institutions, it’s the ability to structure a pedagogical approach to architecture that creates funding partnerships that is helping keep them afloat.
In many respects, this is also about the matter of debt you bring up. But eliminating pedagogy will not eliminate debt. Instead, a radical rethinking of how architectural knowledge without the burdens of Deans, Chairs, dining services, maintenance staffs and deferred maintenance will accomplish that. But once that is effectively deployed it will be the sign of a new pedagogical approach to disseminating architectural knowledge. Perhaps this is the role of social media and the online mini-degree/certificate, breaking through to make specific components of architecture accessible now, all the while progressively expanding as an opportunity arises.
But what I’m really curious about is rhizomatic germination (which I am not clear if you support or not) present in architecture and you position regarding it. This germination is manifested in the application of pedagogies and not just the term. I also question the notion that it (being pedagogy) has a historical potency. Again, it’s not the noun that matters, but the verb. The prime example would be the pedagogical legacy of the Beaux Arts or the Bauhaus- both how which fell suspect to the pedagogical approach of Terry Eagleton and other post modern scholars (note- an external agent that was identified as a pedagogical ally).
But this has never been a stable practice, despite our nostalgic beliefs. Recall that the earliest debates about the direction practice should take revolved around the then newly codified methods of perspectival drawing versus plan geometry. Therefore the roots of your rhizome are far longer than what they appear, and it is only within the last 100 years that we have seen a significant increase in nodes of thinking.
So again, I refer to social media- but with caution. If a student can create their own journey, their own pedagogical trajectory online by just watching videos, is this any better? Or is it a matter of deferring to the learned scholars of the discipline (you call them starchedemics- was Carl Sagan a starchedemic?), and being mindful of their actions and ideologies that are the proper route. In some respects, this appears to be the path you would prefer when you mention the places of solace.
There’s another way of looking at these places too. They haven’t gone away, but are propagating themselves across institutions everywhere by increasing enrollment and pushing out the brand/pedagogy. It’s just that the real meat of the education was so covered, we can’t see it unless we look very close.
thank you for an interesting start.
As someone who recently returned to acquire a one year masters after practicing architecture for 15 years. I was shocked at how petty, political and disconnected from the reality of practice AND education architecture school could be. For instance, there was an incredibly talented practitioner who walked away from his practice after a disagreement about concrete with a client. My colleague said that he would come into the office depressed, watch porn and go home. He was making low six figures at the school but stopped paying his rent. He one day turned to one of the two people working for him and said that the practice was theirs. My colleague had him evicted after he refused to pay for this desk space. This school has a top ten business and law school. This prof could have leveraged these resources and made these challenges a teachable moment in order to better the profession and the school. How to write better contracts? How to persuade recalcitrant clients? Instead he has withdrawn and become a recluse making $250k a year. Meanwhile poorer, younger faculty want to push him out... Learning is really important and something I love. Many students leave school with too much debt to take any chances practicing architecture. Also, many faculty have community college-like relationships with large offices and do little more that train their students to work there. It is NOT university-level engagement. Rethinking practice is...
I am very curious to see what the Free School does. Peter Zellner is doing something quite interesting.
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