Pedagogy is animated theory that transforms the discipline. It emerges from discussion, debate, and creation and involves the collaboration of instructors, students, and institutions. Essential to pedagogical development is the understanding that architecture is a cultural discipline, one that thrives on creative speculations that enter into tension with external issues.[1] Effective architectural pedagogy alters the world beyond the boundary of its originating institution, changing conformist ideologies and empowering the disenfranchised via the implications of aesthetics.[2] In the pursuit of disciplinary transformation that will destabilize the status quo, pedagogy must first address how to forget and how to fail.

Forgetting is indispensable to learning; if you assume that you already know something, you will be closed down to obtaining any new information about it.[3] To be clear, this is not an endorsement of forgetting history, but one of forgetting preconceptions. Assumptions are the greatest danger to every participant in pedagogy: well-worn vocabulary haunts the veteran, perceived familiarity derails the novice, and habit starves institutions. Considering how to forget in this context means overturning assumptions rather than reinforcing and disseminating them. This can be done by developing new vocabulary based on the careful consideration of information, rather than defaulting to old terms based on the rapid consumption of it. With this in mind, a studio brief should impose a narrowly bounded, abstract problem that forefronts making as an active means of intellectual investigation. This estranges the problem from those approaching it and transforms the studio into a pedagogical device that yields collaborative research in order to contribute to a larger body of architectural knowledge.[4]

Forgetting is indispensable to learning; if you assume that you already know something, you will be closed down to obtaining any new information about it.

Error, particularly that which extends to the point of failure, liberates those within the academic environment; if it is alright to err, then you may learn without fear of exposing a lack of knowledge. Controlled failure, as explored in avant-garde art and architecture practices, may employ cheap materials, poor craft, misregistration, or camp, among other strategies. Herein, error reveals the relationship between subjectivity and knowledge and raises questions about the function of authority and expertise.[5] Considering how to fail means structuring a problem in a way that institutes controlled failure and alleviates the anxiety of the missteps that are unavoidable along the path to intellectual development. Fear of making mistakes or showing a lack of knowledge is a means by which the powerful control the powerless, slowing individual apprehension of knowledge, and stifling our shared ideological development. Error, as a given condition of pedagogical models, alleviates the fear of failure and consequent loss of individual agency that could otherwise hamper the development of the discipline. Pedagogy that does not allow for failure, does not allow for success.[6]

With forgetting and failure as active pedagogical tools, we stand to take greater risks and share in greater successes as a discipline. But it is equally important that we note the desired effects of these—to break with conformist ideologies and to increase access to knowledge—and consider how we can push the field toward greater inclusivity. While it is important for the output of architecture to make way for cultural shifts, it is equally important for us to enable these within the body of the academy and profession.[7] [8]

[1] Influential in clarifying my understanding of architectural pedagogy is a discussion between Jeff Kipnis and Peter Eisenman, “I am for tendencies,” from Log, no. 28 (Summer 2013), 133-142.

[2] A well-stated argument for this ambition of architecture can be found in Todd Gannon’s lecture given at SCI-Arc, in 2015, entitled, “Five Points for Thesis” in which he states that architecture (and art) should be, “celebrations of possibilities that are excluded from dominant paradigms.” He sees this as well represented in Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography, Bernard Tschumi’s 1975-77 “Advertisements for Architecture,” and Jeff Kipnis and Stephen Turk’s 2012 “White Walkers.” The lecture can be found at here. I also found interesting fellow respondent Patrick Geske’s comments on the imperceptible influence of the myriad designs that structure our world.

[3] Peter Eisenman’s Formal Analysis course at Yale, in which I participated as a student six years ago, initiates with a similar premise. The syllabus states, “The most difficult thing for an incoming graduate architecture student is learning what ‘learning how to see’ as an architect is. All graduate students in architecture believe, because of a lifetime of being in and around buildings, that they know what architecture is; they already think they know what their subject is. Therefore, the first activity in this class is one of unlearning.” The syllabus can be found in its entirety here.

[4] Several of my fellow respondents might argue for few constraints and thus greater freedom. I would ask them, is it not our goal to reshape the discipline at large, and with it the world of practice, by presenting some palpable alternative to existing models of architecture? Pedagogy requires us to have a sense of what we want architecture to be in order to incite change. The independent thinking that comes from the curiosity and awe, or love that respondent Debbie Garcia so eloquently describes, is what works to further shape and spread these ideas.

[5] Scott A. Sandage’s book entitled Failure is an illuminating text on the art world’s deployment of failure as a strategy. Of particular interest to this text is, “The Invention of Failure: An Interview with Sina Najaf and David Serlin.” Scott A. Sandage, Failure, Documents of Contemporary Art, Whitechapel Gallery, 2010, 85–88.

[6] I have had discussions with my colleague Matthew Au, faculty at SCI-Arc, that brought the relevance of this subject to my attention and further now in writing through this exchange with Jake Matatyaou, who decries dogmatic pedagogical agendas that limit the agency of participants and leave no room for failure. I am indebted to him for the addition of the term agency to this text.

[7] I found myself compelled to add this paragraph in considering Zachary Tate Porter’s response in which he critiques “passive pedagogical models” making reference to Paulo Freire’s “banking model” of education from Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Herder, 1970), 58. While tangential to Porter’s comment it occurred to me that collaborative models like those suggested might also aid in enabling a demographic shift within the profession.

[8] This text is the product of readings, lectures, teaching, discussion with colleagues and students, and writing, far in excess of those listed here. My intention is to use the footnotes not only to expound on the varied media and environments of influence that shaped my position, but also to illuminate my definition of pedagogy by presenting an example of its collective development.

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'.