Fellow Fellows is a series that focuses on the current eruption and trend of fellowships in academia today. These positions within the academic realm produce a fantastic blend of practice, research and design influence and traditionally within a tight time frame. Fellow Fellows sits down with these fellows and attempts to understand what these positions offer to both themselves and the discipline at large. Fellow Fellows is about bringing attention and inquiry to an otherwise maddening pace of refreshed academics while giving a broad view of the exceptional and breakthrough work being done in-between the newly minted graduate and the licensed associate. 

This week we talk to WAI Architecture Think Tank. WAI Architecture Think Tank is an international studio practicing architecture, urbanism and architectural research, founded in Brussels in 2008 by Puerto Rican architect, artist, author and theorist Cruz Garcia and French architect, artist, author and poet, Nathalie Frankowski. WAI and its parallel artist practice Garcia Frankowski are based in Beijing, Taliesin and Taliesin West, where both directors are former Visiting Teaching Fellows at the School of Architecture at Taliesin, and current Hyde Chairs of Excellence at the College of Architecture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. WAI's directors are also founding curators of Intelligentsia Gallery, an alternative art space in Beijing. 

The conversation, focus and applications to fellowships have exploded over the past decade. They have become the go-to means of exposure, legitimization within academia and, in some respect, the HOV lane of historically PhD-owned territories of research and publication. What are your views on the current standing of fellowships as a vehicle of conceptual exploration?

Not being very familiar with the history of Fellowships in American Academia, which we assume is what you are referring to, fellowships (or Chair positions) have offered a unique opportunity for us to find fertile ground for communicating experimental ideas while rethinking our position in the world. Based in Beijing for seven of the eight first years of our careers provided several challenges including the clear boundaries between underground or experimental discourses and the political role of academia or mainstream architecture in China. During those seven years, every lecture, presentation or workshop required many hours of flights, trains and a very complicated schedule which most of the time meant travelling back and forward to Europe in order to speak, do workshops with academic institutions, or participate in exhibitions. During this period, we also had to rely on the vividness of little magazines around the world that kept providing platforms for discourse and positions. 

While the conceptual exploration has been a core characteristic of our practice, fellowships  in that matter have been highly complementary  platforms allowing us to be fully engaged with our research interests in a more comprehensive way. Being in a fellowship means that we can dedicate a larger part of our time in exploring those ideas and push them further in an academic environment offering a supporting material and intellectual infrastructure to do so. We feel less isolated, it’s easier to exchange with others, find common or divergent ground and build new projects. While incorporating students in these works we can see how they can bring refreshing perspectives, as they are generally new to those topics.

We value highly the intellectual exchanges we can have with them, either in seminars or in studios, as the fellowship or any real pedagogical experiment remains dialectical as every critical project reveals new questions requiring new forms of critique.

The fact that we can travel across the world, work and share these topics we have been exploring for almost a decade, is a very rewarding process that fits very well in the nature of a research fellowship.

Because of the encompassing nature of these fellowships we can develop a complete thinking process and work more on long term research projects. Our production pace is also very different and allows us to increase the intensity of our focus without spending energy on external factors. The fact that we can travel across the world, work and share these topics we have been exploring for almost a decade, is a very rewarding process that fits very well in the nature of a research fellowship.

What fellowship where you in and what brought you to that fellowship?

We arrived to the US with an invitation to be Visiting Teaching Fellows at the School of Architecture at Taliesin and Taliesin West, the former Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. Aaron Betsky who was familiar with our work, was curating the Shenzhen Urbanism and Architecture Bi-City Biennale.  After seeing one of our presentations Aaron, then the Dean of the School (now the President), described with the unique condition, location and history of the place.  Later on, he encouraged us to consider the Visiting Teaching Fellow position as it offers a very exceptional pedagogic setting, small class of students, life on historical campuses, learning from an architectural legacy, cooking, eating, living as a community, but also having the opportunity to bring our own ideas, ways of thinking and teaching to the institution.

So in that matter the Fellowship seemed like an interesting challenge for us, bringing new perspectives to a storied institution in a period of transition, located at the opposite side of the world we were then living in, at a time when we felt we have contributed as much as we could to the architectural and art environment in Beijing.

After completing a year at the School of Architecture at Taliesin, we were invited to be the Hyde Chairs of Excellence at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, a position aimed to bring different perspectives to the College of Architecture previously held by the likes of Wolf Prix and Peter Cook.

What was the focus of the fellowship research? What did you produce? Teach? And or exhibit during that time?

In both instances the fellowships have been invitations to bring ideas and concepts we explore in our practice as WAI Architecture Think Tank directly to the academic environment. Focusing on our diverse interests, we have offered different studios depending on the level of the students. For example, graduate studios focusing on Narrative Architectures or architectural stories, aiming to develop critiques of ideology by mixing drawing, historical references, images, models, film and text. Other studios were developed around what we named Hardcore Architecture or architecture as pure geometric form. On that subject, as an example, we taught a studio that transformed a discarded school building in the town of Miami, Arizona, into a Contemporary Social Condenser for the community. We also offer several research and publishing seminars, curatorial workshops, pre-thesis seminars, contemporary theory seminars, representation classes, seminars on film and moving images, contemporary art, or on history of strategies of Universalism since Suprematism, and so on. Several of our studios and seminars are closely related to books we are writing at the moment, or theories and manifesto we have published and researched about. Other courses focus on ongoing or new interests we are forging along the way. For us it’s a dual way of teaching because every studio, or workshop or seminar opens new research possibilities while always relating strongly to our own practice as well as to other workshops, lectures and exhibitions we keep offering in other parts of the world.

We usually end the studio or seminar work by organizing exhibitions, student publications, student film screening or other events either within the school or for a wider public, with the work produced during the semester.

How has the fellowship advanced or become a platform for your academic and professional career?

The Visiting Teaching Fellow at the School of Architecture at Taliesin and the Hyde Chair of Excellence at UNL have been integral components for our practice. Not only they allow us to create a larger form of collective intelligence, but they also consolidate our idea of a practice where pedagogical experiments are as important projects to develop discourses and positions as any other could be. 

As mentioned before, earlier in our career we had to travel several times in a year all across the world to have the type of dialogue we can now have every single day. At that time, we also developed a lot of self-initiated projects, trying to engage in different kinds of workshops, exhibitions, discussions involving a public from very young kids, to high schools, college students, young professionals and general public. Education, in the wide sense of the word, has always been a main component of our practice and a priority. Of course, because the fellowships allows us to build upon longer term projects, usually being involved by semesters, with students specialized in architecture in a high end academic setting, our exchanges have become more insightful and encompassing, our teaching syllabus can remain experimental but still offer solid knowledge on architecture, advance bases for research and history, while tackling some more complex topics. Research in different fronts have expanded exponentially while solidifying into more comprehensive projects and consolidating our teaching curriculum. 

What negative sides to a fellowship do you see? (if any)

It’s not necessarily a negative side, but the uncertainty of what happens next is always a challenge we have to deal with. Almost ten years since the foundation of WAI, we’re still inside this vortex of projects that lead us in unprecedented directions, both intellectually and physically. 

What is the pedagogical role of the fellowship and how does it find its way into the focus and vision of the institution that you worked with?

The School of Architecture at Taliesin still adhere to the original experimental tradition of ‘learning by doing’. Our experience there as fellows could be summarized as ‘Architecture is life; life is architecture’. Living as a community, teaching as a community, exchanging as a community. The daily duties of interacting with such an institution means that you, either as a student or as a visiting fellow, becomes an active part of it. Everyone is involved in the collective efforts such as helping the chef in the kitchen, making installations in the dining room, organizing the formals, preparing the events, exhibitions or presentations. To this you can add a direct interaction with the historical legacy of the place, by exchanging with the fellows that were there at the time of Frank Lloyd Wright like Jane Houston (Minerva Montooth) who was Frank Lloyd Wright assistant, or Effi Casey, a musician and artist and wife of the late structural engineer John Casey, with the preservationists, with the Foundation, the interaction with tourists and tour guides, architecture lovers coming to the place for a piece of history. And to cap it all, the endless intellectual exchanges with our students, with visiting lectures that ranged from Wolf Prix to Michiel Riedijk, with the Dean Aaron Betsky and his husband, artist Peter Harberkorn, or colleagues like Chris Lasch, Elena Rocchi, Chris Winters. The beauty of such a fellowship is that the involvement between the fellows and the students doesn't work around the clock, so the learning process and exchange process is much deeper and resonant.  It’s hard to put it into words but the mixture between the focus, the vision and the legacy of the institution makes the whole DNA of the visiting fellowship.

At the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, we have been invited to bring in new perspectives and alternative ways to think and produce architecture to a solid academic institution. Historically, the position of Hyde Chair of Excellence has brought many interesting visions and it’s stimulating for us at that moment to be able to be part of a bigger institution, a state university, with a big aim to shape the future of society, and a broad reach to the future practitioners, policy makers, thinkers, builders of society.

Where do you see the role of the fellowship becoming in the future and how does it fit within the current discipline of architecture?

As long as institutions are willing to open the doors to alternative ways of teaching and practicing architecture fellowships are the correct way to bring diverse approaches into the academic world.  While sometimes experimentation is confused with style, a lot of nontraditional practices can be incorporated in more standard environments. Institutions would gain diversity of perspectives if more fellowships are put in place and are used to attract new or diverging ideas. Especially in a time when our profession is changing due to evolving economies, we should understand that the ways of practicing of today are not the same as in the past, especially for young, interesting practices, and the ways of practicing of tomorrow are yet to be shaped. We need to have an academia that acknowledges, reflects and even provides space to have an effect on the changing nature of architecture, we need to understand what is the real contemporary condition of the architect, or architects in plural, since there’s not a standard way of practicing. It needs to be able to articulate what are the new questions to be asked, what old questions have to be revisited; in order to prepare wisely the architects of tomorrow.

Especially in a time when our profession is changing due to evolving economies, we should understand that the ways of practicing of today are not the same as in the past, especially for young, interesting practices, and the ways of practicing of tomorrow are yet to be shaped. 

There is some criticism that a fellowship is a cost effective way for institutions to appropriate potent ideas while leaving the fellow with little compensation besides the year of residence and no guarantee of a permanent position? What is your position on this?

There are a lot of conflicts between the role of Universities and the influence of Capitalism today. Tuition fees ballooning out of reach and universities being treated like corporations, especially in the US. Students are being neglected of their capacity to rethink society by the burden of unsurmountable debts. We have read a lot recently about adjunct professors, PhD students, being underpaid and exploited. We are aware of how some Universities make it very difficult to become tenured in order to underpay and give less benefits to their teaching employees as well as to keep the old hegemonic structures in place.

Tuition fees ballooning out of reach and universities being treated like corporations, especially in the US. Students are being neglected of their capacity to rethink society by the burden of unsurmountable debts. We have read a lot recently about adjunct professors, PhD students, being underpaid and exploited

However, as we mentioned earlier, for a practice like ours, with a Puerto Rican and a French Architect operating in Beijing, a fellowship was perhaps the most sensible way to get us to start teaching in institutions that felt we could bring something different and hopefully beneficial while providing us with time to reflect on our career path and the current state of our practice. Fellowships shouldn’t exist in detriment of pedagogical worker’s rights, but rather as complementary positions expanding the spectrum of discourses and ways of doing and thinking about architecture.

What support, and/or resources does a fellowship supply that would be hard to come by in any other position? Why would you pursue a fellowship instead of a full time position?

Our first fellowship allowed us to test, experiment or confirm pedagogical approaches we wanted to experience with in those settings, but also understand if it was something that could be mutually beneficial, for us, our practice, for the students and for the institution. Of course what we always privilege is the value of the opportunity in terms of interesting and stimulating academic environments, challenging curriculum with a freedom to bring our own expertise and ways of teaching. In the case of our first fellowship, we strongly complied with the vision of Aaron on what should be the new school of Architecture at Taliesin and were more than willing to be part of it. What was also unique and knowledgeable about it is, because of its encompassing nature, living and learning as a community, having smaller classes and more time dedicated to each students, allows you to develop a better sensibility towards the possibilities, the successes or impasses of an architectural curriculum, and adapt your methodology accordingly. 

What was your next step after the fellowship?

We went from the Visiting Teaching Fellowship at the School of Architecture in Taliesin to the Hyde Chair of Excellence in UNL, and then we’ll see. Needless to say, we are looking forward continuing being engage with the academia in one way or the other.

What are you working on now and how is it tied to the work done during the fellowship?

We are currently working on publishing the first Chinese version of our book ‘Pure Hardcore Icons: A Manifesto on Pure Form in Architecture’, a theory we’ve been working with for several years, also the base of one of our undergraduate studio, challenging Robert Venturi’s concept of the Difficult Whole. While with the ‘Difficult Whole’ Venturi argued for an architecture of complexity and contradiction, the ‘Easy Parts’ would deal with buildings of simple geometric forms. For example, the third year studio at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln designing ‘The Campus of the Easy Parts’ focused on the idea of conceiving faculty buildings, research labs, exhibition spaces and housing projects based on research on the use of pure form in the past and contemporary history of architecture, painting, sculpture, fashion, film, in order to first understand the potential of such shapes and then adapt these forms to the required programs. The result was the design of a campus as an idealized model of land occupation (in the same vein as Leonidov’s Magnitogorsk, Wright’s Broadacre City, and Koolhaas/OMA project for Parc de la Villette) with eleven ‘hardcorist’ buildings, or what we named ‘the Easy Parts’.  

Another book we are currently working on, which also served as framework for our graduate level research studio also at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln ‘Landscapes Without Qualities’, is  ‘Narrative Architecture: A Kynical Manifesto’. We have been recently awarded a grant from the Graham Foundation for it.  Narrative Architecture studies projects like Superstudio’s Il Monumento Continuo and The Fundamental Acts, Madelon Vriesendorp’s Flagrant Delit, Archizoom’s No-Stop City and Rem Koolhaas’ Story of the Pool in order to reveal the potential of architectural narratives that employ text, images, and film in order to generate ideological critiques on architecture and urbanism. Using this theory as a model, our studio consisted in imagining a future in the great landscapes in which work has been ‘abolished’ by automation. Our students looked at utilitarian architectures (grain elevators, silos, water towers, bunkers, tanks for fossil fuels) in a future that questioned not only the values of these structures, but the structure of society as well. In preparation for some upcoming publications and exhibitions dealing with the legacy of Kazimir Malevich and Lazar Khidekel, as well as on projects dealing with film and architecture, we offered a seminar on the influence of Suprematism in the development of modern and contemporary architecture entitled ‘Tales of the Black Square: Strategies of Universalism since Suprematism’ and several other seminars and workshops related to media, manifestoes, publishing and film including ‘From GIF to Utopia: Architecture and the Moving Image’; ‘Comrades of Time’; and ‘An Archeology of Architectural Media’.

What advice would you have for prospective fellowship applicants? 

One advice would be to feel free to also submit visual material you feel can support any of your statements. Seeing outcomes, outtakes or process of the work always brings a better understanding of what is intended, especially in a profession like ours, where our teaching curriculum must also include solid representational components. Also there shouldn’t be any reason why to see architecture as practice and pedagogy differently. The more they are integrated, the more seamless and balanced it becomes. As for what can be proposed, we would keep encouraging more experimental approaches that can help students understand that, again, there’s not one way to practice as architects, and furthermore offer ways to complement at best their thinking and design process.