James Leng, 2018-2019 Harry der Boghosian Fellowship recipient at Syracuse University School of Architecture. Image courtesy of Shawn Tang.

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 James Leng, 2018-2019 Harry der Boghosian Fellowship at Syracuse University School of Architecture.

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

I would be very curious to learn more about the historic lineage of architectural fellowships. A cursory search of some of the longer running fellowships—at Rice, Michigan, Buffalo, for example—reveals that they stretch back some 20 to 25 years. It makes me wonder how their existence has evolved over the last several decades, and if indeed they are becoming more prominent in the landscape of architectural institutions.

My sense is that each institution has a different ambition for its fellowships, but the benefit is always the opportunity to introduce a wildcard—an external set of voices—briefly into the culture of the school. For the fellows, they gain access to the incredible resources and network of an institution, as well as the opportunity to research a subject of their choosing without the traditional pressures of a PhD or tenuring. Of course this means the output of a fellowship could never be judged on the same plane as that of traditional research, there is neither the gift of time nor the same scholarly rigor.

My sense is that each institution has a different ambition for its fellowships, but the benefit is always the opportunity to introduce a wildcard—an external set of voices—briefly into the culture of the school.

From my own experience, fellowships manifest as type of bridging device between design production, academic research, and teaching. It is a remarkable platform for someone like myself, who found the daily grind of professional practice not necessarily so inspiring, yet didn’t quite feel like they belong entrenched in academia, where research and teaching take up most of one’s time. I’d like to imagine, perhaps naively, that fellowships are part of a longer experiment to cultivate a younger generation of design instructors that can productively integrate design, research, and teaching.

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

I was the 2018-2019 Harry der Boghosian Fellowship at Syracuse University School of Architecture. I was transitioning out of a longer period of professional practice, and wanting of more intellectual stimulation. I first transitioned into part-time teaching before coming across the possibility of teaching fellowships. The Boghosian Fellowship, in particular, attracted me because of its newness: I was the third fellow since its inception. I thought one of the big advantages of this newness was that the fellowship was structured very openly, and I was allowed to explore freely the nature and scope of my research topic. There was less of a sense of structured expectation that came with the longer running fellowships. The other main consideration was knowing that there is a very strong group of young design faculty at the school itself, which creates a certain amount of critical energy in the school environment, and a network of mutual support.

What was the focus of the fellowship research? 

The two major macro-topics I explored during my fellowship were non-canonical (non-Western) modes of vision and representation, and the construction of context as shaped through aesthetic, political, and cultural forces. 

One of the biggest early decisions during the fellowship was to either tackle these topics in abstraction, or ground them in a specific location. Ultimately, I decided to center the research on the Three Gorges region of the Yangtze River in China. This specific context is so embedded in the evolution of Chinese history—from its role in Chinese mythology, to the aesthetic tradition of Sanshui (landscape) painting, to its political re-imagination as a landscape of power and control through the Three Gorges Dam—this place became for me a perfect maelstrom from which to tease out alternative modes of seeing and intervening (designing) within a given context.

Things like scale, distance, proportion, and all manner of things we take for granted as stable and objective, suddenly become destabilized and up for interpretation when viewed from a different lineage of seeing. 

Many Western scholars have written about how space—and thereby context—is not a neutral construct (Lefebvre, Heidegger, etc.), but it becomes more telling to directly explore how a non-Western culture conceived of space, and how malleable its various qualities could be. Things like scale, distance, proportion, and all manner of things we take for granted as stable and objective, suddenly become destabilized and up for interpretation when viewed from a different lineage of seeing. (Wang Shu wrote an insightful article on this in the most recent issue of Log: "The “Narrative of the Mountain," translated by Le Luo, Log 45, Winter-Spring 2019, p.17.)

Typically within the discipline of architecture, the site is often seen as a-priori, as an inherited condition. This research posits instead that context is conceived through a set of aesthetic and political traditions, so therefore the questioning—and designing—of the site is as critically important as designing an intervention for the context itself.

Finally, the specificity of the research site reveals a level of modernization that is uniquely Chinese, given its cultural relationship to landscape, geo-engineering, and territorial control. In addition, by unpacking a series of human narratives across time, from Tang Dynasty poets, to British maritime explorers, to the plight of displaced residents from the flooding of the Dam Reservoir, one also constructs an image of a more complex and nuanced China.

What did you produce, teach, and exhibit during that time? 

The culmination of the fellowship was an exhibition that showcased the results of the year-long research. In order to reach that goal, in the fall semester, I taught a research seminar that simultaneously created a conceptual foundation for the exhibit. Students in the seminar explored visual narratives of the Yangtze River through drawings and models. In the Spring semester, I taught a Visiting Critic Studio focused on designing a poet’s retreat in the Three Gorges, as well as a design production seminar focused on physically producing the exhibit itself.

The exhibition, Portals Through the Haze, is a meditation on the state of modernization in the Three Gorges landscape, and an alternate way of seeing this reality. The haze operates as a shifting metaphor that represents both the material and immaterial qualities of the environment as well as its man-made transformations.

If anything, I would like to see institutions turn their adjunct positions into something more similar to the fellowship model, where there is actually a sense of investment and support for the faculty member. 

The central conceit was that in such a world obscured by this haze, the precision and verisimilitude sought through the use of conventional forms of architectural representation is imprecise, if not entirely useless. The haze reveals and conceals; it collapses time and space; it blurs the natural and the artificial, the mountain and the village, and renders impossible any definitive vantage point. 

Staged between and through a large landscape model and a series of photographs, the viewer is encouraged to take the fictional but profoundly realistic perspective found in traditional Chinese landscape painting, one where all scales and all views are experienced simultaneously. What is on view becomes a continuum of all possible vantage points and objects, rather than a singular, stable object viewed from a single, stable point of view. The viewer navigates the landscape from the scale of a room to the scale of an entire region, looking into as well as out onto The Three Gorges. Only such active, simultaneous viewing can reveal what is hidden under, through, and beyond this haze.

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

More than anything, I got to reap the rewards of struggling with a singular topic of inquiry for an entire year. Unless you’re a student, there aren’t that many positions that allow the luxury of time to think and explore freely. Academically, being thrown into the fray and forced to develop course syllabi from scratch was stressful, but ultimately rewarding. The ability of crafting one’s own courses is usually a privilege for much more experienced instructors, so in this case, the fellowship created an amazing opportunity. And finally, as someone who enjoys the challenges of teaching, the fellowship was also a gateway to self directed teaching and interaction with students that I’m quite grateful for.

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

The only thing that I would consider a negative—or perhaps a word of caution— is that the rate of output during a fellowship is not something that is sustainable long-term. I think most people understand that a fellowship is a short-duration position in which one is given an extraordinary amount of resources, while also being expected to deliver an equally extraordinary product and service to the school in return. For me, to simultaneously research a new topic, teach several courses, and produce a culminating exhibition was an intense—but worthwhile—endeavor. However, at the same time, it will take me some time to recover from that state of overwork. This is, of course, descriptive of my own tendency for overworking, but also, of the increasing, implied expectations of fellows as they gain more prominence in the discipline.

There has been some criticism that fellowships are 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? 

I can only speak to the fellowship at Syracuse University, but I was very well compensated financially. Additionally, at least for me, not having a guarantee of a permanent position is not necessarily negative. I’ve always thought of fellowships, in the general sense of the word, meant having a temporary residency to do something out of the ordinary. It relieves one from the pressures of something more permanent, like a tenure-track position. In my case, it was not my intent to pursue a permanent position after the fellowship. I saw it more as a stand-alone exploratory experience that may open up paths in the not-necessarily-immediate future. 

In my experience, the most stand-out aspect of my fellowship was having access to incredible peers and mentors in the faculty.

If I had any true criticism for university positions, it would be for the adjunct or lecturer positions. In some institutions, those are dispensable positions of pure exploitation with very little benefit for the individual instructor. If anything, I would like to see institutions turn their adjunct positions into something more similar to the fellowship model, where there is actually a sense of investment and support for the faculty member. 

What support—or resources—does a fellowship supply that would be hard to come by in another position? Why would you pursue a fellowship instead of a full-time position? 

In my experience, the most stand-out aspect of my fellowship was having access to incredible peers and mentors in the faculty. Being able to spend many hours conversing and discussing ideas with Dean Michael Speaks and Associate Dean Julia Czerniak was an absolute gift. Additionally, I would not have been able to make my research trip to the Three Gorges possible without the resources of Professor Fei Wang. Because of the uniqueness of the fellowship position, it really felt like the entire school was there in support of my endeavors, and for that I’m very grateful.

What was your next step after the fellowship? 

I am actually shifting gears back to professional practice, but with my own design practice. I’ve partnered with Jennifer Ly—a long-time friend and classmate from UC Berkeley and Harvard GSD, and the 2017 Rotch Traveling Fellowship Recipient—to start Figure, an architectural design firm based in San Francisco. The fellowship was a perfect incubation time for us to set up the backend of the business and for several projects to come into reality contractually. So now that the fellowship has ended, we’ve hit the ground running. Hoping to share new work with everyone soon.

On the other hand, I will continue to seek out teaching opportunities, and to engage in academic discourse. I’m not sure what form that will take, but I believe teaching and practicing concurrently is a very productive model.

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

I’m not working on anything directly related to the research of the fellowship at the moment, but I believe the work done will find a second life in the near future. If anything, my fellowship research has connected me to many individuals outside the architectural discipline—artists, geographers, historians. I’m excited for architecture to engage more with its disciplinary boundaries, or even outside its traditional territories. I think breaking its typical insularity is the way for the field to find newfound relevance in the contemporary world.