Archinect - Features

Cross-Talk #2: Deborah Garcia on 'Pedagogy' Today

2017-07-30T09:00:00-04:00

It is with much trepidation that I responded to the prompt of pedagogy issued for this round of Cross-Talk. A bit of hesitation because having graduated less than two months ago the...wounds are fresh, shall we say. The hand that fed is not yet out of eyesight... The master is still very much near. Take your pick of idioms and metaphors; it is difficult to write on the subject within which one is so acutely implicated. I have been a product of it and continue to subject myself willingly to its current operators. What I have included as my response will react to the pieces written by fellow participants of this current Cross-Talk—participants who I also call my teachers, peers, and friends. Friends for now, I might add, for if these Cross-Talks are in any way successful they should at least shake these friendly foundations out of simple curiosity and mischievous delight—two things this writer is quite prone to.

Cross-Talk #2: JuneJuly on 'Pedagogy' Today

2017-07-29T09:00:00-04:00

When asking questions about how to teach architecture, we have to understand what architecture is as a profession. The profession, as the academy understands it, no longer exists. The service of architecture can largely be separated into two fields: design architecture and executive architecture. Design architecture is concerned with the design of space, and executive architecture with the delivery of that design. Pedagogy today attempts to prepare students for both of these roles, and in that way prepares them for neither. Contractors and fabricators are already comfortable executing architecture, and extra-disciplinary creative agencies (advertising, graphics, branding) take on the design of architecture without hesitation. This is indiscriminate to whether or not those who do the work were trained as architects. This will only continue.

Cross-Talk #2: Constance Vale on 'Pedagogy' Today

2017-07-28T09:00:00-04:00

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.

Cross-Talk #2: Patrick Geske on 'Pedagogy' Today

2017-07-27T12:29:00-04:00

At its core, architecture is a personal pursuit that involves an itinerant and systematic questioning of everything one grows up to find in the world—pre-existing as it were, solid and opaque as if somehow natural.

Cross-Talk #2: Matthew Allen on 'Pedagogy' Today

2017-07-26T12:02:00-04:00

Not so long ago, not everyone would be expected to graduate from high school. (Graduation rates in the US: 1900: 6%; 1930: 55%; 2016: 83%.) Now college is more or less mandatory in many lines of work, and an advanced degree is almost a requirement to be an architect. But somehow an old idea persists: the idea of the architect as a generalist problem-solver, a gentleman amateur. This is a nineteenth century idea that fit, say, Frank Lloyd Wright, but, strangely enough, it also fits most contemporary architects that come to mind.

Cross-Talk #2: Pedagogy — Introduction

2017-07-24T14:46:00-04:00

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.

Cross-Talk: 'Between Architecture and People' by Caio Barboza

2017-05-25T12:10:00-04:00

Flexibility is the new f-word… PC is the face of contemporary architecture… and it adapts to people’s needs: stories of a promising 21st century for the discipline now subjugated to solidarity and justice.

Cross-Talk: 'Reflections of Agonist Reflections' by Eliyahu Keller

2017-05-24T12:10:00-04:00

The definition provided by Wikipedia for ‘agonism’ puts an emphasis on the legitimacy of struggle, on its “permanent place”, and less on the outcome of the conflict. With this—and not to say by any means that all struggles are valid—the point is still quite clear. It is the struggle that matters, not the result. It is the activity that counts, not where it leads. It is, as we tell children who lose a ball game, all about participation; it’s about moving, staying fit, agile; it’s about always being in flux.

Cross-Talk: 'The Agonist' by Clemens Finkelstein

2017-05-23T12:23:00-04:00

A(nta)gonistic—a fragile web composed of the agonist, antagonist, and anti-agonist—is how the contemporary struggle unfolds in architectural discourse: an interrelated mess of pretension shooting bursts of polemic observations and sadomasochistic exposure, bouncing from media-outlet to media-outlet till incoherently strung shibboleths and their comments ooze through touchscreens and keyboards in an attempt to incite debate, leaving fingers sticky.