OK Burningman, do you even know how to read that graphic??? Pitiful. Your pitiful. The lack of pass rate may be (within good reason) the intensity of the ARE in California (which you should know is much different AND much more difficult than that of the rest of the states). Plus, if you actually read the graphic you will see that Pratt has a lower success rate when taking ARE's than SCI-Arc.

And as for competition in SoCal, let's be realistic: USC (The University of Southern California [you must not know what any of these acronyms mean, so I will spell them out for you] has one of the best programs in the country), UCLA (The University of California at Los Angeles), and Woodbury University all present a solid level of competition. Are you really comparing one of the top design schools in the world to the University of Detroit Mercy (yes, I am very familiar with UDM as I am from Detroit)? This must be just a testament to your lack of cultural understanding outside of the suit and tie side of architecture (as a profession and a lifestyle).

But in reality, SCI-Arc is more in competition with schools like the AA, Pratt, UCL The Bartlett, etc, etc (how many schools had a lecture series that included Patrik Schumacher promoting his new book....hmmmm.....the AA and SCI-Arc!). Thus, the school's level of intensity and it's resolve to generate 'designers' as opposed to tie wearing architects may be reason enough for the more talented of us to attend (obviously you did not get the memo), not sub-par students. There IS other aspects of design work with and WITHOUT the architecture dialogue that you clearly do not understand, as you would clearly be much more comfortable straddled with the liability of the stamp.

...I could keep going...do you know who the dean of SCI-Arc is? Do you know who sits on the board? Do you know who helped found the school? Do you know about the facilities? Clearly not.

Arfaei, good choice, but it's a bummer that you will not be joining me at SCI-Arc this fall. Be careful in Clinton Hill at night and stay off the subway through Bed-Stuy. :)

i'll tell you this.. SCIARC was fun. the people, teachers, scene...

you're much more at liberty to do and say watch you want. 

much more laid back than eastcoast arch schools.

word victimeyes! word. anyone who says that SCI-Arc is not currently one of the top schools is just flat out naive. 

Aside from 3 incessant detractors, namely 'burningman, ctrlZ, and rusty' who seems to find any and every time to deface the institutions they haven't attended for reasons I can't fathom, except retaliation for rejection, jealousy, or simply petty hatred against the pedagogy or attitude of the school (which by in large arrogant with tendency toward cowboy mentality), SCI-Arc should not be your choice of school if you are comparing SCI-Arc to CUNY and Pratt.

SCI-Arc is not CUNY.

SCI-Arc is not Pratt.

SCI-Arc shares a lineage with AA (founded by renegades who rejected the dominant institutions), but we are a much younger institution.

SCI-Arc shares regular rivalry with east coast GSAPP (see pic below). But SCI-Arc is still not GSAPP.

SCI-Arc is not a school, it is a factory. Many school, including SCI-Arc compare their school to ethos of a laboratory environment. But I disagree. In any given day, school is filled with people, instructors, students, and staff, chaotically mangled into production mode.

There is no hierarchy. There is no classroom. Only hungry, dirty, and sometime mischievous people in a 1/4 mile long concrete and steel trench, trying to cook up a next atomic bomb.

SCI-Arc doesn't teach students how to draft, they teach students how to draw. SCI-Arc doesn't teach you how to be an architect, they teach students how to think (mostly about architecture).

If you have visited the school, you would not be posting these irrelevant questions on archinect. And if you did visit the school and still had doubt, then that should give you a clue, you do not belong here.

Choose the other school. Do not come to this school. Do not compare this school to other schools. Pratt will welcome you. SCI-Arc will try to break you (out of your mold).

This is our legacy. And you are not welcome.

SCI-Arc, circa 1980: (Clockwise order) Frederick Fisher, Robert Mangurian, Michael Rotondi, Coy Howard, Craig Hodgetts, Thom Mayne, Frank Gehry

@ACrowly
Thank you for the information. I feel like you are a  "“Everything I do, I feel is genius. Whether it is or it isn't." person.
I am happy that I am not going to attend SCI-Arc if the people there are remotely like you.I feel sorry for you and the school that you attend.
PS: If I even have visited the schools I would have posted this.Because asking other people's opinion for someone like me with abroad education is needed.All I can say is that I am sorry for you.
(sorry if I have mistakes in my writings, English is not my first language.)

ACrowley,

if you are a that genius why do you even attend at a school?

To learn how to think LIKE a genius? It's a true comedy...

You said that your school is a factory.

However, remember that in Andy Worhol's factory a genius was only one and the others around the genius were bunch of fools who gathered following a phantasy of genius.

why dont you knuckleheads post your portfolios and stop talking shit about my homies at sci-arc.

get off the jock and go stack some bricks.

Word Louis! ACrowley, we have to let the haters hate (even though that was one of the best descriptions I have heard about our school thus far). When there is success there will always be cynics ("when your swimming up stream your doing something right" - Stanford Ovshinsky). Arfei, I'm sorry that you didn't see what we saw in SCI-Arc, however you obviously didn't visit the rail yard. If you did you would either:

A. Want to join us

or

B. Know what we are about and have serious respect

So get off the jock and stop hating.

Hahaha.

Yes, let all us hater know. UCLA and USC are great schools, but not for architecture. Anyone who tells you this probably hasn't left southern Cali. How could anyone make the claim Sci-Arc is one of the best in the world and simultaneously make the claim that it's in direct competition with UCLA and USC?

Southern California Institute of Architecture
1052 tests taken per in 2006

207 graduates - 2006
65.78% pass rate

It seems to be the largest arch school in the country, to claim that it is against the 'institution' is quite the oxymoron. The number I'm most concerned about is the 207 to 1052. For any school that remotely has a name, this ratio seems to be extremely low; which means that for the size of the school it isn't producing nearly enough architects. Just compare it to the first 5 schools on Matt A's list. Sci-Arc ratio and pass rate is quite under-performing. Most people go to architecture school to become architects, I'm guessing people go to Sci-Arc or other reasons.

Andrews University                           795: 36       67.67%

Arizona State University                 1117: 86       74.22%

Auburn University                            1194: 47       74.54%

Ball State University                        1383:54       76.86%

Boston Architectural College         1207:63       68.93%

Sci-Arc                                                1052:207     65.78%

Sad sad sad....schools 1/4th of its size is producing more architects.

^

ACrowley: "Aside from 3 incessant detractors, namely 'burningman, ctrlZ, and rusty' who seems to find any and every time to deface the institutions they haven't attended for reasons I can't fathom,... blah blah blah "

Wait, why is my name included in this trainwreck of a thread? I said nothing. 

I'm cool with Sci-Arc. If you have $50k/year burning in your (or your dad's) pocket, Sci-Arc is as good as any other choice. 

If one decides to attend, I highly recommend getting your shots up to date, as everyone affiliated with the program appears to be rabid. To be fair, people who have an irrational hatred of the program need medical help as well.

My only knock on Sci-Arc is that it's a little too California dreamy? There's a 'starfucker' element to the whole experience (and I say that in an endearing way). All your ideal clients are rich, rad dudes who spread joy around the world by opening funky art museums.

Yes, there's a need for museums, but there is (sadly) also a need for hospitals, jails and retirement homes in this world as well. Sci-Arc education would be a waste for the later. Noone enters architecture with halfway homes in mind, so Sci-Arc brochure would definitively be enticing to a young mind.

So in conclusion, you have your starfuckers on the west coast, assmunchers on the east coast, and things that go 'mooo' in the middle. Your salary will be the same (from all three backgrounds) when you are fresh out of school until you prove yourself not to be an expense. 

In the meantime try your hardest to be born rich. :)

You can create value through design and you can create value through function. But one thing it always comes down to is that all of these projects are essentially the same when it comes to windows, doors and floors.

Now, that ignores innovation— innovation can be measured by a combination of performance and value. If you get the chance to design something completely novel, that object must be able to be used hundreds if not thousands of times without failure. And that its life-cycle should have an approximate average cost to operate in regards to comparable technologies.

So, be it Sci-Arc or Yale, it all comes down to nuts, bolts and gaskets.

That being said, most of your are clearly forgetting the "hipster effect."

Things are only cool when no one else thinks they are cool. The very nature that lead to SCI-Arc actually existing currently makes it uncool. In a total turn of irony, SCI-Arc only has an allure because it can be compared to other schools.

If Notre Dame, Yale and University of Miami stopped pumping out contempo-casual classical architecture, SCI-Arc  would no longer have anything to be at odds with and would render itself into irrelevancy.

@antithesis
As you can see I have applied to SCI-Arc and got accepted, So I am not a hater if I was I would not have applied.All I asked if you read the thread was some info on the schools that I got accepted in.But this guy "ACrowly" is so angry and has a very bad wayto express his thoughts.
I think SCI-Arc is a good school and if was not I would not have applied to it.I just asked a question to have a better understanding of the schools but it came out as long fight between other people here.I am not a hater and I think every school has its own benefits and problems.
 

if notre dame yale and Umiami didnt exist there would still be mountains of generic architecture of the type that burningboy is interested in. if one wants to speculate on a school by how many of its students pass the Cali lisencing test (which is the hardest), they have low Architectural standards.

If you go into a bar right now and tell them your an experimental architect, 99% of the people in their will not understand what your talking about. The hipster effect only applies to the mainstream, not the circle of architecture. Hipsterism twice removed is not hip.

ie. not conforming to the non-conforming. By that logic you end up like leon krier, a counter-revolutionary that never took a step forward. Even Zumthor and Moneo know this, and one of them taught at sci-arc

This doesnt mean that every student at sci-arc will become an experimental architect, but it does mean that platforms do exist for those ideas to ferment.

People are limited in how they see ideas. you wanna fight sci-arc? go get your degree there, they'd welcome u. Otherwise it would be best if the aimless critics shrivel back into mediocrity
 

If you guys, louis kahn and Acrowley, think that you are that creative, let me ask a few things.

If SCI-Arc is that creative, why does works from SCI-Arc look almost same since late 90's?

If SCI-Arc is that flexible, why hasn't the works from SCI-Arc been changed for almost 20 years?

Isn't that because SCI-Arc see creativity only in one way?

I understand burningman's reactions because if having looked at works from SCI-Arc since long time ago they look pretty much boring.

Let me say one other thing.

Just like a hater always hates, a non-listener always don't listen to others.

ok, I give up. You guys are all right, SCI-Arc is a worthless entity. It plays no role whatsoever in the development of architectural or design focused thought. All of the teachers (past and present), founders, and board members are dumb 'experimental architects', and all of us that attend the school are sub-par students because we don't run out to get our licenses upon graduation (and even if we did aspire to hammer out dimensions and railing details, we would only pass the ARE's 65.78% of the time anyway). Long live every school that thrives from the banalities of stone and light frame architecture and any type of capitalist agenda!!

LET'S SPEND NO TIME THINKING AND MUCH MORE TIME DOING!! DOWN WITH THE RAIL DEPOT AND DOWN WITH BEDFORD SQUARE!! THERE IS NO ROOM FOR THOUGHT AND RAW DESIGN IN ARCHITECTURE ANYMORE!! BUT FIRST:

EVERYONE VOTE THE TRUMP - PALIN TICKET FOR 2012!! LET'S PUSH CAPITALISM TO THE SKY!!! WOOOOOHOOOOOO! THEN WE CAN TRULY STREAMLINE ARCHITECTURE!!!!!! Pulte homes for life!

Arfei, apologies. Did not mean to imply that you were being a hater. :-)

Actually, Bedford Square is a great example to my point that "ultra-contemporary" architecture is a practice of comparatives and entirely referential in nature. The starkness of the pavilion design is amplified by its banal and traditionalist  surroundings. Rather, the contemporary structure creates that banality that amplifies the curious nature of the pavilion.

Both become less spectacular without the other. But even with the comparative nature presented here, this sort of extremist combinations themselves get tiring after you see a couple of them. If one were really committed to exploration of architectural design, there's many possibilities of how to approach this outside of object creation.

For instance, the single blue door or the white distraction-away-from-Georgian classical facade demonstrate that even seemingly insignificant design choices can have a profound impact. Architects such as Legorreta and Zumthor explore architectural design through color and materiality rather than form and object. 

I'm not simply outright saying SCI-Arc is a worthless school. I'm just saying that these extremist comparison do no one any good because architectural design is highly comparative. And proclaiming that SCI-Arc is the foremost leader is architectural design hinders its stance as an experimental school more than it helps.

James R. -

well put and thank you for the elementary lesson in design. I personally am not disagreeing with the beauty of different vernaculars of architecture in our physical realm: it is what defines our thoughts and forces evolution. Thus I do not believe in any type of Utopian aesthetic or Marxist communal design principles (if that is what you were implying). However, I do believe in the evolution of thought and experimentation as our precedents and our technologies allow us to reach into different realms of science fiction. I don't think that we would be doing ourselves any favors by expecting and settling for perpetual simulations of what already exists (no, I'm not proposing a world where gravity doesn't exist and people walk on water). I know that there are many people that agree with me on this.

The DRL Ten Pavilion is an example of this. Ten years of progressive fictitious applied art and science ideas, culminated into a fabricated and built pavilion for your enjoyment.

Ultimately, I think what every advocate of SCI-Arc on here is trying to say, is that we think we deserve to be respected a little bit more. As an open table for thought where everyone's interest can be discussed we don't like being pissed on by the numbers of successful ARE score's from 2006. Nor do we like it being implied that we are irrelevant as a school because we are not out there stacking bricks and bidding out contracts for retirement homes and highway rest stops (ie, cranking out registered architects). It is obvious that SCI-Arc is (with several other schools) at the forefront of aggressive, popular, and nascent design. Anyone who refutes this is clearly out of touch with reality or is just naive to the academic world of architecture. Sure, saying that we are number one can be nauseating for others and insulting to other schools (please take note University of Michigan students), so let's try to refrain from any spontaneous and/or ill posed claims (I apologize for any earlier comments as I was quite hot under the collar). Let's be level headed and agree that SCI-Arc is SCI-Arc. It is not on the same playing field as every other school (not to say that it's better, just different).

burningman -

SCI-Arc is a school for design with an architecture dialogue. This may come as a surprise to you, but the world of design stretches beyond architecture. And for many of us, the concept of having the ability to reach beyond what a traditional degree in architecture may allow us to do is quite appealing. Many of us are fascinated by pushing the limits of design as well (whether it be at 1/8" scale, on a board, or built for habitable use), which is why we wanted to be part of SCI-Arc in the first place. No, you may not be able to pull something out of Tom Wiscombe's vertical studio and go build it right away on a limited budget, but that's the beauty of it for us. It reaches beyond what we know and helps us to push science fiction into different directions (believe it or not, computers, robots, and the parking assistants in Santa Monica were all once objects of science fiction as well).

SCI-Arc provides this type of education for people like us. SCI-Arc presents us with the tools, the faculty, and the lifestyle to develop our own ideas to question what is commonly accepted. However, burningman, this is unfathomable for some people to understand. I can see why some think that we might be worthless as architects in an unaccommodating society (thank you Delueze and Guattari for the Anit-Oedipus).  However, with all do respect, please stop with your numbers and your attempts to debilitate someone's interest with your less than knowledgeable comments. :-)

As ACrowley stated, we will continue to cook up another atomic bomb (figuratively speaking) while the students of other traditional schools continue to outline their curriculum. Just please stop with the false and uneducated comments, especially to someone who is innocently seeking educated advice on the three schools to facilitate his decision.

By the way, I am not from Southern California. I'm from the Detroit area. People from all over the world attend SCI-Arc, as it is an international school, not a regional school (yes, you can wrap your head around that if you try).

a couple of questions:

-why on earth is this such a divisive topic?

-when did this factious split between "aggressive, popular, and nascent design" and those who are  "out there stacking bricks and bidding out contracts for retirement homes and highway rest stops (ie...registered architects)" take place exactly, and a better question is...WHY?

-is this argument a way of expressing frustration at how architects have dealt with the recession...i.e. some went into escapist, design-research-academia while others sucked it up, took the brunt of it, and continued to work in the trenches...now they hate each other because camp A bailed and didn't 'man up' somehow but still lords it over the grunts who had 'loser' jobs, and camp B won't dream of doling out any of those jobs to the dreamer kids who flaked out and can't detail block walls, but now the kids decide that, uh, they want that paycheck after all?

honestly, as someone in my 30s i'm interested in what goes on in the schools but won't go so far as to get all worked up over it.  study whatever you like.  but the war between the "building" people and the "nascent design" people is truly baffling to me. 

we are architects, and by definition we deal with the built environment.  whether that built environment is organized into a brick box or something resembling the skin of a molting reptile is irrelevant...(and for the sake of this conversation, so is the size of the budget required)...it could be a good project or a bad project either way. 

but when it becomes a war between some sort of amorphous 'design image' and 'dumb, ordinary buildings', i start to get worried....(and i'm all for research, no matter how far out.) science fiction is fine as a reference or an inspiration, but when you start to flat-out ignore spatiality, scale, and real human experience, you are no longer in the realm of architecture and it's time to call it something else.

when i was in school, there was a guy who thought he was all creative and designed a house for a spider.  he was told to get the hell out and come back with something  that deals with architectural issues...and this was at the most far-out school out there, at the time. 

ps--it's this idea that you are somehow leaving plain-old architecture behind for bigger, better worlds (design beyond architecture; pushing the limits) that i question in your comment, antithesis.  it sounds like weirdly cultish scientology-speak (as does the comment about SCI-Arc providing the 'lifestyle' to make this happen.)

i hope you have some sort of idea what the objective of all this limit-pushing is, other than to achieve something 'new'?  do you assess the effectiveness/value of these experiments in technology, experience, space, social and urban issues?  if you do, then more power to you.  but if you don't, i hope you know that at the end of the day, we don't live in a movie.

I particularly like the back-handed compliment myself; "well put and thank you for the elementary lesson in design," says antithesis.

Technically, it's "Art Fundamentals 1102." But architects never seem to actually go to art school to learn about the cultural movements that inform their various philosophies. And if this is so elementary and reductive, why is it a topic that's so little discussed? Oh yeah, I remember now. Because actually analyzing what art and design means always leads into post-modernism and deconstructionism— the intersection of which is where all meaning dies.

Which is primarily a return to nihilism and Baudrillard— every aspect of human meaning is so tremendously fictitious. You can revel is the amorphous falsities of life or you can turn a blind eye to them like Kierkegaard and revel in the fantasy (Three Upbuilding Discourses, 1844).

Whatever the case and whomever is the subject, we're all educated enough to know it is all utter and insignificant bullshit.

The true feat of architecture is to capitalize on that bullshit and sell it to clients— be it stone monuments to tired art or chrome balloons dedicated to vanity, a good architect makes fantasies into realities.

I can see why some think that we might be worthless as architects in an unaccommodating society (thank you Delueze and Guattari for the Anit-Oedipus). 

Come on...

Do you really think any of contemporary architects understand Deleuze and Guattari?

Moreover, Anti-Oedipus is just one facet of Deleuze's philosophical process.

Reading Anti-Oedipus only, you would never catch what Deleuze was trying to do.

If you tell me, in a few sentence, what is difference between Deleuze and Baudrillard in their positions for Objects, I will admit you are progressive.

If you cannot, don't pretend to know what actually you don't know.

Do you really think any of contemporary architects understand Deleuze and Guattari?

syp.. I can only assume you're not a contemporary architect - but perhaps some sort of philosopher. And I can only assume you've gotten lost and found yourself in somehow in an architecture thread, although given the subject matter in said thread, i can understand how you could have been tricked.

I also don't completely understand their philosophy, but at least I know how wrong contemporary architects are in understanding Deleuze's philosophy.

Moreover, at least I don't pretend being an "avant garde".

They, SCI-Arc's people, are the one who have insisted on being avant-gardes because they think in a progressive way and they know about contemporary philosophy better than us.

So, I guess, my question wouldn't be that difficult for them to answer.

I wouldnt compare the DRL ten pavilion to a blue door design tactic and write it off as going nowhere, but i see the point. A fascination with such subtle moves, as materiality and color is on the 'safe' side, a middle ground between the georgian facade and a parametric pavilion. One could probably explore those ideas even at sci-arc, or your local corporate architecture firm, its very hard to pull off well.

There are too many people here without jobs, or just out of touch with academia.

give it 20-30 years, when all the grandkids pop up and wanna go to LA. School is the time to explore, even if you want to be "cautious"

syp you can read this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Deleuze-Guattari-Architects-Thinkers/dp/0415421160

If that is your only response, it's truely disappointing...

You could at least try.

Okay, it's not fun anymore. I am out.

California and Texas are the hardest states to get licensed because of extra exams. The passing rates are on each test taken. Simply because there are extra exams doesn't mean that the passing rates should be lower or higher, these numbers presented by Matt A are based on a per test passing rate.

Andrews University                           795: 36       67.67%

Arizona State University                 1117: 86       74.22%

Auburn University                            1194: 47       74.54%

Ball State University                        1383:54       76.86%

Boston Architectural College         1207:63       68.93%

Sci-Arc                                                1052:207     65.78%

Yes, Sci-Arc draws in some international students, but so does Michigan, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, MIT, and other large well known arc programs. These schools were supposed the top 5 this year, but I know they draw a lot of international students. The numbers look much worse if you want to use the international student excuse. Sci-Arc supporters- must be hard to accept being below average.

University of Michigan                     1324:158       76.74%

Harvard University                            1352:14         79.44%

Yale University                                     814:65         82.80%

Columbia University                         1348: 58        70.55%

MIT                                                          545:38         75.96%

Sci-Arc                                                1052:207        65.78%

Still lower ratio, even lower passing rate....there is no comparison

Sad sad sad

Good Choice. I will be graduating with my second Architecture Degree from Pratt next week. I feel it was well worth it.  Good Luck. 

I give up. Your all missing the point and I really don't want to waste any more of my time holding your hands...it's too nice outside and I have to continue on with my work (by the way, I work at a firm that specializes on branch banks and I am currently detailing a block wall for an ATM enclosure, thus I am not a dreamer 'kid' who didn't learn how to detail a block wall).

Syp, I really am confused about who it is that you think you are. Don't come to me and try to start a philosophical discussion about something YOU THINK you know. First of all there was no discussion regarding the points of view on objectivity between Baudrillard and Delueze ANYWHERE in this conversation (please read the entire blog). I understand that you want to change the topic to be about yourself so that you can discuss what you might have read in someone's thesis somewhere to exercise your intelligence, however in this discussion it is entirely beside the point. Even if this were the direction in which this conversation (collaboratively) were headed, who would respect you as an authoritarian figure in regards to rhizomatic relationships and propagated growth?? Actually, don't answer that, at least not for me, because I don't care.

In any case, the point of my reference was not about objectivity, but rather the rationality of the alienated individual in 'our' environment that makes SCI-Arc so important. Just so you know.

burningman -  get a clue. You should change your name to rainman. Please re-read above comments and try to comprehend. Thank you.

James R. - architects do take courses in art fundamentals (believe it or not, different schools have different names and course numbers as well). Where I came from these courses were called 'History of the Design Environment 1 & 2" and "Basic Design 1 & 2". Thank you again for you condescension, but please keep that garbage to yourself. 

As for Baudrillard, I disagree. I don't think that all frontiers have been exhausted. I am not saying that I am going to change the reality of the world, but in all respects, I believe that architecture should be explored. WHICH, is the whole point of creative design schools like SCI-Arc, the AA's DRL, Cranbrook, etc. WHICH IS WHAT THE WHOLE POINT OF THIS DISCUSSION HAS REVOLVED AROUND ALL ALONG: IS SCI-ARC RELEVANT? IS IT A GOOD SCHOOL? IF SO, HOW GOOD? IF NOT, WHY? <---------this is the point syp

By the way James R. I honestly think you may be the most level headed person in this conversation. Thank you for the semi-logical dialogue.

As for the rest of you: thank you all for the frustrating conversation. I hope that this pointless discussion by confused counterparts eventually is removed from the vortex of uselessness soon. However, I will not be around to take part, as I have a block wall to detail and some sunshine to enjoy. :)

that's too bad...  i've been really digging your quotable gems, such as:

"Then we visited SCI-Arc...my wife said "I was truly impressed! It's like a fancy club for the chose few. I'm proud of you babe!""

and

"Basically, I think that there is good reason to say that SCI-Arc is in the top three architecture schools in the world right now, sitting pretty with the AA and Harvard at the top. Anyone who disagrees is just flat out uneducated about the matter and is out of touch with the current state of architectural academia. Bottom line. "

please keep them coming!

antithesis,

Wasn't it you that quoted anti-oedipus at the first time to imply "our thought is connected with contemporary philosopher which you losers wouldn't understand."? you don't remember what you wrote?

Moreover, since 90's, haven't you guys always hinted contemporary philosophers to excuse for your dreamy renderings whenever architects ask about realities?

So, actually I gave you guys an opportunity to clarify your ideas to other persons who cannot understand your profound ideas in this forum. Then, why do you blame me?

I must say this thread is sort of ridiculous, I think there is certainly enough individuality in schools not to generalize to such an extent that is happening in this thread.

Arfaei, congratulations on your acceptance and Pratt is an amazing school, you really could not have picked wrong either way.

What I can say as a current SCI-ARC student, who transferred after being at Boston Architectural for a number of years is that while I am very happy with SCIARC, I think it is a great school, I also believe that if it is going to be your only experience for education then you will not be well rounded upon graduation as the program is so theoretical and focused on an experimental approach to architecture, that many students do not take the initiative to understand architecture in other ways. I, and many students absolutely love and desire the program SCIARC offers and its approach. But for me transferring over from a number of years at Boston, I have gained a very practical reality of architecture that Juxtaposes well with SCIARC's program, and I feel I at the end of my undergraduate degree I will have a truly well rounded education (though this undergraduate degree is taking longer then it should due to my decision to get the %^&* out of the BAC). I will also say that SCI-ARC does not try to hide who it is, it is avant garde and it is for students who want the very special and unique education they provide, it certainly isn't for everybody and there are certainly different ways to teach and learn architecture and many amazing programs around the country that provide various, and perhaps more well rounded alternatives.

Different philosophies create different architecture, I certainly wouldn't want every piece of architecture in the world to be similar.

Median, you just broke the developing pattern that paints everyone at Sci-Arc as being batshit insane. Way to ruin everything with your logic and reason. :)

Yeah Median, wtf party pooper. Way to ruin the amusement. We were looking forward to more classic Sci-Arc quotes. Must be the years spent in Boston that makes you less Sci-Archy;)

im not out to impress you syp, im not even a sci-arc person, nor interested in deleuze for that matter.

but if your fumbling over philosophical parameters for why sci-arc is the way it is, your missing the point of architectural research as it exists in an institution. im not going to spell out for you people what ideas are emerging, i have intellectual property to protect. Just look at the dam websites and see if you can figure it out. Because so far all your diagnostics are superficial, and lost in deleuze, the wonderful world of NCARB stats, or aiming to justify mediocre or outdated educations.

if youre a guiding light, please show us the way, im sure its either "over-intellectualized self-righteousness"  or "more grounded in reality" whatever that means....

Otherwise the critique of sci-arc producing 'dreamy renderings' is very much a red herring, a question of how slow architecture should be, and how one should experiment. A very yawn-inducing stance, i roll my eyes and say 'not again' every time i leave Yale to go to my office Philadelphia.

and syp if you were really avant-garde, you wouldnt be saying avant-garde, that term is almost 100 years old now. Philosophy is not the excuse for architecture. architecture is the excuse for architecture, now you know more about architecture, time for that M.Arch...

syp:

"antithesis,

Wasn't it you that quoted anti-oedipus at the first time to imply "our thought is connected with contemporary philosopher which you losers wouldn't understand."? you don't remember what you wrote?" no. I did not write this.

DON'T PRETEND TO QUOTE ME. THAT IS NOT WHAT I SAID.YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT MISQUOTING OR ACCUSING OTHER PEOPLE OF FALSE STATEMENTS IS NOT ONLY UNETHICAL, BUT ITS GROUNDS FOR A PROPER ASS BEATING.

Your talking about something that you truly dont understand and your accusations are ungrounded. I am done talking with you.

sectionalhealing - please re-read the bottom line of your quote then reconsider your position. You clearly don't know what it is that your talking about either. Do more research then come with a better argument other than nitpicking what I have said rather than proposing any logical arguments yourself. Thus, I thank your for taking this discussion to a personal level, which shows your ethical stance as well. So, please fuck off. thank you.
 

Not much love from CUNY in this tangle of a thread - probably a good thing. Speaks well about their student base.