^yes, especially since many clients won't care about environmental concerns if the design team cannot make financial sense of the cost.

Exactly non. There isn’t anything sustainable about things that aren’t feasible.

You should have led with that point instead of the mega-vague Marxist generalization.

Agree. But big picture these sentiments tie into that line of thought. If you go down that rabbit hole it will all make sense. Capitalism/business is viewed as an oppressive force to be ignored or circumvented rather than engaged...which is the only constraint (other than gravity in some programs Lol) that is acceptable to be treated that way.

I'm not entirely sure I follow, and I'm trying here. Sure, there is always a small handful of students wearing Che shirts proposing radical shit without any intention of meeting reality... I mean I was one of those wankers (Che shirt included, albeit briefly), but the point was to design a thought exercise, not necessarily a rational building. This is more often than not the result of lax studio curricula or a more experimental prof, not the entirety of academia. 

There is no force or agenda present that oppress students. Perhaps it's just that the wild ideas are what makes media tours instead of someone coming up with a reasonable wall section for a 6-storey block of apartments.

I mean, sweet Jesus on a half shell. It's almost like he's not paying attention. There's likely more assholes teaching anarcho-capitalism, or whatever Patrimetric is labeling it now, than there are flat out Marxists. Real Marxists want get rid of property owners, and have the state build. Where does this "program" exist?

right, it's funny: the right/conservative consensus has done such a good job solidifying neoliberalism as the mainstream that many people delusionally think that architecture programs are some how on the left spectrum, based on false assumptions and a hangover from mccarthyism. instead what we see is an overwhelming push for hyper-individualism and self-promotion. it's like when people describe sanders as a socialist, when he's in reality closer to center-left in the context of the world. what a strange country we live in..

^to be honest, I had an elective class that revolved around this stuff... but it was mostly a literature class with no studio involvement. Few students took it since, from what I can remember, your entire grade was based on a single paper turned in at the end of the year and no exam. It was called something like avant-guard design theory.

Square, couldn't have answered the question better myself.

b3tadine[sutures] - there are slivers of such beliefs around the world in various political parties. In Canada, we have the NDP Party which sometimes borrows ideas from such thoughts.

^Aps, don't forget Bloc Quebcois. They seem to hoard a great deal of these thoughts.

Don't get me going on the BQ!!!

Bunch of racists.

Aps... I can see them from my office window... almost. The peace tower conveniently blocks my view of QC.

but are there any architecture schools that could be described as "marxist?" the idea is laughable to me; architects, by necessity, follow the money, after all...

Square. You are not paying attention.

please then, explain to me what these principles of marxism are that you are so concerned about, and what schools are implementing them. it is the title of this thread after all.

call it what you want. Will you at least acknowledge the anti-capitalist sentiment? To me that’s like a university in LA professing an anti-earthquake sentiment. The context is the context, and teaching ways to work within it is important. Do I have the quote Eames?

no, because i don't operate in vague generalizations. i know many schools, including one of the ones i went to, that are thoroughly capitalist. their intent is to produce architects who can plug into a firm owned privately by an individual or a small set of individuals, not produce proletariats looking to own the means of production. in fact, many, if not most programs i am aware of (again i can't say all because i do not claim to over broad, oversimplified knowledge of all architecture programs in the us) are full of individuals who own their own practices and employ others, setting a perfect precedent for capitalism.

you're way out of your league on this one.. you've already made a fool of yourself with the opening question (whether you agree or not, to claim that marxism isn't interested in economics is prfoundly stupid); might be time to head back to the politics sandbox you made.

I’m referring to the rhetorical arguments and talking points of cultural Marxism, the thing that people pretend doesn’t exist. While I agree that many professors are tapped into the real world and have one foot in professional practice, many do not. The tenured professors seem to be more entrenched in ideology than the ones who come in to teach a studio or do desk crits. I’ll also note that this is a recent thing in architecture school. When I went it wasn’t really something too overbearing, but things have changed. When did you last step foot in academia square?

Xla still has yet to answer square's questions; define, or cite examples of what you proffering as being true. Where is Marxist Design, or Cultural Marxism occurring?

Cultural Marxism, doesn't mean what you think it does. <-----tip #1

i currently teach, but there isn't one person who i know of at my institution who remotely resembles what you're talking about. also, even if we were to assume what you are saying is true, is your goal to suppress "leftist" points of view? should we not have a spectrum of perspectives and ideologies?

i would argue that while i see plenty of architecture professors who are liberal in terms of social issues, i see little to no left leaning professors in terms of economics because, again, even the "liberal" ones often own businesses and tend to be conservative. you see this cognitive dissonance all the time with "socially conscience" professors who turn around and pay their employees garbage with no health insurance.

I don’t mean straight up Marxism...should clarify a little bit thought it was obvious....but the Sentiments and bits and pieces of ideas that come from that school of thought. Mainly, a resentment of capitalism, business, etc....a hostility that it is something in the way rather than something to be engaged and respected as a given constraint of the given context.

Square, viewing capitalism as a force of oppression rather than a force of liberation is an artifact of Marxist thought.

And it’s also inconsistent with history and reality.

i'm living in reality, today. not talking about history. paying someone a non-living wage in the 21st-century to run your cool architecture studio isn't liberating.

jlxax is railing against institutions to be more "in touch with reality," but they live in vague abstractions without citing any concrete examples. the irony is incredibly rich.

Because I shouldn’t need to give specific examples of the obvious....and it’s obvious to anyone who’s been around academia this last decade. This goes back further in the humanities, but it’s become the new thing in the post starchitect era that I think began around 5-10 years ago.

fin.

Anything can be made into an "era" or claimed to be "obvious" if you invent your own rules. That does not make it so, objectively.

Lol. If it’s so obvious, wouldn’t it be super easy to give specific examples?

Can you give specific examples to the contrary?

So because you can't give examples to support your point, now you want the rest of us to prove you wrong!? Do your own homework

While I was in school, I remember somebody bring up the Building Code, and why do we, as students , don't more info on it in the class.

The answer; "it will destroy your imagination".

True to a large degree.

I do not disagree. I told myself I'd stop doing guest reviews in my old undergrad school after my last trip. One poor sap (4th year) used the building code's req for a fire-truck turning radius as the guiding principle of his project (a residential addition to an old 100+ year old historic church). 100% focus on driving a truck anywhere but literally did not give a fiery fuck about the buildings. I cut him off when he started listing the code sections.

I used to think that codes, zoning, destroyed creativity, I wish I could have those five years back, practice teaches you a lot about creativity.

creativity thrives with constraints

constraints and deadlines.

and coffee

We had a 'codes' talk in school that felt very much like the puberty talk they make you sit through in middle school. Everyone had the 'so that's how that works' look on their face but also looked equally uncomfortable and disgusted.

mainly i think the reason codes aren't taught in school is because they're hard to teach. it takes experience and wisdom to recognize what parts of a project really depend on clear understanding of a portion of the code and can inform the design (eg restrictions on facade materials for particular building types), and what things can be assumed to work out if you make reasonable allowances (fire truck paths) and occasionally what things no one knows without asking for interpretation...

I think you're totally right midlander. I also wonder how much of it is some professors' lack of practice experience. Especially from younger profs who are straight out of an MArch II program and have never had a full-time job at a firm.

Building codes and regulations age rather quickly and are outdated before they reach the studio, let alone finding the sucker(m/f/x) that would actually like to teach that subject to architecture students. The best way to learn that stuff is in practice with real constraints and real clients and real building departments etc. We all picked it up and are all able to use that knowledge on a day to day basis, yet none of us learned it in academia really.

On the topic of building codes, 1. they do age but the basics stay the same, even some don't change much at all, ADA for example. 2. Why should the private sector have the burden of teaching something as fundamental as life safety, accessibility and zoning? A good design studio incorporates codes into the design task as part of the project brief, failing to do so is just a waste of time. We are, in this profession, designers not artist, part of a good design is working within the constrains of the codes and regulations. The goal of most architects should be to design buildings and other built environments that actually get built. Sorry if reality is too oppressive for you to express your creativity. Over and OUT Peter N

innovation often is the result of creative people finding a way to overcome constraints such as cost, codes or other real world problems, what you describe is more free form thinking that is nice and all but thoughts don't keep the rain out.

Big Lawn Pesticide strongly supports the dandelion seeding tower. Time to lawyer up.

Jay, something in the line of the late Sam Mockbee’s Rural Studio...guess he could even be considered a Marxist!

Moderator, please feature this post.

That got taken away!!!!

Man i am tired of people trying to make architecture as a solution to a problem. I hear it from interviews time to time. You may address some programmatic functional requirements, but it is not a problem. More of a condition. Do you think Ghery/Zaha made the work look like the way they are because they have to address certain problem? Nah They just want to. Just like you can make a building look like a duck while it solves nothing. 

The fact that there is a problem to be solved is a constraint. Your creativity is constrained in figuring out a solution to that problem. Otherwise you could create anything.

usually you have a lot of options in choosing your problems though, or making them up

Coffee was invented by a bunch of guys sitting around and smoking who wanted something to drink that would let them stay up later and smoke fucking more. - Dr Denis Leary

Can't argue too much with that, can you?

Even a flaming racist like Marx gets something correct now and then.

LOL. Fix the situation, become a developer yourself...no?

Experiencing downward mobility, declining living standards, neo-liberal austerity and Laissez-faire market forces , the rise in nationalism, and the destruction of the environment in real-time is a far, far, faaarrrrr more radicalizing force than anything a professor said during a lecture about Walter Gropius or whatever.

are you then saying what you learned in school had very little to do with reality? horror...!

Will never happen. Drafting will become more and more automated for sure, but the job of architect is way too broad to ever disappear. With few exceptions, we're also luddites who are only slightly less resistant to change than contractors, who will continue to exercise heavy control over the means of production / construction.

you mean THINKING is important. Good response. on intelligence (good book) reference here, and on actual intelligence see

revisiting a year later and it's still just as good.

Oh boy, what a trip. This is such a good thread.

this made my day... i think my forum skills peaked here.

wow, how did I miss this the first time around? Masterful dismantling, square.