Hi to everyone!

Next year i will start the 4th year...so all people that now are writing is this post if possible know from which unit do you came from?

I want know if is possible just for give me an idea of the different type political unit... Actually i like to speak with someone doing the unit 5,4 or did in the past the unit 14 ith najle.

Thanks for all AA gossip

arnold1, doll31,

Sigh... get a life you two. It's amazing how your 'conspiracy theory' brain works. From concocting all these tutors vs. students theories to the speculation of my username. I just happen to be a fan of Chuck Palahniuk. That's it. Period.

Next I'll hear from you guys will be Elvis is alive and will be the mystery academic Head of Brett!

What imagination you two have...

Hey tyler, whats with the attitude buddy? "Grow Up" " Get A Life"?

Take that condescending tone somewhere else. That sarcasm is very outdated, along with your obsession with bad writers. Everyone can chat here without having to be abused. This noxious behaviour particularly from the more vocal parts of the election so far have been unbearable.

If anyone is mean spirited Tyler, its you. Just go back and read your snide remarks.

On another note, it is interesting to see the consistency in the race -

Farshid supporters being consistent about all the issues they address.

Unfortunately Jeremy supporters have been consistently quiet, but I have to respect that consistency. Atleast he is being stubborn about not revealing his vision.

However, the cynical oppurtunism, sarcasm and general disruptive behaviour adopted by other groups within the school are overshadowing everything. At the end of the day, if Farshid has been able to create a practise that makes a virtue out of being consistently innovative, perhaps she also has a track record that we seriously consider. Her fame isnt the main issue, her track record is.

arnold1, on a lighter note I have to say your stretching of the imagination about Fight Club and AA is quite amusing and funny. Especially on the part about pisssed off unfulfilled stars-wanna-be.

vkngzzz, arnorld1, I assure you I am not from any camp.

Farshid supporters in this forum would vote for Britney Spears if they were given the chance.

Farshid supporters are just unfair, immature and, in fact, stupid! We should vote for Jeremy Till.

doll31, you are just so thick....

Keep going tyler - you're only reinforcing my point. These are the low levels that you are stooping to. "You are so thick?" Also username2005, Britney Spears? Is that really what successful women amount to?

For one of the best architecture schools in the world its very disaapointing to see the low level of debate, especially coming from certain campaigning groups. If anyone has descended to the very low levels of gutter politics tyler, its you again. Lets raise the standard a little, or is this the level of debate that will dominate in th school if your candidate gets the job?

Hello everyone.

I don't usually do the bulletin board thing, but a friend kindly informed me that my name is bouncing back and forth in this forum.

Well, I just mean to say that I do not support anyone in particular. Thanks for suggesting that I am on a candidate's payroll, but that is not the case. Although their first presentations to the community were rather mediocre, I believe that both Farshid and Brett are fully qualified to be Chairs, and I am quite happy with the short list.

Someone's suggestion that Brett would preserve the status quo of the 'Harvard crew' is, given Farshid's own Harvard background, downright bizarre. Personally, I resigned a Harvard professorship five years ago and never looked back.

As for the gutter politics, I did not intend to humiliate anyone last Wednesday, and I am sorry if that is how it came across. 'Underdog' means outsider, period.

I understand your misgivings. We should talk to each other more, but face to face.

yours


George L. Legendre

Good that someone is raising back the level of discussion from gutter politics and recognising mistakes! I accept and believe your claim of neutrality, whether you believe it or not, and I hope that you will honour it. However, the conscious or unconscious identification of "outsider" and "underdog" has a very dangerous political tone as you will probably recognise yourself. Remember Tories on inmigration... And this is an association that, whether intentional or unintentional, describes very well the arrogant, coercive, in-breeding, conservative and regressive mood of what we have called, with some literary licence, "Brett's mob".
I would love to discuss face to face this and other things but I hope you appreciate is not very safe for a student to come forward now and confront a large percentage of the tutors in such a mood. Did you see them yesterday in the Open Search Committee sitting in formation? How can they be so concerned about the articulation of Farshid and Kari's professorship when Brett has not even bothered to name his Academic Head? But, no questions about that. I hope the Search Committee discussed the salary of such addition to the staff as part of the contract negotiations, because it is not going to be cheap... From your newly accepted neutrality, don't you think that your colleagues are behaving in such aggressive and inappropriate manner that they are underminding the democratic process this is supposed to be, and therefore, the legitimacy of their likely victory?
Architecture is also about style, and these people have none...

Doll
Regarding your comment about people 'behaving in such aggressive and inappropriate manner that they are underminding the democratic process', i guess it's the nature of today's politics and I imagine the microcosm of the AA is no exception to that. I have not witnessed what happened with 'Brett's mob' personnaly so i won't talk about that particular incident. However, intensive lobbying and spin is the name of the game nowadays, as illustrated in the recent UK general election campaign. People are ready to use every possible nasty trick to get elected. Don't get me wrong i'm not saying it's a good thing; but make no mistake, Farshid is hardly an angel either and i am quite sure that she must be doing EXACTLY the same thing right now, if not so openly and publicly. They're all fighting a dirty battle of egos and i don't think we should expect any friendly moves from either candidate towards the others.

Back to concepts. . . .quick online search for both systems. . . .

Schools implementing Vertical Studios:

http://www.sciarc.edu/v5/gallery/student_verticals.php
http://www.arch.udmercy.edu/vert.htm
http://www.arct.cam.ac.uk/coursebase/handbooks/graduate/diploma.html

Schools implementing Clusters:

http://www.cep.unc.edu/level_3/community/clusters.html
http://cgs.org.ohio-state.edu/programs/adminiareas.shtml


---------------------------------------------------------------------
Ballot

The first-round ballot will take place on Thursday/Friday 19/20 May, with a result announced on Tuesday 24 May. The second-round ballot will take place on Thursday/Friday 26/27 May. The final result will be announced on Wednesday 1 June.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Method of Voting

Members of the School Community can cast their vote in the Lecture Hall from 10.00 until 7.00.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Good Luck and may your candidate WIN!

all three of them? now there's a thought.

kevin,

thanks for the links -- i have some comments --

cambridge is not presently offering a dip program -detail

as for us MArch programs, the vertical studios are a function of primarily the MArch I programs[3+ years or 2 years with advanced placement] where the entering students have had no or little previous course / studio work and basicly its there first or second design studio; mixing the 2 works very well in that case. it is the last year of studio where you need to look at and compare where truely graduate level work is pursued; thesis. the programs are not mixed at this point. you should look at other 1 year MArch programs in the US for fair comparisons where the students have completed a 'first professional degree' prior to starting this program.

the dip/march programs have different pedegogy intents; with one of dips goals is to meet part II criteria which includes much more core modules. the march is beyond that most basic instruction and should reflect that.

if the intent is to set the standards to the us NAAB standards [as the fashid orange book suggest] they will not be able to do it without adding more time to the march program and off hand i would say that a US arch seeking naab accrediation should do the dip2[2 years or 1 year advanced placement] and march program if they were seeking a first professional degree = to us standards.

making the dip/march program vertical dumbs down the graduate potential.

i am a bit confused on how the clusters can work at the aa as the AA is not a university and doesnt have the other programs and departments to tap into to form the alliances. it is something that US universities are looking at more and more; hybrid education as no discipline is thought in a pure sense as once we knew it. one only has to look at Penn and its relationship with Balmond who will be very active in the economic department and architecture.

its not that this idea cant work at the aa and to some regards is pursued within the grad programs now [emtech with univeristy of reading and drl] but it seems like a much more difficult process to realize for the full AA when the infrastructure is not there. the personal committement of the faculty will be a huge cost to the AA; faculty have to have longer committements to the school than 1 year contracts as these relationships [$$$] will take much more time to nurture.

i also think it unrealistic to think relationships can be made with univseristies that already have strong architectural programs in place -- so becomes somewhat limiting in terms of the best brains.

where you can say this idea spread beyond universities to government and industries, i would again suggest that because of the limited resouces of the AA v. a university, the level of expertise necessary to offer these partners again will be limiting.

the clusters could help with long term funding but even with institutes associated with universities its been very hard to get this to stick in the us.

also i would question how many dip/intermediate or foundation instructors share a concept that architecture is a hybrid discipline.

FOA? Alejandro is so bad as a dean in Berlage. for instance recently Phyllis Lambert gave a incredibly awful lecture. I don't know a lot about this influential lady, maybe she is useful for FOA but has nothing to do with academia. And this was not the 1st time in this term.

Rowan Moore
director the Architecture Foundation, London
The Architecture of the Headline

Also this guy gave a 30 minutes so-called lecture and nobody want to even ask a single question.

And he never shows up in school unless there's a lecture. Is it a coincidence?

I don't trust these egocentric guys who just take the head of architecture school as a profitable position for their fuckin' own careers.

Ted,
Thanks for the more serious information. This is the kind of tone that one would have hoped the discussion to hinge on in an election like this, rather than in the vociferous, petty and aggressive attacks from Mark, Michael, Tom, Francesca, Oliver and some DRL elements, from who you have some samples in this very forum, to the external candidates. If rather than having them pouring bile over outsiders and trying to consolidate their position at any cost, they were interested in truly discussing proposals and strategies, we would have been much further by now. However, as you can imagine, I totally disagree with you on your statements.
First of all, I think the issue of accreditation should never become the main determination of an academic policy. The AA comes from a tradition in which knowledge, rather than accreditation, is paramount. That is why giving priority to the vertical fields of knowledge is in principle a more adequate strategy than worrying about accreditation at this point.
The meagre achievements within the AA to get credited by the University of Reading sound pretty useless when we are actually facing a gigantic overhaul of all European accreditation policies. By virtue of the Bologna Declaration of 1997, europa.eu.int/comm/education/ policies/educ/bologna/bologna.pdf all the schools in the European Union will become exchangeable in a few years, (that means international) and the accreditation mechanisms will become transnational. The AA has already enormous advantages to remain competitive within this new order and should intensify this advantage, rather than design its program based on contingent methods of accreditation now. That would be pretty shortsighted and will fail to profit from the AA tradition of negotiating accreditation on its own terms. Farshid and Kari’s proposal enables to negotiate with the different existing levels of accreditation while creating larger units of knowledge able to contain modules, projects, levels etc… Their proposal will still allow people to go through part 1 and part 2 examinations, the open university, etc. What is promising in fact is not to discriminate or distinguish people based on levels but to provide different knowledge environments. In their hand out last Friday, they clearly state that ‘instead of accreditation requirements, the structure of the school must respect the demands of the specific investigations, as regards extent and complexity.’
I can not agree more with them! I’ll get back to some of your other points later.

dol31-

i also think the aa should not try to go for US-NAAB accrediation[which is crap and i said in an earlier post]; i was just responding to farshid/karis statement in the orange book and how it would impact the structure of the program [time] as it is today:

"An additional strategy to compete with the best American universities for talented graduate students would be to ensure that some of the graduate degrees conform to the requirements of the NAAB. Likewise, the AA can augment recruitment of students from other European schools by establishing faculty and student exchange programmes and acquiring additional EU funding from research Cupertino with foreign universities."

under no circumstance would i like to see the aa change to accomodate the NAAB standards.

Doll31,

I simply do not believe anything what you are saying -- all bullshit.
Forget Farshid. You should support Jeremy Till.

Hi all,

I've been told that my links above might give someone a misleading sense of what is being proposed by the different candidates. Please remember that my Google search for both Vertical Studio and Clusters was a name search only. These are the top search results only and thus might at best be similar to what Brett and Frashid/Kari are proposing, so do your fact checking before you vote. . . .

But read the post after mine. . .(that is if your not following) it is informative. And here is more background information.

Here's the orange book link:
http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/chair/assets/orangebook.pdf

The presentations:
http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/chair/

doll, what you have posted is very interesting. So, that mean that the parameters that they will measure any graduating student from all European schools is actually going to change. So, basically, all the concerns that have been expressed about the vertical units are basically only related to the immediate or short term and is basically short sighted? In their presentations, all the candidates made it clear that their proposed changes will be made together with the whole school and over a period of time. So the vertical unit structure seems to be a more long term and forward thinking strategy that will also use the oppurtunity for the new potential changes to put the aa back into the role of a leading institution that will set the standards rather than be dictated by existing but soon to be questioned standards? Thats interesting, because it seems to consider the long term to immediate potentials for the school.

------------------

vkngzzz and doll31,

listen carefully what others have said and don't fool us.


TED wrote:
05/18/05 16:09


i also think the aa should not try to go for US-NAAB accrediation[which is crap and i said in an earlier post]; i was just responding to farshid/karis statement in the orange book and how it would impact the structure of the program [time] as it is today:

"An additional strategy to compete with the best American universities for talented graduate students would be to ensure that some of the graduate degrees conform to the requirements of the NAAB. Likewise, the AA can augment recruitment of students from other European schools by establishing faculty and student exchange programmes and acquiring additional EU funding from research Cupertino with foreign universities."

under no circumstance would i like to see the aa change to accomodate the NAAB standards.


ideo wrote:
05/18/05 15:20


FOA? Alejandro is so bad as a dean in Berlage. for instance recently Phyllis Lambert gave a incredibly awful lecture. I don't know a lot about this influential lady, maybe she is useful for FOA but has nothing to do with academia. And this was not the 1st time in this term.

Rowan Moore
director the Architecture Foundation, London
The Architecture of the Headline

Also this guy gave a 30 minutes so-called lecture and nobody want to even ask a single question.

And he never shows up in school unless there's a lecture. Is it a coincidence?

I don't trust these egocentric guys who just take the head of architecture school as a profitable position for their fuckin' own careers.

The NAAB conception of a professional master criteria do not apply to a 5 year degree. So the only thing to discuss is does the AA want to introduce another master that together with diploma would be comparable to the best American programs? From the Orange book, I don’t gather that there is any intention of changing the existing masters or putting different content into them or changing the 5 year diploma program. I understood this as a capstone course for the 5 year program. Anyway this like all the other accreditation issues has to be investigated. By the way, if you think that the NAAB is restrictive, look at all the good American programs- Cranbrook is not comparable to Princeton and not comparable to Columbia,… this just shows that even though the NAAB looks harsh on paper, it is actually quite flexible. So just like any one of these good schools, the AA will be able to negotiate the requirements on its own terms. It has track record in doing so with the RIBA,...So lets not turn this into a huge issue. I think we should welcome all food for thought in the development that the AA needs to think about.

Ted,
For once, I kind of agree with you. I am not sure either the NAAB accreditation is a good idea, but I am not sure it is bad either. It is definitely better in terms of drawing new students than Reading University of the Open University anyway. I just think that the discussion of accreditation that Brett's mob of scaremongers has been using to attack farshid and kari's proposal -the only serious one we have amongst the candidates and the proof of this is that is the only one being discussed at this forum and elsewhere- is complete nonsense and should not be part of the discussion at this point. The whole issue of accreditation is something that is not undergoing major changes world wide and what we should choose is a program that improves the level of education and research at the AA, not the ones that are already credited by the University of Reading/Open University (big deal...). We should decide on what we think is a good model of education and research and then we will deal with how and where to get accreditation for it in our own terms. The AA commands respect worldwide and it will be easy to get accreditation once we have the right system in place.
In this sense, I must say that the proposal of "clusters" is the vaguest thing I have ever heard, certainly a smokescreen for the consolidation of the status quo and the spread of DLR through the school that a certain group within the school is seeking. Rather than tending to diversify the school it is going to make programs converge towards the same sort of computer-driven fog that we can witness now in DRL.

Regarding those other, less intelligent entries in the discussion, I would like to welcome in those students of the Berlage who are now trying to avoid the influence of FOA to spead beyond their domain. Wouldn't you be concerned too if the partner of your chair was to become a chair of a neighboring institution? I must say I feel a bit sorry for them if Farshid wins, and not surprised they are fighting it.

doll31,

I think your talking into a well-deserved vacuum at this point....

And let's avoid misinformation. Alejandro's role as Dean at Berlage is a one day a week contract. A lot of good new teachers since he came. The mediators series is about power brokers of various kinds in architecture, a magazine of personalities. If one or two speaker aren't to students' tastes it doesn't follow that the Dean is not up to scratch.

arnold1,

just for your information, cranbrook is not an NAAB accrediated degree; its post professional[probably closer in pedegogy to the AA MArch]. so dont go looking at it as your poster child. and NAAB just as RIBA/ARB are not flexible groups at all. many graduate from the AA dip and do not get AA Part II as they do not pass those standards to external examiners.

i must say its good to see some strong attitudes about the school. from afar, the candidates must be putting good ideas that are at least sparking some passionate debate.

TED
you are right. i made a mistake about Cranbrook. But SciArch is NAAB registered and that is quite a different school to Princeton and Columbia. So back to my earlier point- NAAB registeration can be negotiated,....

have they voted yet? I thought it was supposed to be this week.
Any news?

we're voting right now - the result will be announced Tuesday evening.

exit polls?

--jeremiah , "If one or two speaker aren't to students' tastes it doesn't follow that the Dean is not up to scratch."

in some sense ur right. but the thing is it's more than that.

do u mean there were no "good new teachers" tutoring in berlage during wiel arets' period?

for instance this term we had 3 proposals for studios. the ideal situation is 10 ppl each group.( because 30 participants in 1st year) but one studio was canceled because the tutors who came from aa ( Ines Weizman and Manuel Herz) did a extremely bad presentation without showing any clear methodology thereby only one student chose this studio. as a result we have 2 studios now which means 15 students congest in 1 studio.

apart from one-day-showing up in terms of his "one day a week contract", isn't a dean's responsibility to set up elaborate selection of the teachers and a high quality lecture series?

the next year is the last year of his contract. more than 10 ppl told me "he'd better get out of here asap." is that only my bias?

i hope i make myself clear because my english is not that good.

wow, this is really getting people going...it feels like you're talking about the FA cup final rather than the chairman of an academic institute!

if the election was a few months away, you could probably get past hi you fancy graphic lover in thread lenght...

it's kinda funny how from the outside, AAers are considered incredibly hardworking people, and you still find the time to write HUGE posts on a forum...how do you manage that? does the 14k a year allow you to a 25 hours day?

admirable, really!

Mr. Ceccanti...Whatever...

Results of the first ballot should be in today. What are the scores?!
There's nothing on the AA site yet (plus, am I the only one having trouble
playing the presentation streams?).

Dear AA'ers - Give us an update! Rant away!

The results are going to be announced at 6.00pm this evening in the lecture hall - everyone invited! I'm sure someone will post it on here soon after. I don't know why it seems to take so long to count less than 700 votes, these people wouldn't be very good at a General Election.

Wow, are we roughly an hour and a half away?

from knowing the results . . . that is

Stupid question maybe, but...

Will this first ballot mean that one of the candidates is eliminated from the race? Doesn't seem clear to me from the Chair Search page on the AA site...

If the person in first place gets 51% of the vote, he or she is the winner - no need for a second ballott. If the leader gets less than that, the person with least votes is eliminated and we then have to vote between the first and second placed.

so is it . . . Farshid as Spiderdad reported?

Brett Steele is the new Chairman - 57%

wow conflicting reports! Sounds like America!

No conflict - I was there - it was announced - i posted immediately.

100% sure

rock on!
some people at the met will be prety pissed off...
(i did not mean to offend anyone with the previous post...:)

sweet, thanks for letting us know so quickly! Brett it is.

Richard - why?

what did farshid + jeromy end up with???

they only gave Brett's percentage votes, nothing for the others.

Jeremy Till is too prissy