hey thats what all those old books are for. way too much emphasis is put on being "creative" and not enough is placed on being resourceful.

Like Vado said, "that's what all those books are for." He's only at fault if he got caught. Otherwise, he's a great designer.

Good comments oldenvirginia – I once had a fellow student rip off one of my own projects. Can you believe it? Her attempts were so obvious, yet the professor oversaw the similarities. I went directly to the professor to prove my case yet the professor seemed to protect the plagiarist, claiming that the novice student was only trying to learn the concepts by utilizing one of mine and building upon it – WTF was he talking about??? I never did find out if that student paid a consequence.

went to school w/ some kids that pretty blantantly ripped off FOA and ds+r, the profs ate it up and even went so far as to make excuses for them, comparing it to jazz riffs quoting other songs and samples in electronic music.

i argued that was more geared towards homage, or that samples added layers to an already established rhythm and not just the random gathering of images/tricks that look cool, and was immediately ushered out of the crit like a democrat at a pro-bush rally.

today, my stance lies somewhere betwixt the two.

It's kinda funny but reading holz.box's response, it reminds me of how much creativity is left to explore in the architecture world compared to other disciplines. I live with an ex-excecutive chef that claims everything has been done before – yet in the architecture world, there is so much more to explore, yet so many have decided to copy what has already been done before. Where are the creative (for a lack of a better term) entrepreneurs? Where are the new ideas?

in architecture, sadly, everything has been done before, the only difference now is seeing the old in a new light.

No it has not !!!!

come on guys, if u want to copy, why not be a interior designer, they are license to copy and get paid more.

copying is a really effective way of learning.

Agree, Steven, but I'm going to paraphrase a Dan Hoffman comment at one of our Cranbrook crits: copying is only educational if you are analyzing why the original designer made those decisions in the first place. You have to know what the original designer's intent was, what techiques they used to approach it, and why they felt their solution resolved it. Then you can explain how your approach and solution are both similar and different from the original.

In other words, it sounds like what oldenvirginia is describing is plagiarizing, not analyzing. I think it sucks.

the only thing that i'd add to that 'only' is that part of the learning comes from adapting a copped project to the requirements of your own. this can be extremely hard to pull off.

a student in my undergrad adapted morphosis' crawford house plan for a project of a completely different program. there was a certain twisted brilliance and skill in making it work. ...sort of like 'readymades' > adaptation of something not because you have learned of its rationale but despite its origins.

you go beta! that's so true! yes, it has all been done before. there are no 'original' ideas any more, just 'original' and more imaginitive ways of presenting existing ones. I can't even keep count of how many times I saw this happen while in undergrad! Pirates!

when i was an undergrad i took a summer ceramics class. i was the only "artiste" in the group as all my classmates seemed to elementary ed students or teachers. they like to make heart shaped things. well anyway, i got the idea one night to raid the slurry tank, where the real bfa/mfa potters would toss their discards. i got into the habit of gleaning pieces from the the tank and constructing my work from them. it was actually the most architectural work i ever did, including school and professional. go figure.

i always figured there were two reasons to copy - one is to learn and emulate/analyze and the other was to quell insecurity.

i witnessed the latter in undergrad - a student who wasn't talented showed up with a project that was significantly furhter developed than anything they'd done before. during the crit, though, a prof began to dissect the project and eventually revealing that there was, in essence, a basement with windows facing dirt. turns out the student wasn't talented enough to modify the stolen plan to accommodate topo...
so they burst out crying and walked out of the crit.

this may be a jack handy moment, but i often wonder what's going to happen to rock band names after they've all been taken. contemplate that one for a moment.

in terms of architecture, i think that fomal experimentation has been pushed to the limits of diminishing return, that instead it may be more important to "copy" the forms of the past, but do them in a more intelligant way, i.e. environmentally sound, urbanistical engaged, culturally aware, etc. these issues are too often overshadowed by form.

urbanistically (that will teach me to make up words!)

i am surprised how many people see value in copying...
i could see how intentionally re-drafting an existing project as an exercise in learning and analyzing is viewed as a valid learning tool;
otherwise, inspiration should be the limit...
imho, in terms of built work and design, the concept of site/place alone should be enough never to justify copying...(assumed exception for standardized systems/details)

i agree simples...it seems like siting a building would have to have a profound impact on its design.

i think copying is okay, as long as you are candid about your source of inspiration.

siting only has an effect if you're considering the site.
there's plenty of architectural invention irrespective of site.

WELL JUST COPY A BUILDING ON A SIMULAR SITE. ITS NOT THAT HARD.

my contention through school is that people aren't dumb. they know when you're copying/imitating. and whether you've done it successfully or not is judged. attribution isn't as necessary a part of architecture as i think the body of material is rather well known and it's somewhat agreed that you are taking things you've seen already and expanding off of that visual library. i mean we all have copies of phylogenesis or UN studio on our desks. and our profs tell us to look at x,y, and z projects or read so-and-so's article...

now stealing ideas from studio-mates is a little different. it's always frustrating when you work on an idea for a while to get it just right and then a week later see it appear on someone else's' model/drawings. i find that a little more in the moral gray area.

el jeffe...i was actually thinking about that just now...especially when you apply tha thought to:



but i did see an image floating around the web of a brand new villa savoye being built somewhere (midwest...or was it china) and it did make me cringe...but you are right!

i guess my previous comment was made based on my personal belief in re. to architecture and site...and that doesn't necessarily make it right!!!

simples,
in an undergrad theory class at the Univ. of New Mexico while covering Corbu, i sketched the villa savoye in my notebook but then added a surrounding rancho/adobe wall with wagon-wheel inserts.
pretty sweet sketch....

i'm a magazine designer ~;-)

ideas exist to be stolen.

stolen, hell. i share.

plagiarism is necessary; progress demands it.

notice i didn't use quotes...

i heard an innerview with the writer francine prose who related an anecdote about a writer who had become so frustrated from his work being rejected, that he found a "little known" austen piece and submitted it. it was rejected by every publisher he submitted it to and only one recognized it as austen.

Ok, so I'm not going to try to steer this conversation (it's not mine to do so) - rather just bump my original point - which was the plagiarism of others' work and passing it off as your own. There have been some great points made already:

Steven: Copying as a method of learning. I completely agree: copying is a great way of learning. Heck, I taught myself 3d max entirely this way - getting an uber-rendering from some pro and trying my damndest to reproduce it. I overcame a lot of obstacles doing that and taught myself huge amounts along the way. But, like libertybell says, it's about you putting yourself in that person's shoes and taking the same journey. Simply reproducing the result does nothing for yourself and even less for the integrity of the design.

I just went to dinner with my g/f and was having a go at how I can't understand why so many people on here seem to be cool with copying. I managed to explain my feelings best by analogising the situation with maths... My teachers always insisted that we show our working when coming to a solution. Now, if you were to copy someone's answer straight across with no working showed - that's what this guy did. If, however, you had no clue how to do the problem and were to copy someone's working and answer and, in your own time, reverse-engineer it so that you could see how the process worked - that's when you start to learn from it.

The reason I don't think this works in this case though is that this guy was presenting the result as his own idea and, in doing so, exploited a weakness of creative design. Everybody knows that architecture students work hard and a large part of this is that each person has their ideas in their head - and usually to a much more detailed degree than could ever be communicated in a final crit (either because of short crit time provided or a large amount of drafting time required). Therefore, everyone has to distill a project down to it's most important factors. In essence, it's asking you to write the answer to a maths problem in a box - no time to explain all the working.

Now, in uni, he was obviously required to add some random explanitory bumf to the design - that's hardly demanding. But, in the real word - in practice - there are plenty of clients who don't require psuedo-philosophical explanation as to why their building looks the way it does. And this is even more true of the majority of the population - dare I say it, architectural laymen. Now, what concerns me is that he will be able to carve a career out of recycling other people's products - products of a long complicated design struggle - and spread this method around. And I'm sure he's not alone.

I guess my point is: when did mediocrity become so acceptable? When I look at a building, I'm heartened to think that someone thought about it - resolved it - so that it may serve out it's life well. As an architectural layman, I would be quick to throw praise at a cool looking building that does it's job well, but would feel cheated to know that large sections have been ripped directly from other's work. It's not what the architect was paid for, and it's not what we should get used to.

Beta says everything has been done before. I prefer to see the flip side - that nothing has been exhausted. Why settle for copying someone else's design when you could at least reshuffle it into something - anything - different. To me, that suggests the lowest of creative lethargy and it's people like that who are to blame for mediocrity and lack of competition wherever you find it.

I'm loving hearing your thoughts. I do have more to write, but I'm turning this into an essay. :(

PS. el jeffe - I am differentiating out-right plagerism from the grey-area of very small progressive design steps - using other's work as a point of departure. I'm talking only about the former.

i really have a hard time believing this student got away with what you're saying.

in my experience, professors are smart and perceptive. more often than not, i find them saying, "oh you were looking at XXX, weren't you?" and i have to pretend i even know who XXX even is.

i think the problem is that you're being vague about what this guy actually copied. was it a i painted a weekend afternoon landscape in a pointillist style so i'm plagiarizing seurat, or was it i sat down and copied the mona lisa and leonardo da who?

ultimately we do tons of precedent/case-study research before we start designing. there are good ideas already out there for us to adapt and specify for our project and i don't think using these ideas is wrong at all.

you could say one of my school projs. this year was a total ito rip off. he was my major point of study. so is that plagiarism?

You're saying you're annoyed because your classmate got into the GSD, based on good grades, which were based on copying projects.
But the GSD really doesn't weigh admissions decisions heavily on grades. GPA only counts for an estimated 5% of the total package upon which decisions are based. Portfolio is generally the biggest factor. So we'd have to assume that not only did your own professors fail to recognize this person's work as plagiarism, but that everyone on the admissions committee also did.

So there could be a number of possibilities: the work copied is fairly obscure and nobody but you caught on; the work is derivative but not such blatant copying that others feel it is plagiarism; all of the professors and admissions people failed to recognize something that should have been obvious to them; or they did recognize it and felt that it wasn't a problem...

I guess any of those are possible.

In practice architects have taken other architects (and former clients, developers, builders, etc.) to court for copying their designs or using unauthorized plans. The architects nearly never win these cases. Courts have ruled that a single change as minimal as flipping/mirroring the plan or changing the composition of one facade are enough to create a "substantially different design".
By that standard your classmate by your own description changed enough to make the designs his own - at least on a technicality.

I don't think you should worry about this too much. Your classmate is probably wracked with self doubt and will go through grad school and his career wondering if he's really capable of designing anything on his own - and he'll probably never find out.

in frampton's tectionic class, u can choose either to write thesis or build an exact model of the master to learn.

then why would someone choose to copy the master's design in a design class inorder to learn??

is copying the best way to learn from previous master? especially in a design studio?

those are all lame excuses.

for ppl at work, why not spend a sunday afternoon to copy and learn from previous master as personal studies instead of copying it in the office and claim it under your company's name and charge the client.

from a real life story, one time, the client found out and asked for the refund.

hejduk worked through Corb, there is nothing wrong with that. i like what Rauschenberg did, appropriation.

oldenvirginia, very nice essay, with lots of good stuff in it.

I especially like this: ...that nothing has been exhausted. That's an optimistic and generous way to look at the world.

And I agree: I've always felt that design was more rearranging than creating slick and fresh from the ether.

okay question!! what about when someone blatantly copies images off a website and says they did the work. one after another image on a website. not an architectural project but studies.... mathematical and rendered images??

in a masters program...what would you do if you knew not to mention half your class and 2 critics have gone by and the student still gets praise..??

your advise is welcome

I would say send the prof to the web site via an e-mail. Don't use your computer but a campus computer. It should be pretty convincing.

Just to add another yet another example...

We just finished a cardboard chair project (I'm sure it's a fairly well known project) where we had to construct a chair out of a 4'x8' sheet of cardboard with no glue, adhesives, fasteners etc. So we also had to include "research" to go with this chair.

So throughout the duration of this project not a lot of people are working on it and when presentation day rolls by, suddenly everyone has a completed chair... half of which were copied right off the internet. No change was made to the design.

What blows my mind is how all the professors failed to catch this, even though some of the designs could be found by simply googling "cardboard chair".

All other ethical issues aside, what is important in education is devoping neurological pathways in the brain, which is why process is so important in school. If you aren't developing those thought processes because you are letting someone else do the work, it will catch up with you soon enough. Or then again, maybe not...

Strawbeary is right.

What I find particularly funny is people going $100k into debt to copy shit off google. That's a winning strategy!

That is why good designers or architects are rare in our professional field.

Many poeple advocate copying, but if they are creative enough so that they can make original ideas, I don't think, they still would advocate copying.
People copy because they are not creative enough.

If copying is intended for learning something as a student it could happen sometimes because not everyone is creative, but copying should be the last choice even for students and definitely not to be encouraged.

Don't worry.
Copying people may make some "cool" images in school but they would never learn how to think in a critical and creative way and would never make their own design or theory. I have seen bunch of people like that.

I mean I could really careless how someone wants to go through school but once that interferes with my learning and the potential importance that my degree holds it's very much my opinion. I approached my professor but received a response I wasn't expecting.

He gave me many reasons why it's something he rather not pursue ie. the persons work will eventual show, sometimes there's a fine line between inspiration and ownership..... it was absolutely disappointing.

I thought I was here for the school and I could be supported by the system but how foolish I have been.

Short story about plagiarism in architecture school....

In sophomore studio undergrad, one of my roommates at the time decided to copy a friends project who took the studio a year earlier.

Unfortunately for him, it was right before the end of the 2nd semester sophomore studio, when all the sophomores are putting together portfolios to get "approved" to stay in the arch school for their junior year.

Examples of the previous years portfolios were made available so students could get an idea of what the school wanted. Unfortunately for my roommate at the time, the person who he had coped from had lent his portfolio to the school to be used as an example, and it included his design of the project in question. My roommate had almost exactly copied the project, so it was pretty easy to put two and two together.

Complaints were made.
Projects were compared.
Roommate was expelled from the architecture program.

Don't matter, he was somewhat a spoiled kid to begin with, I didn't really miss him.