Recently I’ve come to the reluctant conclusion that architectural education does some very specific things to its students, and in remarkably short order:
1.) It disconnects them from their bodies....2.) It brainwashes them.
— Common Edge
In a brief article on Common Edge, the University of Texas San Antonio's Dr. Nikos A. Salingaros lists five effects he's witnessed as a teacher on students, and they include disasociation from one's body, a certain brainwashing through abstraction, and an emphasis on insularity and novelty over the actual human experience of a building. As he notes:
Contemporary architecture is obsessed, to the point of arrogance, with “innovation.” But unless you’re trained to admire and revere it for its own sake (something architecture students are routinely taught), aggressive “novelty” often triggers negative reactions from everyone else: alarm, anxiety, even physio-psychological pain. Remember the poor Vitra firemen, unwitting victims of “cutting edge” architecture? That’s just the proverbial tip of the iceberg, as far as alienation and architecture are concerned. Once upon a time, shareable stories were embedded onto and into buildings. Today architects detach their stories and apply them instead as sales pitch, justification, explanation, excuse, argument, clarification, rationalization, even exoneration. All of it as if preaching madly to a skeptical congregation. They’re right to be worried.
Excessive hours are not exclusive to architecture. The average undergraduate (not just architecture students) needs in the range of 26-28 hours to complete their daily tasks. If you want to address this sleepless night, stop the brainwashing about how architecture students are so busy- everyone is busy.
Faculty need admit to themselves that the way their students will learn to solve problems is very different from how they were brought up. In addition, the problems are faced with very different contexts/complexities. This will create a need to appreciate "new" techniques among older faculty and will frame agendas for the new.
I'd agree that we're brainwashed, ie, taught. We're taught to value order, hierarchy, quality of material, rigor in pursuit of ideas.
We're brainwashed into believing that cheap materials and arpeggios of dormers on a single family house with a 2k sf/occupant and a 4 ca garage is obscene.
We're taught that there is architecture specific to the Renaissance in Italy, the American Colonial era, ancient Egypt, 1950s LA, and our own communities in 2017 - and that these distinctions have value and meaning.
We're brainwashed into thinking we have a point of view to offer and that we can make something better than what was there before.
Maybe the author thinks we should just follow builders' lead, or do only exactly what clients already think they need?
Are there other disciplines from whom he thinks we ought to be taking direction? Psychologists, maybe? Do they not have their own academic orthodoxy?
Salingaors (and C. Alexander) were from a time where they were trying to reconcile computerized processes with aesthetics, so I always find it interesting when the 'crack is wack' argument is used in reference to them or by them. Salingaros used a "simple" mathematical construct in a publication to describe the ratio of surface area of a facade as related to its depth to demonstrate how "serrated" a faced may be. So if we think of this in respects to abstraction, it:
1- reduces the facade to a numerical calculation, the drawing only illustrates the outcome.
2- describes the facade in plan form only, a projection from which no one would ever experience facade.
3- Suggests that standardization is possible, suggesting beauty is universal.
(Also note that the tone of the book/manifesto to demonstrate that he is right- that's brainwashing)
I'd also say humanism is taught in many schools, but not always in that historic mode. Scale, making, and materials can be taught through the use of materials in making.
But the most disingenuous part of the "modernism is bad" argument is that it suggests that we can negotiate all the issues architecture confronts -by choice and otherwise- through the eye and hand despite the fact that humanism now faces matters that are far more larger and complex- and indeed require abstraction.
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Bingo.
With the caveat that the obsession is with aesthetic innovation.
I'd like to see someone address issues with the ridiculous intensity of architectural educational programs and the very real and long-term effects of sleep deprivation.
"I'd like to see someone address issues with the ridiculous intensity of architectural educational programs and the very real and long-term effects of sleep deprivation."
Scientology uses the same strategy to break down new converts.
:)
Julia-
It's curious how you chose to refer to Dr. Salingaros as a "part-time instructor", and in the title of the post, no less. He's a very accomplished academic. Your decision to refer to him in that way is...interesting.
A thoughtful correction, Julia. Thanks.
I recall a news piece on a psych department doing studies on the people in an arch department. I googled searched but didn't find it.
the brainwash starts in pre-k, even for architecture instructors.
Hello tintt - see e.g.
Brown, G., & Gifford, R. (2001). Architects predict lay evaluations of large contemporary buildings: whose conceptual properties? Journal of Environmental Psychology, 21(1), 93-99.
"Evidence suggests that architects as a group cannot predict the public's aesthetic evaluations of architecture. In this study, practicing architects predicted laypersons' responses to large contemporary building, and again these predictions were poorly correlated with ratings by laypersons...The results suggest that architects are unable to exchange their own criteria for conceptual properties for those of laypersons when they predict public evaluations, which leads to self-anchored, inaccurate predictions."
(Laypersons = everyone else!)
Ghomeshi, M., Nikpour, M., & Jusan, M. M. (2012). Evaluation of Conceptual Properties by Layperson in Residential Façade Designs. Arts and Design Studies, 3, 13-17.
"When it comes to aesthetic evaluation of a design, architects and non-architects differ from each other...In environmental preference, this type of conceptual evaluation might be conscious or unconscious..."
Thanks. I was actually thinking of something else but that is interesting of course too. The piece I was recalling was a study on the arch students and their well-being.
Excessive hours are not exclusive to architecture. The average undergraduate (not just architecture students) needs in the range of 26-28 hours to complete their daily tasks. If you want to address this sleepless night, stop the brainwashing about how architecture students are so busy- everyone is busy.
Faculty need admit to themselves that the way their students will learn to solve problems is very different from how they were brought up. In addition, the problems are faced with very different contexts/complexities. This will create a need to appreciate "new" techniques among older faculty and will frame agendas for the new.
This was more about the comment from Miles. Today, architectural education is no more time consuming than others. To address the brainwash you need to start with expectations set in k-12.
Salingaros isn't really talking about the sleepless-nights issue. He's making a case that modernist architecture schools indoctrinate students in a way that estranges them from their natural human instincts.
Ah well, enjoy your insularity and novelty while it lasts, as soon as you'll be working that's ancient history anyways. Speaking of insularity and novelty, apparently this professor still uses an overhead projector to project his handwritten notes during lectures, how cool is that!
Why would anyone publish such a pseudo-critique without any evidence or particular examples. Not a serious person or article.
There is a serious dialogue regarding aesthetics and humanism (why do we need to separate them) but instead we have grandstanding pricks like this guy. These are students learning about architecture, a dying art. They better be brainwashed before entering a world of data and narrative hacks, because it's the only way the built world will have anything good or humane at all.
This, without mentioning the overarching indoctrination campaign that's brought upon all students in higher education. Architecture schools are just adding their own flavor. The layperson not "getting" architecture to us, is much the same in the way educated folks of this country (US) don't understand why Trump is the President...
Architects don't "get" each other either.
Competition is fierce, and becomes more intense the higher you climb. At the starchitect level most design to one-up each other. It's not so much about getting each other as it is getting over on each other.
Chemex,
Dr. Salingaros has published extensively on this subject, and many others. You may disagree with his assertions, but to say he is "not a serious person" is, well...not serious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikos_Salingaros
CV: http://zeta.math.utsa.edu/~yxk833/vitae.html
I don't get it. He's a mathematician pretending to be an architect?
I'd expect a serious mathematician not to make generalizations based on anecdotal evidence. Christopher Alexander is fine, but has the same blind spots that Jane Jacobs or any technologist or media critic now has, which is a disrespect or lack of understanding on the creative act of making. You can't calculate it in a pie chart, which is probably why architecture education is so diffucult. But it's the same reason why rich yuppies move to artsy areas of the city... they want to sponge their creativity, much like Salingaros seems to be making his career on.
In other words, if people outside our secret club are critical of what we secret club members do, then it must be that they don't or can't understand our magical process.
The secret club desperate for anyone to talk with them. And inviting different opinions like this guy no matter how bogus. You don't have to be a scientist to understand and appreciate their different perspective. This is just an awful anti-architecture straw man fallacy. I.e. Philistinism
And you don't need to be an architect to see that there is a profound problem with architecture today. All sorts of people are saying it.
"I heard somewhere that architecture has problem" a bestselling title by urbanist technocrats. Just don't invite this guy to a pottery class. ("Why are you working with clay you egomaniacs! Don't you know about Walmart?)
This guy got a grant to find the scientific formula for architecture, did he ever find it? Why the F is he hiding it from us???
Oh just another traveling salesman selling "starchitectue is bad" because he saw some pictures of Dubai (when consulting on a project there). Jackass. He should be the critic for the NYTimes.
Conclusion: starchitecture formalism is a very small % of architecture (but attracts a large part of media/hack attention). If your school isn't teaching humanism, it's a bad class or school. It's not, "modern architecture is bad" (structural professional issues are a real, less sexy problem)
I'd agree that we're brainwashed, ie, taught. We're taught to value order, hierarchy, quality of material, rigor in pursuit of ideas.
We're brainwashed into believing that cheap materials and arpeggios of dormers on a single family house with a 2k sf/occupant and a 4 ca garage is obscene.
We're taught that there is architecture specific to the Renaissance in Italy, the American Colonial era, ancient Egypt, 1950s LA, and our own communities in 2017 - and that these distinctions have value and meaning.
We're brainwashed into thinking we have a point of view to offer and that we can make something better than what was there before.
Maybe the author thinks we should just follow builders' lead, or do only exactly what clients already think they need?
Are there other disciplines from whom he thinks we ought to be taking direction? Psychologists, maybe? Do they not have their own academic orthodoxy?
Reading some comments... instead of one or the other, we could have a balanced approach to an education where we learn practical things along side the theoretical and esoteric but we don't... why is this so controversial?
Most architecture schools already do this. Maybe Holland is different.
Yes, I'd say my own education was pretty balanced. Required to work in offices, building technology curriculum linked with studio projects, etc, but still aspirational studios and theory classes.
I think NAAB includes a well-rounded set of requirements. Results may vary.
Yes, NAAB has requirements. But I hear a lot about students not knowing much of anything upon graduating from the programs no matter what - so which is it?
practical is boring
Salingaors (and C. Alexander) were from a time where they were trying to reconcile computerized processes with aesthetics, so I always find it interesting when the 'crack is wack' argument is used in reference to them or by them. Salingaros used a "simple" mathematical construct in a publication to describe the ratio of surface area of a facade as related to its depth to demonstrate how "serrated" a faced may be. So if we think of this in respects to abstraction, it:
1- reduces the facade to a numerical calculation, the drawing only illustrates the outcome.
2- describes the facade in plan form only, a projection from which no one would ever experience facade.
3- Suggests that standardization is possible, suggesting beauty is universal.
(Also note that the tone of the book/manifesto to demonstrate that he is right- that's brainwashing)
I'd also say humanism is taught in many schools, but not always in that historic mode. Scale, making, and materials can be taught through the use of materials in making.
But the most disingenuous part of the "modernism is bad" argument is that it suggests that we can negotiate all the issues architecture confronts -by choice and otherwise- through the eye and hand despite the fact that humanism now faces matters that are far more larger and complex- and indeed require abstraction.
(deleted)
The irony of this is there's a growing interest in the intersection of psychology and architecture (catalyzed by the great Mind in Design symposium in 2012) where dialogue between two fields can strengthen both in different ways. Science and psychology are essential, but that's not what this is. This is just a form of trolling, claiming the architecture process is artsy and irrelevant.
That sounds interesting but I can't find any info on that symposium. Was it called Minding Design (I found one in Scottsdale)?
Yeah that's it
Oh yeah, the book version was Mind in Architecture. Think it spawned a few bad imitators.
"But the most disingenuous part of the "modernism is bad" argument is that it suggests that we can negotiate all the issues architecture confronts -by choice and otherwise- through the eye and hand despite the fact that humanism now faces matters that are far more larger and complex- and indeed require abstraction."
Would you please elaborate on this, Marc? Specifically, how do you think the matters that "humanism now faces" require architectural abstraction?
I'm not sure what you mean be traditional, but I'll respond generally. Yes and sorta- Yes because over the years we have learned that there are other agents that are important to humans - arguably over the past 100-150 years during which the discipline of ecology has emerged. The origins of traditional architecture are far older. Sorta- because the basic principles that ground traditional architecture are adaptable and relatable to contemporary scenarios.
I'm treating humanist architecture as a practice based on the human body emphasizing physical scale as the means to frame logical decisions. Secondly, this relationship if almost exclusively based on a narrative that explains how you relate to society based on your relation to the architecture (potentially setting up problematic gender and/or identity issues). The key issue is that this is an ocularcentric approach, understandably so because vision is easily shared and communicated versus other qualities like smell which can be more subjective. This tight lens is the problem because while it can be emotive, it is only one form of spatial evaluation and critique.
So if you were to use skin as a mode of critique the methods of evaluation become more complex. Suddenly sweat can be a valid critique. Yes, this has been addressed through ASHRAE but what if you really start thinking about architecture that responds and communicates environmental conditions w/o falling back on duct work to solve the problem? Easy, thermal mass and performance have been built into charts (abstraction- we can't "see" thermal masses perform). What of the exterior of the building? What types of environments does it create and how do the perform? Well, that depends on climate which is another abstraction (v seasons). Then add climate change. Looking at buildings as the pertain to the future and not just how the presently relate to the past is increasingly part of practice and is an abstraction.
I'm not suggesting that it humanism will go away (here), I'm saying the rational decisions and ideas will require different modes of thinking, ones that favor other bodily experiences and means of consideration.
Architecture is by definition a "humanist" discipline because it exists in particular client-place relationships and must be responsive to particular situations, where it gets its authenticity. The modernist movement is too complex to be defined as standardization or Bauhaus or anything else, when you had many different responses to it.
The multi-sensory critique is valid, but has mostly been a response to the ocularcentric fetish of postmodernism, not traditional modernism. Which is why the critique here is so weird--building models and traditional Bauhaus teaching methods do give you a hand-mind empathy for material and physicality that is essential in the architecture process. Focusing on making crazy renderings based on no human-culture-place context would be a bad process.
The whole thing doesn't make sense, but I guess proves that a bad critic can spawn an interesting discussion. Any architecture philistinism should be refuted, there is too much of it in the culture, which is destructive. Instead of pushing "computer process" into design, we should be pushing design in computers and science.
"arpeggios of dormers"
That's lovely.
The brainwashing happens as comforming ideals are praised and non-conforming ideas are ridiculed in regard to subjective matters. Its simple reward and punishment conditioning. Aesthetic taste is falsely being presented as an objective truth. Its almost a religion, and it creates a sense of superiority over non-belivers aka non-arch grads. In reality, there are objective aspects of aesthetics, but contemporary academics have done a terrible job of extracting and identifying them. Proportion, basic principles of contrast, etc...are completely ignored.
There are no objective examples of aesthetics.
There are objective examples of anaesthetics.
Tequila, for one.
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