Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP) has appointed architect, curator, and artist Andrés Jaque as its next Dean. He replaces Amale Andraos, who stepped down from the role in May 2021.
Jaque received his Ph.D. and MArch from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid. He has been involved with GSAPP since 2013, where he began teaching advanced design studios. He directs the school's Master of Science program in Advanced Architectural Design, to which he was appointed in 2018.
Aside from his work at GSAPP, Jaque is the founder of Office for Political Innovation, an international architecture firm based in New York and Madrid. His practice has been recognized and part of collections at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago, along with other exhibitions at institutions around the world. Jaque’s accolades include the Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts from the City of Vienna, the Silver Lion for Best Research Project at the 14th Venice Biennale, and the Dionisio Hernández Gil Prize. He also co-curated Manifesta 12 in Palermo in 2018 and was Chief Curator of the 13th Shanghai Biennale, Bodies of Water.
Archinect Sessions Episode #18: Moonwalking Or (The Expected Virtue of Social Architecture) with Andrés Jaque, winner of MoMA PS1's YAP
"During his time at GSAPP, Andrés has become beloved by his colleagues and demonstrated deep commitment to the success of the institution and its students and alumni," said Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger in a letter announcing Jaque’s appointment. "He will steward GSAPP to even greater heights, and I am grateful to him for agreeing to take on this role."
"The world is radically evolving, and GSAPP is known for leading change and for mobilizing our disciplines to reinvent societies, environments, politics, and technologies in order to address the challenges of our times," said Jaque in a statement. "Building on the School’s strong legacy established by my predecessors and the faculty at large, I look forward to further intensifying GSAPP’s role in pushing the disciplinary boundaries of our fields to challenge structural forms of domain, and to redefine the demands of the future."
Jaque begins his new role on September 1, 2022.
23 Comments
The continuation of the progressive irrelevance of a once great program.
Care to elaborate on why? I thought this was an excellent successor, someone who's opened the door to new perspectives on architecture and is beloved by students and faculty alike.
Sure, I'd also be curious to hear how you believe he has opened doors to new perspectives in architecture?
The reality is that I think he named his firm "Office for Political Innovation" out of branding and a lack of originality. The name calls for a loftier more radical for of practice, that ends up being primarily art based installations and private work for the 1%.
While I did not attend GSAPP, the alumni I know are not happy about this appointment and see this as a continuation of the school's willingness to disengage from reality. The focus on pseudo theory and trendy graphics is disheartening. I would love to see the program lead the profession toward a place where we engage with the most pressing issues facing the built environment today.
GSAPP is really not the school for that kind of practical training. It's been heavy on graphics (Which could lead to very fruitful endeavors - Joseph Kosinki, the director of Tron Legacy and Top Gun Maverick - made his name with his CG research while a GSAPP student) and art, heavily subsidized by Chinese students for the past decade.
Andraos' tenure saw it further morphing into GSD-lite with worse facilities but comparable tuition.
I agree that there's more of an experimental and theoretical flavor to GSAPP's pedagogy, but I don't think it comes at a compromise to practical training at all - you see this in the student work produced outside of studio. It can really bear fruit in interesting ways outside of traditional architecture as well. Not sure what you mean by 'Pseudo theory', but I think you might change your mind about Office for Political Innovation when some of their work currently under construction finishes. Check out 'Colegio Reggio' for example. Back when Mark Wigley was Dean (2004-2014), he had zero built work under his name, but I'm sure people don't describe him as disengaged with reality, so I'm not sure what GSAPP alumni you're referring to.
As a very recent graduate of GSAPP, I agree with The Crow. As far as I could tell, the school was focused on creating left-wing "architect" political activists rather than even designers (not even talking about practical designers). I understand that you do not go to top schools to learn about 2x4 stud walls, but GSAPP has gone way too far. When required courses are called "Arguments" and "Transscalarities", and guest speakers are 19/20 times architectural exhibitionists or architectural political activists calling for the dissolution of national borders, I wonder how you pull back from that. I had a really hard time trying to find elective (voluntary) courses that were not political and actually about architecture itself, not some idea of architecture embedded in social injustice. GSAPP also leans way too heavily on pretty graphics instead of actual architecture. As someone who fell for the allure of pretty graphics and spent half of my bachelor years mastering some of them, I came away with the opinion that they are just party tricks... using axonometric not because they are dimensionally accurate but because they look fantastical... using oversized Sun in reddish-orange hue to catch the eye... those are graphics designs tricks that obscure what we are supposed to learn in these school in my opinion: poetics of space, not canvas.
Yeah, the last time I was in school the obsession with images (John May and friends) was on the rise - right along with the whole OOO schickt. The faculty - especially younger ones who built their academic careers on this stuff - was openly more interested in architecture as "image" - whether 2D graphics or digital representations in all their different forms - than construction.
The advent of 3D printers played a role in making this pedagogy feasible, as students could print dozens of "study models" generated from these image studies.
Not that these should be discouraged - I think studying architecture as images is a pretty interesting exercise and some faculty did a great job teasing out tensions between image and construction. Yale does it too, but they've always maintained a fairly diverse range of pedagogical styles (I can't imagine any other Ivy having a new classical option studio). Some schools took it a biiiit too far, like GSAPP and GSD - though I might be too far removed from school nowadays.
Kim, it's a terribly flawed construction to say in the same breath, that you wished architecture wasn't so political -- it is -- and then state that GSAPP focused on fancy graphics, and not actual architecture.
Isn’t it convenient that the academic cartel gets a $250000 federal check for a unlicensed student they have barely educated in useful skills, “hey, guess you just found out architecture is political, sucker”
What are you prattling on about?
I have to agree with Kim's perspective, although it seems in recent years the liberal activism in schools like GSAPP + others was more of a reactionary stance to the pandemic woes and post-Trump reflections (I hope). I think Andres Jaque brings a different perspective on politics - something a bit more critical on architecture and less preachy, although I may be wrong. Time will tell. I think students got Pinterest-highs with the 2D image fad and obscured the interesting potential in it, but younger faculty need to lead in pulling back from this more. Ironically, one of Pinterest's co-founders is a GSAPP alumni himself, which goes to show the interesting alternatives that do emerge from the school.
On a side note - architecture has been shifting toward some sort of "political activism" for a while anyway, irrespective of academia. Just compare the most recent trend of Pritzker Prize winners with those of previous years and it's easy to see a change in priorities largely based around politics of space, resources, and climate. This is interesting to discuss in schools, albeit in a more openly critical way and less shoved-down-your-throat.
b3, to clarify my stance a bit more, I thought school was a bit too one-sidedly political and focused one graphics. I do not think they are mutually exclusive. One a side note, I did have professor Andrés Jaque for one of my classes, and I believe he does genuinely want lively, balanced political discussions - he wanted for instance, if there were any, conservatives in the classrooms to speak up and argue against all these left of the left political arguments. He was sincere, and I thanked him for his sincerity. But the combination of GSAPP selecting for more left-wing professors and students, recent political climate, having literal marxist(s) teaching required courses (and keep bringing up fair redistribution of land as the solution for every problem), and all the class topics being left of the left politically, the school environment was one of most insulated echo chamber I knew/know. You can have your political leaning, but I do not think it is healthy for a supposed #2 graduate architecture program in the US to be such a big echo chamber.
GSAPP’s decadence is only the byproduct of the corrupt NAAB accrediting cartel. They know they can coast on nonsense in a meaningless 4 year undergrad program. Then force these activists into another 2-3 year masters where they learn the actual substance of architecture (if they do that) along with English majors.
Meanwhile there are plenty of 4 year programs where students master architecture, that have to suffer because of corrupt arch profession elites. Why accreditation and licensing should be done by states not the NAAB.
Young people think that “politics” will save them. Or that starting your own architecture union is the answer. Just another cartel within the cartel. No. Better to make money outside of the cartel in order to further isolate and break it down.
How did you arrive at such a broad consensus from "young people"? I consider myself in this category and wholly disagree with that. I find politics very interesting insofar as it may help save architecture from cultural irrelevance by simply understanding the political domains it affects. I'm not interested in free handouts for personal gain.
Good point. A lot of young people don't agree with the progressive capturing of academia. It's likely more the growth of academic bureaucracy over professors that in turn pushes out good education and inflates costs. There are now, for the first time, more bureaucrats than professors. All funded by crazy costs and Federal / student debt.
At the end of the day, either you believe architecture itself -- the design of place, buildings, etc -- has value or you don't. The new ideology doesn't value design at all. Young people will continue to suffer until the academic bureaucracy and professional/accreditation cartel ends. That is the only politics that will benefit society.
Ideally the skills produced in architecture school would be valued in an open and free market. However the accreditation and academic cartel system either doesn't believe that architecture has value in itself or wants to replace it entirely with another ideology -- design for the elite few, politics for the masses.
Transscalarities—I got curious:
MSAAD Program Director Andrés Jaque hosts an introductory session for the program’s Transscalarities course. Operating as a cauldron of collective research and critical discussion, Transscalarities explores the way architectural design operates politically, societally, and environmentally by unfolding discontinuous interconnections across scales. In this first session, Professor Jaque and the MSAAD class will respond to readings by Langdon Winner, Kimberle Crenshaw, and Bruno Latour, and will discuss the course’s main lines of inquiry: 1. Environmental Engagement, 2. Racial Justice, 3. Decolonizing Design, 4. From Technodeterminism to the Techno-social, 5. Materiality as Transterritorial, 6. From Exploitation to Mutual Care, and 7. Interspecies Diplomacy.
https://www.arch.columbia.edu/...
(I'm also seeing the word with one s.)
Honestly these all sound like great topics for architectural discussion and I'm especially intrigued by Interspecies Diplomacy.
while arguably interesting, none of this is worth the absurd cost columbia charges. it's one of the least affordable architecture schools in the US.
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