Anonymous blogger criticizes SCI Arc thesis projects, the school itself, and its director. Are the troops looking for a 'new object of desire' or is this an academic flamewar? Your refutation or support posts here please.
Anonymous blogger criticizes SCI Arc thesis projects, the school itself, and its director. Are the troops looking for a 'new object of desire' or is this an academic flamewar? Your refutation or support posts here please. Drowning in Culture
29 Comments
That is quite a blog post...
Nah, you know what, good for Sci-Arc for not giving their students whiplash, like so many other places have: hitting the brakes, making a u-turn, and pretending that's where they were heading all along.
There are many ways to make and talk about architecture, and not all of them have to do with community centers in neglected neighborhoods, or the endless spraying of vegetation over every building surface possible. Not that there's anything wrong with all of that, of course, it's just that any form of repetition can become mindless.
I'm glad there are places out there where other things are still happening. I thought the two images that this blogger included with the post, presumably recent student work, looked kind of exciting. (Not so into that cube thing, though)
And besides, anybody who's going to criticize a school or a discourse for being based on 'technique' had better get their fonts in order before hitting 'post'.
Its not just SCI-ARC these days. other schools are having a hard time transitioning their thinking from merely making 3d forms, to actually being able to test their designs with computational data. Its hard to crit projects like that, because all the comments are how, instead of why.
Bitter tone aside, the blogger raises an important point:
How are these thesis projects relevant to anyone outside of academia (or architecture in general)?
Unless you live in a bubble of architecture culture, you'll have to reach out and engage values of the greater society.
I think the projects at Sci-Arc are beautiful and interesting, but unless they make the bigger connections, the projects seem myopic, self-absorbed and irrelevant.
It's not really an anonymous post, as John Southern has been long and publically associated with Drowning in Culture. And John is hardly a sniping malcontent; he is a Sciarc grad and a fairly accomplished human being and AUDC and Taalman Koch collaborator.
765, your point is well taken about architecture profiting from many kinds of discourse, but a lot of what seems to have provoked the post is that Sciarc has gone from a place where vigorous discussions about architecture occur to one where dogma is passed down without interrogation. It's extremely distressing to interview recent Sciarc graduates who have produced these spatial arabesques for three years and find out they have no idea why - if you aren't teaching the ideology of the technique as well as the technique itself, I don't think you are teaching at all.
i always thought sci-arc was the west equivalent of cooper union. when did they decide to become GSAAP-west?
Read 'The Muses Are Not Amused: Pandemonium in the House of Architecture' its a transcript of a lecture that jorge Silvetti gave at the gsd a few years back. you can find it in the Harvard reader.
http://www.amazon.com/New-Architectural-Pragmatism-Harvard-Magazine/dp/0816652643#reader
@houseofmud - sorry, I took the 'anonymous' at face value up there, wasn't familiar with Mr. Southern, that tempers it all somewhat.
I do think it's silly to pretend that form doesn't matter all of the sudden. It's all architecture, thankfully.
I'm surprised to hear people suggest that at Sci-Arc, they're only making form, not talking about it. If that's true, it would be a shame, that wasn't the case back when I was more familiar with the school.
In any event, I would be heartened to think that there was a highly skilled class of technicians, sequestered somewhere like monks, continuing to work on formal innovation, while the rest of us out here just spent all day worrying about stormwater management and social justice.
i knew who the poster was but since the person didn't include his name on the article, i respected his anonymity.
765, i agree with you on staying the course but your examples are two extreme ends of the spectrum and i feel it would be injustice to the article's points to think he is painting it as such.
personally, i think there is a software driven form 'inflation.'
also, i did coin the word 'arabesque' in relation to 'certain' formal ornamentation houseofmud talks about.;.)
i eliminated link from the original newspost to my short review of thesis presentations in 2006 to keep the focus on 'Drowning in Culture' post.
also eliminated, discussion thread link for the same reason.
Don't get me wrong, I think the projects are fabulous.
I just wish there was a way of making them relevant beyond form-studies. A bright student spending a year in thesis is the perfect opportunity to make that case.
I went to SCIArc's thesis presentations last spring and left with a few thoughts. While some of the work was formally beautiful, much of it was not. The majority of the work presented was in the form of fluid digital models. Most physical models were poor quality for a thesis presentation. Many were near exact imitations of their very well known professors' work to the point that it undermined the professor's design ability by demonstrating how easy it is to replicate. Few projects had a readable plan or section that could actually explain the architecture as occupied space. Some of the work was so obtuse and pretentious that it wasn't even worth investigating.
SCIArc was once known for its cutting edge thinking and output and ARCHITECTURE. Not so much these days....
about 5 of all the projects presented were 'new'. Others, same old stuff.
As a recent SCI_Arc grad (like last year, not 2 days ago) from the graduate program namely in question here, I am a little annoyed with the commentary of the blog for a number of reasons.
To some degree, the comments about the work of the school focusing more on product rather than process (i.e. it looks good rather than what does it mean/do) are applicable. However I think this is a really easy generalization to make about the work. Yes, in years past the school has somewhat celebrated the students who produce the glossy renderings, however there are just as many students who are actively engaged in not following in their instructors shadows.
I can't speak for this years thesis as I was not there, but last year there were projects that addressed everything from virtual worlds, interactive design, issues of environmental design (far beyond the typical academic approach of sun angles and louvers), artificial intelligence and automated design approaches, architecture and film... and the list goes on. All of these projects, from their inception during thesis prep, were 100% vested in exploring the future potentials of architecture, be it design, process, experience, etc, and all of these projects had solid research, engaging critiques and discussions and while they may have had a well designed and rendered object, it was certainly not the only thing the project had to offer. It was a huge disappointment for us all to see "Best Thesis" awarded to a student whose project was really just that, another project, and not a thesis in the truest sense of the word. But to equate all 80+ thesis students with the work of just this one project, or the few projects this particular person happened to see on his jaunt through the reviews this year seems hardly fair.
To be perfectly honest, it really seems like the intent of this blog wasn't even to attack thesis or the students work, but was rather aimed at attacking at Eric Owen Moss and his role as Dean of the School. Not only is attacking the students work as justification of someones personal opinion of the effectiveness of the Dean a really immature tactic, the two really have very little to do with each other. If anyone should be critiqued in this situation it would have to be the director of the graduate program or maybe the thesis coordinator, but even then I think this is a stretch. I've gone to schools with far worse people in charge and although I may not always agree with the higher ups at SCI-Arc, I do think they are making an effort.
Frankly SCI-Arc has been and hopefully will continue to be a school that doesn't really do a whole lot of hand holding. To suggest that the school take such a heavy handed approach with something as individual as thesis and force students to consider albeit recent and relevant issues, really undermines what thesis and SCI-Arc are about as a institution. There are plenty of other schools training their students to be good corporate cogs with LEED certification and an oxford button down happy to settle into cubicle 27. I'm pretty sure most students who elect to go to SCI-Arc (remember these students choose to be here) are not aiming for this career path. I know I wasn't.
The bottom line here is that like any experience in life, you get out of it what you want to. Some students elected to produce "near exact imitations of their very well known professors' work" and for some people that worked out very well. Other students did not choose to take that path and shouldn't be lumped in with those that did. As someone mentioned previously, architecture can be defined in many ways and take on many different forms and ideologies. That's what is so great about architecture (and also so frustrating)- there are no right answers.
All I can hope is Mr. Drowning in Culture drowns in his own ego.
I dunno about the SCI_Arc grad programs, it seems MARCH 1 is a little more varied, while MARCH 2 is a two year MAYA Course.
What's more: when I visited (this summer) I was shown some of the current graduate work in the admissions office and I couldn't help but to point out that every project looked the same and that there was no identity,expression, or commentary present in the work. A guy working in the admissions office actually laughed out loud and smiled in agreement with me.
Form the questions I asked and the answers I received, it seems that students and others internally at SCI-Arc are expressing similar concerns to those posed in the article. It did not seem like the admissions office had a very good grasp on how important a discussion like this is to have and I truly hope that these issues are frequently and inclusively addressed within the school (maybe at that huge table in the library?). However, my visit to SCI-Arc left no doubt in my mind that it was not the school for me.
wow - it's changed a lot since then!
yes and no.
it is evolving and being responsive to times and demands, and, strangely enough, to the market.
i think its students got complacent and less self organizing.
we paid average $600-700 a semester for a while (very low even then.) school was almost non profit with low bottom overhead and knowing this, everybody participated even it meant as student janitors, maintenance, day laborer waged teachers, whatever.
you went to sci arc to be a part of something very new, free and energetic.
simply put, we had 'those' the other schools didn't have.
of course now, students pay much more and they request service. it is now the faculty and administration's job to create spectacles and action.
it also became bit of an object making practice almost exclusively.
'institution' has grown too big in order to compete with others.
i am certain it has a huge overhead.
even though it is still singular independent institution which is great, it lost its more risk taking student base.
i agree, people who are investing a lot of money into their education. it has became a business and of course, kids are already expecting big returns and quick recovery. this is not unique to sci arc either.
up until i graduated, back then, people came to sci arc graduate program knowing they were going to receive the only approved degree, a bachelors of architecture but they came anyway.
i am a believer of 'risk taking and opposition breeds innovation' theory in general. there is not much out of the ordinary in most architectural schools anymore but there is a lot of career investment. too professional maybe..
peter cook being an aa-londonist, an old friend of sci arc and other schools, knows this situation well.
i'll stop here...
ah gotcha, so it's like your favorite indie band getting signed and going mainstream.
:P
i was at a reception at neutra vdl house last night when cal poly pomona design school welcomed its new dean michael woo which might amount to be a brilliant move by any architecture school standarts. mr. woo is trained as an urban designer and actively involved in los angeles politics over several decades. i would not be surprised if cal poly takes the lead and puts the city as a laboratory in the front of the students and the faculty.
that is what i meant by coming back to the city. this is the most current and interesting work out there. it is bit of a vision thing too.
sometimes it is easy to miss the things in front of you when your eyes are all blurred up following everything via digital computer screens honing the 'shape of things' relentlessly to limited ends.
Greetings Orhan -wanted to chime in on this discussion.
post 1 of 2:
Vis. the level of thinking in thesis- whether at SCIArc or other schools- debates taking place today across many disciplines on 'post criticality' and 'post theory', for example, are urgent to properly engage. It can be hard to get the discussion to the level it needs to reach, because most studio and seminar faculty don't agree on these debates which makes it tough for students to track a path through the chaff of opinions.
Even though that situation sounds daunting, it can, indeed, be what makes a school vibrant- when it functions as a lab to actively index a set of explorations in culture, at the moment they are playing out in 'real time'.
Seminars and design studios in every school I've ever taught in are usually at loggerheads to get students thinking [whether critically, post critically, post theoretically, or- let's face it- just THINKING AT ALL in any manner]. IMHO this is the most interesting challenge of teaching in design schools where studio takes up 50-60% of the credit load, but in reality takes 95% of the students' time. That's what can make those design schools vulnerable to such criticism. But it also gives them a strength in design that shouldn't be ignored, because thinking does take place through design, not just through theory.
With that defense of thinking through design stated, I myself am strongly against monocultures which avoid theory at all, and IMHO the current weak, glossed acceptance of post-criticality which pervades schools and the intellectual strains of architecture culture as well doesn't help. It is a license to stop thinking, since many designers have no sense of the history, purpose, definitions, or value of critical thought. Frankly, it strikes me as profoundly retrograde and reactionary, except in outlier cases where the designer/theorist championing it has a reservoir of knowledge far surpassing most other folks', and consequently can situate their post-critical work in a very sophisticated manner.
continue:
post 2 of 2:
There's a parallel debate which Chris Anderson of WIRED magazine explored in a fairly recent issue of his magazine- the problem of post theory/post model work, due primarily to the onset of the 'terabyte age', as data storage and search engines/filters have grown so massive and powerful that many scientific and social models are perturbed, changed or overthrown. This argument has many flaws, but there is a kernel of truth in it that we need to test.
I've taught at SCIArc in the past, over about a five year period- multiple seminars and studios- and the level of discussion and thinking that the students achieved in those classes was just as intense and intellectually engaged as any other school I've taught at. The overall culture might seem from the outside, to be primarily formally oriented, but the fact is that inside the school during my time [~2004-09] there was tremendous diversity of thought and design work in the student body.
There was a similar misperception of a school back in the mid/late 90s. Quite a few people saw the GSAPP from the outside and thought that it was a monoculture, but nothing could be further from the truth. Tschumi managed to harness and wrangle many differing approaches and voices into a productive tension that was enormously exciting.
Best-
Ed Keller
Thanks for your response Ed. Constructive and questioning as always. No doubt you have a way of getting your students think well. During the reviews I have participated last spring, I thought your students accomplished very good projects and ideas and certainly they were well developed.
Too bad Sci Arc doesn't have a 'student' produced online and/or print bi annual publication that weaves through the work to bring the school discussions together and perhaps document the content of each semester, with interviews and fresh essays by students. I gues they have 'onramp' in which student projects shown.
I observed many terminal projects in thesis discussions reflected further iterations of a wall installation I saw in Sci Arc press covering a first year studio. That is the dominant 'form factor' prevailing in most architecture schools, like one time prizmacolor elevations did.
About your percentages of studio time, it was alright until twenty years ago when people had limited network and often spend laborious hours on the drafting board. Now, most of those terabytes you mention via Chris Anderson, are used on the same strata resolving the world's ills with building designs and bird's eye views. In one hand technology grew tremendously but on the other hand the end results points to similar destinations. The sub-monocultures are everywhere.
In my interview with EOM last year, he strongly stated (at the end part) that Sci Arc is not a trade school but didn't talk about what trade is.. Isn't his office also a trade?
Of course those views are fair and balanced and safe to spell, I bet every other school would say the same thing, “we are not a trade school..”
Until somebody says, "we are doing the trade this way."
Just because it sounds good at this point, I will borrow a phrase and few sentences from Allan Sekula class project “Salty Dog Bites the Hand.”
Ouch!
Although not a sci-arc student, I was able to observe the process this year, and this article has some very good points. To be frank, many of the projects simply appeared to be vapid digital self-gratification, and a few students included things in their presentations which made it VERY hard to take the projects seriously. (was it Gothic? or just corny kitch à la hogwarts?)
That being said, there was plenty of engaging architecture, and some of it was not only very interesting, but actually socially relevant. But this work was wholly ignored by the administration during graduation. None of the projects or students who tried to do work which would be socially or architecturally relevant outside of sci-arc, received any acknowledgement for their efforts. (Ironic given Micheal Sorkin's speech during graduation.)
I think it is obvious that facility like Hernan Diaz-Alonso have too much influence over the process, and that the graduate studios (especially in march 2) need to be rethought.
It needs to be more of an education, and less of a indoctrination.
Just a opinion from the outside looking in.
xcarlx,
people teach what they teach. students create idols and every now and then they create new set of heroes.
you can't blame people for what they teach.
however, i believe in provocative learning environments where different ideas and ideals are debated with spirit and equal respect.
if certain group of students are not acknowledged, it is those students who should stand up and turn up the volume.
academia is a natural place to do this and it becomes very difficult in the so called professional world. a lot of graduates drop out and become distanced from the discourse as the profession solidifies itself as a service industry when people increasingly become compliant.
in many schools i have been to, i have not seen any spirited debate of opposing ideas. unfortunately, it usually regarded as unhealthy and people regarded as trouble makers by the groupthink members.
i am not really talking about sci arc specifically. this is a wide spread issue.
thanks for writing your observations.
I agree that it is a shame that the school continually rewards those students whose work fits within the narrow confines dictated by the design sensibilities of the studio instructors. That said, I think by the time most students reach thesis (if not sooner) they have made a decision to either use their education as an education or to use their education to gain their instructors approval and get rewarded for it. While the students who have made an effort to actually learn something in school (and life) are justifiably upset during graduation that yet again popularity has trumped intelligence, they are likely the ones that years down the road will be producing the work that people will be talking about while the "best thesis" of yesteryear will still be working in their instructors shadows.
But then again, how is this any different from a vast majority of work places that rarely reward merit and individuality and often reward conformity?
We arrive at a point in time of architectural education where the experimentation that should be encouraged in school has taken a sidestep, or possibly just simply fallen off the edge.
A friend once described CAD as a $5,000 pencil. Our fascination with 2B and 6H leads or felt-tip and roller ball pens has little to do with the idea that will take its form along Main St. The software du jour may be old and stale once the graduate enters the workforce where the reality of putting together a building that doesn't leak may have more relevance in the light of errors and omissions insurance.
The richness and value of architecture doesn't lie with the tools used but the exquisite balance of aesthetic, culture, function and practicality laced with excellent skills in politics and negotiations.
I'm currently an undergrad at SCI-Arc and seeing the graduate thesis projects this year was both exciting and disappointing. The projects were pretty, but walking down the hall, it became increasingly disturbing to see some 50+ projects that more or less looked the same, all of which claimed to follow their own interests. This is not to say there weren't lots of great projects as well. Its just that they were just overshadowed by this phenomena.
SCI-Arc as I understand it is a home for questioning what is commonplace and generally accepted by all. It goes against all reason then that any sort of agreement should be found here among its students. It makes even less sense that our students should fall victim to fads.
Some possible explanations...
1) It's the apocalypse (probably not)
2) The state of architecture itself has reached a level of excellence, so we should all drop what were doing now and make cool looking squiglies.
3) Three years just isn't enough to learn architecture.
4) SCI-Arc just ain't what she used to be.
In all fairness, it seems that the instructors and Moss are doing their best to preserve the founding ideals of SCI-Arc. However, its these same ideals that act as a double edge sword. Its an ideal by which the SCI-Arc student is the ultimate authority on what is relevant and what is not. It worked so well up till now because past students were self-driven, outspoken individuals with real visions that would otherwise go unheard by the mainstream architectural community were it not for the community empowerment and education SCI-Arc offered.
Today's typical architectural student is a far cry from this. These students have thoroughly digested "great architecture" and strive to emulate it rather than question it. SCI-Arc has become saturated with these people over the years, for whatever reason (and i'm sure that itself is a whole other discussion).
My concern is where do we go from here? Start a new SCI-Arc? Call it SCI-Arc II, wait fifty years, move three buildings then start a SCI-Arc III?
I'd much rather save the current SCI-Arc.
I would caution on stating that the Michael Woo hiring at Cal Poly is that new potential for an architecture program to do real critical work on the city. Unfortunately, state budgets cuts might cut Woo and the staff's new plans short...but this has always been the issue at Cal poly: playing too cautious against the wind. Woo's a nice guy, but he doesn't get deals done in LA (who does anyway?!).
I loved your old post Orhan on the old westside Sci-Arc. I had faculty from that 1980s 1990s generation under Mary-Ann and Rob and they were great.
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