The Failed Architecture School: Challenging Architectural Pedagogy
Not sure how many have heard the news, but the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture will close this summer after 88 years of existence. Once upon a time I considered joining this school. Growing up in Western North Carolina, I always heard of the success and eventual failure of the Black Mountain College, which to put it best was a rebel in the realm of higher education. Black Mountain College challenged pedagogy, it fostered community and creativity, and I consider the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture to be its contemporary.
For those unfamiliar with Frank Lloyd Wright's School of Architecture, it challenged the methods of architecture education. One of the more notable methods was the student shelter program, in which, as part of a thesis, students were required to design and build their own shelter in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, on the campus of Taliesin West. "The idea was 'learning by doing', and the desired result, as Wright put it, was 'to develop a well correlated, creative human being with a wide horizon.'"
To get a better sense of the school's philosophy I've included an excerpt from their website:
After reading Habraken, I couldn't help but think of the way the SoAT was challenging architecture pedagogy and how we can analyze their methods and adopt them in more schools. However, not every school is capable of doing what SoAT did, can you imagine the University's reaction if we built living quarters in Lee Hall? But we must think critically about how education impacts our ultimate practice. I like in the opening how Habraken stated "ultimately, our self-image determines the way we design; our buildings reflect how we see ourselves". I would like to argue that our "self-image" has also determined the way architecture is taught. We preach a lot about "community" but what if we lived it in our education?
https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/why-the-school-of-architecture-at-taliesin-is-closing
For those unfamiliar with Frank Lloyd Wright's School of Architecture, it challenged the methods of architecture education. One of the more notable methods was the student shelter program, in which, as part of a thesis, students were required to design and build their own shelter in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, on the campus of Taliesin West. "The idea was 'learning by doing', and the desired result, as Wright put it, was 'to develop a well correlated, creative human being with a wide horizon.'"
To get a better sense of the school's philosophy I've included an excerpt from their website:
SoAT is not just a School, it is a community of learning. When Frank Lloyd Wright founded what is now the School of Architecture at Taliesin in 1932, he envisioned a place where people from all around the world would come together not only to design, but also to live on and work the land, listen to and make music, see and make art, eat and cook good food, dance, and perform. Today, we are still a community of makers whose work extends beyond creating models and drawings to making theater, food, and music. When lecturers come share their work, students often stay up with them until all hours of the night around an open fire, discussing the future of architecture and the world.
We truly live architecture. We don’t just design and discuss, we build for ourselves and for local communities, designing projects for everybody to use. Students live and design in the spaces Wright created, and their work is always informed by the structures and the landscapes to which they respond. Not only that but, for the time they are at Taliesin West they live in a desert shelter a previous student created. Before leaving, each student will design and build their own place of belonging, contributing to the future of SoAT.
After reading Habraken, I couldn't help but think of the way the SoAT was challenging architecture pedagogy and how we can analyze their methods and adopt them in more schools. However, not every school is capable of doing what SoAT did, can you imagine the University's reaction if we built living quarters in Lee Hall? But we must think critically about how education impacts our ultimate practice. I like in the opening how Habraken stated "ultimately, our self-image determines the way we design; our buildings reflect how we see ourselves". I would like to argue that our "self-image" has also determined the way architecture is taught. We preach a lot about "community" but what if we lived it in our education?
https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/why-the-school-of-architecture-at-taliesin-is-closing
x
Comments
Post a Comment