Goodness > Greatness

I think even just in the introduction itself Andrea Oppenheimer Dean’s Rural Studio brings to light some of the most important and relevant questions that architect’s face. I have heard about Auburn’s Rural Studio program and even have a friend that participated in the program within the last couple of years, but I didn’t know much about it. I figured it was something like what David Pastre is doing in the Charleston location, which I may be right or wrong about that. The following is a quote from the writing itself that I find interesting:

“… ‘the architectural profession has an ethical responsibility to help improve living conditions for the poor. Another is that the profession should ‘challenge the status quo into making responsible environmental and social changes.’ Hence his belief that architectural education should expand its curriculum from “paper architecture" to the creation of real buildings and to sowing ‘a moral sense of service to the community.’"

Samuel Mockbee + Dean

I think that having actual physical experience with building architecture is such an important, or at least beneficial, thing to have as an architecture student. Like one of the students in the text accounted, you can draw these elevations and details all day long but until you see if come together and understand how it is built it is hard to connect the two.

Mockbee goes on to say that "the best way to make real architecture is by letting a building evolve out of the culture and place.” I think this can even relate back to Frampton’s topic of critical regionalism. We as architects (I would say for the most part) want to design these huge/great buildings that take advantage of new modern technologies and Mockbee is kind of calling us out on the fact that maybe that isn’t always the most successful architecture in the end.

“Mockbee presents architecture as a discipline rooted in community and its environmental, social, political, and aesthetic issues and shows students that they can make a difference. He tells them that as architects their goodness is more important than their greatness, their compassion more eventful than their passion.”

Andrea Oppenheimer Dean

I just wanted to end on this last quote because the last sentence really stood out to me and gave me something to think about going forward…

Goodness > Greatness    and    Compassion > Passion 

                                                                 Goodness > Greatness

like why though?