Habraken Studio's Heart
"We are part of the everyday environment and depend on it, and that the everyday environment shapes us before we can help shape it,.....and that we must find ways to contribute to it to the best of our abilities"
John Habraken.
Habraken believes that the idea of studio is long outdated because we are only judged on our final product produced. I totally agree. Architecture studio as it stands is all visual. We have moved away from ideas that are amazing but badly represented, to okay projects that are beautifully represented. This creates a disparity among students as for I feel representation can be taught, great ideas cannot. With the way architecture depends on the everyday environment It requires real problems that adversely have real solutions. I believe that studio really needs to perform in a way that allows us to make mistakes without sacrificing our overall grade. It is the point of school to be learning correct? I believe studio needs to have a progress over perfection model instead of this one presentation at the end will determine your whole grade crap. Architecture studio needs more real-world projects that put you in others shoes and allows you to see the other side of architecture that is not so pretty. Because honestly, real problems just aren't beautiful.
Mainly talking about Undergraduate not Graduate...kind of.
ReplyDeleteKimani, I completely agree with you and like the idea you are proposing. I feel like even though studio is where we spent most of our time during our studies, I feel like it is the class in which I have learned the least. I believe that is because we are not learning much about architecture itself but about how we canmake it look beautiful. I feel like changing the way studio is taught and making it more of a learning experience where we are allowed to take risks without fear of failing and getting a bad grade would motivate students to explore new innovative ways to deal with architecture instead of sticking with looking at precedents that we know work.
Kimani,
ReplyDeleteI agree that our studios are very focused around beautiful physical models. In reality, we normally do not even make models. We spend so much of our time close to reviews to put together this amazing model that probably does not even reflect what is in our plans and other drawings since they are changing linearly. I think grading in architecture studios is normally very biases and based on what you produce in the end versus HOW you got there from months of work.
Kimani,
ReplyDeleteI definitely think that the way that studio is focused is mostly on what comes out beautiful. I know from undergrad specifically, that some people would have an amazing idea-- but the render just wasn't quite pretty enough to get the attention that it should have by the professors.
There is room for studio to grow in a way that you should be graded on progress over perfection, and I do wish that this would be implemented more in education. I will say, that when you show a client something (just in previous experiences), they respond a lot better to beautiful renders rather than a floor plan, but the most important part for it to actually get built is not the renders-- I feel like so many things in our profession get ass backwards sometimes.