collaboration vs individual refinement
The reading from Harbraken ties together the theme of the past few weeks really well. Harbraken beautifully describes everyday architecture as the much-needed common fabric that ties together Architecture, as a profession. "What is common cannot be special, but it can be of high quality" Harbraken argues. I have never considered this thought, but it opened my eyes to the power of craft within our profession. A building does not need to stand out but should be well designed for users to enjoy. This statement of his is the thesis of equitable design, that so long as the architect is designing for users (and not himself) a building will fulfill its purpose and delight its users.
Harbraken's section about change really related back to affordable housing that Alejandro Aravena designed and talked about in his TED talk. Harbraken believes that "change goes hand in hand with performance" and that creative architecture is one "which the permanent is truly structural and meaningful and the short-lived full of energy and surprises" willing to be changed without compromising the building. These quotes relate directly back to the premise of the affordable housing in which Aravena designed half the house but provided enough structure for the users to design and construct the other half.
In the back half of the reading, Harbraken lists four categories in which architecture should make adjustments or conduct research to find better solutions. The smallest of these was about new teaching formats. Harbraken likens the studio format to that of a scarecrow, filtering those who are brave enough to face the beast of studio hours and critiques. As this process has worked for filtering students, Harbraken argues that it does not directly relate to the way that Architecture works in the real world. There is hardly collaboration, and definitely not a system where design responsibilities are divided and distributed, letting students only have a say in specific areas. Harbraken addresses that the point of studio is to produce work to show your worth as an architect to get a job, but that this should not be the formant, and that there needs to be change. Do you all agree that there should be a new format to architectural education, or has the system been proven effective enough and not in need of reform?
I'd adamantly say there are more ways, and perhaps better ways, to educate architects to be better prepared for the field. But instead of the emphasis being on collaboration in studios, I believe it is the specialization of craft and only after that the collaboration between architecture and other studies. Collaboration between architecture students, to me, is not only a not very realistic lesson to teach (theres always hierarchy in the workplace, there is none in class,) but I think it wastes time festering ideas that may be architecturally special or beautiful but in reality meaningless/ineffective.
ReplyDeleteI agree that collaboration shouldn't be the first priority for students to learn, but I disagree in that collaboration doesn't teach students. I have found that there is a hierarchy in class and through collaboration, it has begun to prepare me for real-world situations. I feel like to fix the quality of buildings, we need new ideas. However, other ideas won't be considered if they are from someone who can't push them through to consideration.
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ReplyDeleteI have always been one to produce better work when I am surrounded by others in a standard studio environment, but I do think that the collaboration part of how studios are taught could be lessened. We start off doing individual projects and then in our second year get thrown into partner or group work and never turn back. I feel that this restricts us from really growing all of our skills because in group work there is delegation and while one person might be really good at modeling, they could have horrible drawings so they get assigned as the "model maker". This prevents that student from really ever developing other skills because when you are forced to work in groups under a time constraint, you HAVE to delegate.
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