Experts Deserve to Teach

 I was very drawn in by John Habraken’s texts this week. His writing style and topics of discussion were both very entertaining to read.

One particular thing I was interested in was his discussion on education. He talked about studio culture not giving you an opportunity to really discuss what you learned or if you learned anything.  There’s no real litmus test to knowing if you have things you can take away from a project. Projects usually aren’t based around any new ground breaking things being thought of in education or the profession either, and if they are then there’s no teaching being done (the Clemson 3D printing studio). It’s more so a deeper understanding of how I, or you, would approach a project in the real world, sorta. This is where expert guidance on something like this would be beneficial to refining our design process, whether that is a new angle to examine we haven’t considered or means to speed up a process. However as architecture teachers get further from their date of graduation from their alma mater, so does their understanding of the current tools being utilized. Thus we’re at impasse where experts are so far removed from technical tools that they can’t assist in the design process refinement and we’re entirely reliant on learning from them in an environment that expects you to teach yourself. But I do enough ranting on that subject already. Shout out to Johnny for doing it in essay format.

On the architecture side, one of my favorite quotes was by Lawerence Anderson who said, “Too bad nobody wants to do a background building.” Some of the pressure of architecture is absolutely derived in form creation. That sense of feeling unique from the surroundings also serves as great, or poor, marketing. The development of a very successful interior space can absolutely still work with a plain building that fits in with its surroundings.