the role of
ARCHITECTURE COMPETITIONS in the learning process
Coordinator: Lecturer arch. Cristian Blidariu PhD. Student: Lorena Brează
1. courtyard intervention- rendering for project class
i
ABSTRACT
Architecture competitions focus, in their majority, on urgent social and cultural issues- they already offer a complex problem that demands our architectural solutions, like disaster recovery, homeless housing, public space, urban renewal, city planning, or environmental consciousness. Dealing with them is a great way to stay socially active and thoughtful. When it comes to competitions for students of architecture, the contest itself becomes an impressive learning process that should compete with the idea of winning, for the main reason we get to choose it. Architectural competitions are differently approached depending on the area, the school direction, the students’ background, their computer skills and many other reasons. After having the occasion to compare some different systems and analyze the attitudes of a few schools regarding competitions, I decided to write about their influences on the educational process whether performed within certain school subjects or not. This paper is an analysis of the impact competitions can have on one’s education when it comes to studying architecture. Its aim is not only to present the process of a competition, together with every significant, educative part, but also to raise some questions regarding whether or not we should explore more intensively this territory.
ii
CONTENTS
1. A creative playground................................................................................1 . 2. Research.........................................................................................................4 3.. Finding the concept..................................................................................9 4. Design..............................................................................................................11 5. Representation............................................................................................13 6. There’s a Buzz.............................................................................................21 7. Conclusion...................................................................................................30
iii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
fig 1...courtyard intervention- rendering for project class................................................i fig 2...research sketch....................................................................................................................3 fig 3...project development sketch- a vision.........................................................................6 fig.4...Europan Norway-RUNNER-UP-BERGEN....................................................................7 fig.5...Europan Norway- RUNNER-UP Trondheim...............................................................7 fig.6... Europan Norway-Hovedbilde-WINNER-ORSTA....................................................7 fig.7...Europan Norway-RUNNER-UP-BERGEN....................................................................8 fig.8...Europan Norway-RUNNER-UP-ORSTA.......................................................................8 fig.9...Renderings and illustrations from Fala Atelier........................................................16 fig.10..Renderings- Brussels architecture project................................................................17 fig.11...Europan Bergen- ‘A Story of Mollendal’- atmosphere image...........................18 fig.12..Sketch related to competitions participation in Timisoara...............................20 fig.13..The work space...................................................................................................................24 fig.14..Europan 13 - GRAZ WINNER.........................................................................................25 fig.15..Europan 13- OS RUNNER-UP.........................................................................................26
iv
A CREATIVE PLAYGROUND
Architecture competitions focus, in their majority, on urgent social and cultural issues- they already offer a complex problem that demands our architectural solutions, like disaster recovery, homeless housing, public space, urban renewal, city planning, or environmental consciousness. Dealing with them is a great way to stay socially active and thoughtful. While internet is full of ‘How to win architecture competitions’- articles, some may say they are a waste of time. For example, architect Derek Leavitt posted on his blog a list with 5 Things Architects Should Do Instead of Entering Open Competitions after intensive arguments on the subject with Karen Cilento from Archdaily. Amongst them, he suggested that going to a bar ‘you are more likely to meet a stranger that will hire you to design them a real building than to win an actual architectural commission from an open competition. ’ When it comes to architecture competitions for students, the competition itself becomes an impressive learning process that should compete with the idea of winning, for the main reason we get to choose it. Architecture competitions are differently approached depending on the area, the school direction, the students’ background, their computer skills and many other reasons. After having the occasion to compare some different systems and analyze the attitudes of a few schools regarding competitions, I decided to write about their influences in the educational process whether performed within certain school subjects or not. This paper is an analysis of the impact competitions can have on one’s education when it comes to studying architecture. Its aim is not only to present the process of a competition, together with every significant educative part, but also to raise some questions regarding whether or not we should explore more intensively this territory.
1
‘In The Fall of Public Man, Richard Sennett argues that since the 18th century, we have been moving towards recognition of private values to the detriment of a meaningful engagement with the public sphere. This process is characterized by historical change that can be observed not only in the domains of thought and cultural production, but also in social practices. ‘ [1] The book brings criticism to the post-modern discourse in architecture and urbanism, while it echoes the problems generated by architecture’s concern with symbolic meaning since the 60s. Sennett argues that this architecture had been developed by a reaction to rationalization of environmental qualities characterizing many of the iconic personalities of modernity. The critics tried to re-establish the social and cultural values that architecture can bring to the creation of public space.[2] Today, the subject of public space is intensively debated in critical studies, on the popular or academic front, having its importance highlighted from the very first level, even when it comes to competitions- that of the competition brief. LEAP(Laboratoire d’etude de l’architecture potentielle)- a Canadian organization that developed a database with all the competitions that are created in their country- analyzed the way projects were appreciated depending on today’s urgent- social, cultural and political - issues. They discovered that not only has been public space emerging as a primary concern in a great number of the submitted projects, but also, its complex interaction within the built area- way beyond the objective goals linked to the functional and technical resolution of a building- led the participants develop a variety of connections that represent the decisive criteria in the selection of the winning entries. In order to be able make these connections, in order to get to decide at what point the qualities of the interior and exterior public space should become more important than the building itself, for example, we have to develop our own puzzling network that gathers information while linking knowledge, readings, experiments, talks, critics, people and, of course, instincts. As students of architecture, I strongly believe we should be able to create our own network of connections, at any time. Some of us get more use of the knowledge part, while others rely on instincts when it come comes to competitions. Either way, neither of them work separately, without being able to understand a picture that certainly implies, not only the complementary skill, but many others. Architecture competitions for students are, depending on the complexity of their brief, at least powerful reasons, if not veritable tools to learn architecture: they give you a real reason for showing the best of yourself -THE PRIZE, they force you to be on the subject and make RESEARCH, they often imply a TEAM- because even if you don’t want to, you’ll get to ask for someone’s opinion at some point as you are fighting for the prize- and they ask for the most accurate, logical, but in the same time catchy graphics you can give, in order to pass the 30 seconds rule- the time a jury usually spends watching a competition panel. For students, each of the above can represent a class in itself, one that can be at least as demanding and useful as a classical school issue. 2
www.pinterest.com
www.divisare.com
www.europan-europe.eu
2.
3
RESEARCH
When we say Research related to competitions, we often refer to the part where we search everything that has been done on the subject or references from linked domains that can serve as a starting point for developing our project. It is meant to make us more creative, to open our minds, to make connections before starting. So far, I found two important issues that lead to a qualitative research when it comes to competitions. The first one implies the HOW part, more specifically what are the tools of searching, the key words, the websites, the knowledge or already existing references of the person who performs the research. The second one implies knowing when to stop. It has something to do with understanding until what point a reference is still a reference and not the shaping means of our project.
The tools
To develop the first issue, I will tell two short stories. When we were in our first years of architecture, before starting the short fourdays project - which serves as a final evaluation in the project class of Timisoara’s school- we usually took, at least one day for this part- collecting information and letting ourselves inspired. We were a group of friends having this habit of meeting in a bar after the first 24 hours to see what everyone found. It usually went like this: the majority of us had exactly the same things, iconic stuff that could hardly get us somewhere, but there was this friend of ours who always came with something more, at least ten other projects and some writings that I could swear I didn’t find, not event in the 13th page of the searching results. Later on, we started working in teams and even if we grew up a little and we developped individual searching strategies, I didn’t miss the occasion to watch her making ‘ research’ . She was reformulating everything so that the subtle change of words doesn’t change the idea, but emphasizes some parts of it. She often started from an issue that was not at all related to architecture at first sight, from her favorite books or authors and she didn’t stop until she found the link. Sometimes she started on Instagram, Pinterest or Tumblr. That led to what we later tried to create in order to improve our efficiency: a database of websites that can provide references so we can avoid Google in the first place. 4
Until today, I start in creative, artsy areas like Pinterest if I look for atmosphere images that can lead me forward. Further on, I try to remember everything I ever had as reference on the subject and quite often I search my teachers’ approaches, works, or thesis. F-O-R studio of Oana Simionescu and Alex Cozma is a good example in this direction. I spend then, quite a lot of time on Divisare (www.divisare.com)- an atlas of architecture (competitions and projects realized or not) with detailed categories for whatever one may need from post- industrial interiors to architectural models or typology of neighborhoods. Even if just virtually, I usually keep a booklet of what it is worth being collected. It always helps to visualize the process and to remember the strategy. This booklet was introduced as a mandatory item for project discussions by our teachers in the second year of arhitecture, in Timisoara, and we kept using it ever since. I believe the way we start gathering knowledge is important, but more important is to see what actually is valuable and deserves to be selected and what is not, in order to be able to advance to the next phase, in any architectural process. Therefore, I think sharing methods can be a good exercise to improve the way of doing it. The second story is about my coming to Brussels, where I found out that students are really school-focused and don’t have the habit to take part in competitions or extracurricular activities that much. Given the fact that the model is a compulsory piece even in the master years- and its complexity really high, as a 3D model is not required- I assumed that the research part is diminished or at least not given that much importance, as the design process itself has to start sooner. After some weeks of working with my Belgian colleagues on two separate projects for two different classes, we managed to figure out how we can function together as teams in order to develop the project using our very different skills. The projects finished in the third quarter of the first semester, but still, months after, there were people coming at me to ask if I have a reference for their thesis, because they knew I have ‘different’ ways of finding them. I tried to spend some time with them explaining what research alternatives they have and they are using them ever since. Knowing when to stop
My roommate in Brussels saw me researching once for a competition launched by our design teacher where we had to create a unique art installation to be placed in the entrance hall of Musee L, in Louvain-la-Neuve. She asked me: ‘How can you do this? Aren’t you afraid that you won’t be able to do something original after?’ She actually told me after a while, that she had never done that before, not even for school projects. She started designing directly to be sure she doesn’t reproduce a thing. She discovered later that even by not researching, if we search at the end, we will always find similarities with other projects.
5
I believe it is hard to invent something. I have always thought that creativity is born through associations, links and connections. I think we can invent, though, brilliant mechanisms that are able to function beautifully in a given context, by linking everything that has already been invented. I remember I participated once in a portfolio workshop held by Ovidiu Hrin, in Timisoara. In the beginning of his presentation he said something like this: ‚Don’t be afraid to look at examples. Even if you want to copy someone else’s work identically, you won’t be able to do it, because you are a different person and you’ll instinctively change it on the way.’ My point is that we should see the way we make research as a means to organize our mind before starting to design. We gain knowledge about the context where we are going to operate and we learn from how similar interventions behaved. Though, we have to know where to stop in order to be able to provide a healthy process to our project. In the teams I worked, that was usually the moment when we started, little by little to feel like talking, like sharing and presenting what we found, like having ideas. It is usually the moment we can see the brainstorming part coming. At some point, we decided, as a rule, that even if we have several ideas we believe in, in order to be able to pass to the next phase, at the right time, we have to keep in mind that no matter what we choose each time, we will be able to keep the same quality of the design, if every future step is carefully analyzed, and so on. The results will be different- in terms of shape for example- depending on our choices, but the solution provided has all the chances to function very well, no matter what the choice is. Below, I tried to illustrate this idea, as we had ourselves difficulties in expressing it without looking superficial. if we associate the shape of the SQUARE to a result containing all the characteristics we want our project to have, the result will be changed just by the way these values are mixed-up, not necessarily loosing quality, compared to the other choices.
choosing the site
the refference
the software
the concept
3.project development sketch
6
the graphics
the result
4. Europan Norway-RUNNER-UP-BERGEN, www.europan.no
5. Europan Norway- RUNNER-UP Trondheim, www.europan.no
6. Europan Norway-Hovedbilde-WINNER-ORSTA, www.europan.no
7
7. Europan Norway-RUNNER-UP-BERGEN, www.europan.no
8. Europan Norway-RUNNER-UP-ORSTA, www.europan.no
8
FINDING THE CONCEPT
The simplest definition of concept can be: a general idea or understanding of something. In architectural projects, one thing is sure: it doesn’t help mixing up too many! In the architecture school we learn it can be a phrase, a word, a color or a book. My intent is not to write about the poetic shapes it can take, but to try to describe what are to means of getting to it, more specifically, how we train our minds to reach it. Some say we can train our creativity by making exercises- like doing every week, something we have never done before, for example- but I think, no matter how developed the genetic component is, in each of us, we need the others to react to our ideas in order to get further. For me, talking about the project has always improved everything I thought is already good enough. The most powerful thing about working in a well-formed team is, in my opinion, that just by joining one you start feeling stronger, because fighting for a common goal means you get to have the skills you might have lacked when working alonethe ones belonging to your colleagues. ‚Do you save a broken city by fixing its hardware, its public space and infrastructure, or do you save it by fixing its software, the attitudes and behavior of its citizens?’ [3] We usually start asking ourselves something it can take months to be solved. Depending on the site and the actors involved, it never gets to be a matter of shape or color in the first place. Sometimes, architecture forces us to dig into culture, habits and society first. Brainstorming with people who are also into architecture- as it is usually the case of competition processes- is intense, as we have the tendency to get deep in every subject, but sometimes makes us generate ideas that will hardly work on people having different knowledge. I see it as a big risk in everything that architects do and I strongly believe that making architecture for people in the first place should imply the participation of several domains. Because I had some free time while studying in Brussels, I worked in a start-up company that delivers specialty coffee, as a design intern. It was not the first time that I participated in a brainstorming process without any architect around, but it was the first serious one, judging by what the results were supposed to mean. We were brainstorming for the video of the crowd funding campaign, but also for the bar location and its design.
9
I was amazed to see the relaxed, comfortable atmosphere in which everyone was expressing ideas that, trivial as they might have seemed, proved to work beautifully in a short time . At first, things seemed so simple that I didn’t think something interesting can come out, but after I saw some results I started to have doubts every time I had the tendency to introduce complicated approaches. I learned, though, that it is worth interacting with as many domains as possible, when it comes to finding the idea, as we can skip important components from our project by inviting just architects as actors in the brainstorming process. All these made me think of the closing keynote for the 2016 AIA convention, where in a discussion with Mohsen Mostafavi, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Rem Koolhaas said: ‘We’re working in a world where so many different cultures are operating at the same time each with their own value system. If you want to be relevant, you need to be open to an enormous multiplicity of values, interpretations, and readings. The old-fashioned Western ‘this is’ ‘that is’ is no longer tenable. We need to be intellectual and rigorous, but at the same time relativist.” [4]
10
DESIGN
In the beginning of the 2006 documentary film, Sketches of Frank Gehry, director Sydney Pollack asks Frank Gehry, “Is starting hard?” He replies, “You know it is. I don’t know what you do when you start, but I clean my desk, I make a lot of stupid appointments that I make sound important. Avoidance. Delay. Denial. I’m always scared that I’m not going to know what to do. It’s a terrifying moment. And then when I start I’m always amazed—so that wasn’t so bad.”[5] When asked if there is a clear moment of beginning, Michael Tingley from Boora Architects answered: ‘I then begin a period of research and dreaming long before pencil meets paper. I like to spend time on the site, imagining the presence the project may have. How does the site’s character shape the building? How does the building’s character affect the site? How will the qualities of each change through the day? I also gather imagery that acts as inspiration for the project. These images might be found objects, artwork, technical solutions, material samples, or other architectural spaces.’ In a conference I recently attended in Brussels, Bijoy Jain from Studio Mumbai explained his works are influenced by people, by the use of local materials and the idea of building with a certain elegance, while keeping in mind teaching locals to take part in the building process themselves. His concepts- the starting points of his projects- are usually tied to a strong will of building with the same ground- ‘No trucks left and no trucks came in. It was just humans.’ He explained. Because he activates mainly in India, he understands people are living by the rhythm of the moon; therefore, a first question would be where the moon rises.
11
Ian Kaplicky, the Czech Bohemian architect, was convinced that any architecture that is not somehow shocking, abrasive or outrageously sensuous is not worth thinking about. Adolf Loos celebrated the sober and the appropriate and believed it is his duty to do that. [6] All these are just a few examples proving that the way we give shape to the project is different and has something to do with who we are and what we believe in, even if we have to relate to the same site. This is why, working in a team for a competition, usually brings us to a point where everyone is willing to start designing what he has in mind for a while. Being also a matter of the tools we use, we start approaching the idea we have decided on, from different perspectives. What is interesting is that the tool itself (and here I am referring to the software we use)- and the level of knowledge to handle it- has something to say about our design. Even if we have similar sketches in our notebooks, usually the results come out differently. These different approaches are also strategic, as they can lead, in the end to choosing the software in which the project will be made. For example, a project that starts in Archicad in the first place, has all the chances to be completely different than one that starts in Rhino because of the simple fact the two programs have different levels of flexibility. Archicad works with objects to which we can set the parameters, while Rhinoceros let us create from scratch every volume we want to use further on. Also, the former is quite rigid when it comes to organic shapes while the latter is very flexible. Depending on our design, one of them will be easier to handle in the process. For Europan 13, we wanted to create housing units that appear at different times on site and that can take different shapes depending on the community wishes. Involving people in creating them was another important issue of the project. Even if none of the team members was a lover of parametric architecture, after we realized Archicad would hardly allow us explore the vision of the project as we imagined it, we started it again in Rhino. Nothing close to what we imagined came out and it was then we realized that we had the parameters in our mind, but neither Archicad nor Rhino could have allowed us to organize a rule for the stages of appearance of the housing units. At that point we kind of had to learn Grasshopper and we built our design there. It was like a computer game that changed our design in ways that our mind hadn’t imagined it. In terms of shape, it helped us see what we wanted to keep from our project and what we definitely had to give up. It was in Archicad again where we worked the details of the project. All these tool switches taught us a lot about software and compatibilities. Every time I worked in a team for an architecture competition, I had the feeling I am participating to an intensive course of how to approach a project, where I was invited to learn from everyone around and to provide excellent ‘exam’ results, as the idea of having a good grade was this time replaced by the idea of winning. I didn’t even feel it was the process itself the prize, while I was working. 12
REPRESENTATION
I remember Professor Ioan Andreescu talking about graphics in one of his lectures given in our school. He was saying that it is a domain itself and, as architects we should be careful of how much we let ourselves intrigued by it, in order not to lose sight of what our real job is. I think his point was that we sometimes have the tendency to shorten the creative process in order to have time for impressive graphics. To support the idea that this problem is considered an issue to deal with, when it comes to an architectural process- especially a competition entry- I will describe an apparently strange competition I took part in, one that didn’t want us to care about representation at all. It is about Premio Piranesi Prix de Rome, a three weeks workshop-competition where the task is to come with an idea of a modern intervention on an archeological site, with great respect for the existent. Our site back then was the prestigious Villa Adriana, in Tivoli. From the presentation of the brief they stated firmly that the use of Photoshop or other software that doesn’t work vectorial is strictly forbidden and that we should immediately uninstall the software from our computers for the time we were supposed to work there. The reason was the simple fact that they analyzed the way students work along time and they had reached the conclusion a lot of time is lost on ‘pimping’ the design instead of thinking of the design itself. They wanted us to present our designs without even rendering them, directly taken from the 3D software. I remember the reactions in the conference room were not pleasant. It seemed a bit crazy for everyone not to be able to use all the tools they could use, in order to improve their project. Even if I considered it a good exercise back then, as it considerably increased the time we spent detailing the architecture of the museum, I do believe we don’t have to do this, if we know what each software does and how we can use it smartly, in order to communicate the imagined atmosphere of our project, while still keeping the right time for the design process. I feel that if we understand the links between every tool we have at your disposal, the more tools we know, the quicker our representation part is done. And competitions ar the excellent territory to learn this.
13
Let’s take, for instance, the Photoshop/Illustrator/Indesign most common inversion, when it comes to representation. I keep seeing some of my colleagues spending an enormous amount of time and energy making their final panels in Photoshop. Sometimes, I even see them preparing the concept schemes there, or writing their essays. I can perfectly understand that Photoshop is the first editing program we usually learn to work in and it is a sort of inertia that doesn’t make us inquire its drawbacks. But as students of architecture I think we should extend our knowledge even when it comes to computer programs if we wish to make progresses. To explain this briefly, here are some facts about these three software that I correlated with the time that even an advanced user will lose, if he uses the unsuitable one. Photoshop works with PIXELS. It is perfect for editing pictures, making panoramas, modifying our renderings - inserting people, cutting the sky or adding some glow- or making GIFs from our images. However, it LETS us draw lines and WRITE. It is just that: A LINE will always be a number of pixels; therefore, if we are not careful, a line can easily be a stain and it is not rare that I have seen this on final panels. THE TYPE for printing in Photoshop, will never be at its clearest. Following the above principle, we will export pixels. Even if the EPS extension allows exporting type as vectors, it is simply not recommended to use Photoshop for writing. If we want to have A MULTIPLE PAGE DOCUMENT, we have to create each page ourselves and then use its presentation making tool to put them together (or Adobe Pro or upload the files into some program on the internet). Counting the time in which we save each file and try to correlate them a bit to see they have the same characteristics, it takes at least 60 minutes more for a 15 page-document than the time in which Illustrator or Indesign can make it. Illustrator works with VECTORS. They represent scalable images that can be sized as small or large as we need them to be, while still maintaining their resolution. Although it has cool variants to trace an image ( to make graphic symbols from a picture, for example), it doesn’t edit images. In Illustrator: A LINE remains a line; therefore, we can easily make our concept schemes and export them right or have clear text. WE CAN HAVE SEVERAL ARTBOARDS, which makes it easier for us to visualize our panels together and even to save them as PDFs altogether with some clicks. It is ideal for a limited number of panels and it supports large files better than Photoshop. Though, for writing a book, we have Indesign. WE CAN EDIT directly every PDF exported from a 3D software or produce editable PDF to import in the 3D software.
14
Indesign is for arranging together the materials produced in Photoshop and Illustrator. Compared to Illustrator, it has the multi-page layouts or master layouts where one theme reoccurs on multipage. Thus, it is ideal for making brochures, newsletters or writing books. In Indesign, WE CAN’T EDIT ANY MATERIAL; everything has to be prepared before. It is true that nobody literally learns us computer programs as students and, as we often have to do it ourselves, we may not see the big picture all the time. In what I am concerned, participating to competitions kind of forced me to understand these things in order to be sure I increase the prospects of a healthy process and of course, those of at least standing some chances of winning. It is not that I like to lose time for the representation part in the detriment of architecture itself, as I enjoy the creative process more than anything else. It is that I want to be able to enjoy my design until the last minute, the reason why I think I have a certain duty to be able to find the quickest way possible to express my work. Because they think of people and imply participation in their processes, because I appreciate the way they make architecture but also the way they represent their projects, I asked the architects from FALA Atelier, in Portugal-a young architecture studio, based in Porto- how they deal with the final part of their projects. I copied below the conversation that somehow confirmed the idea that once you learned how to represent your work in ways that everyone is able to understand it, the time you spend doing it can be quite short and your pannels really catchy. 1. What software do you usually work with in your office for the design part? 2. How much does it take to prepare the projects for a final presentation/ competition entry (here I am referring to the work you do just concerning the graphics of your project) and what software/techniques do you use for this part? ‘
‘Here go our answers…
1. We use mostly Rhino (for 2d and 3d). The software is very versatile and allows for a quick development of our ideas in the early stages of the projects and for a rigorous set of drawings for the final stages. Also, it is completely compatible with Adobe programs and Cinema4d. 2. We often take a lot of time during development and very little to produce. Example: we can work on a competition for one full month, but we would prepare our presentation panels/booklets/etc in a single week or less. All our 2d drawings are made in Rhino, and then taken to Illustrator. all the images are also made in Rhino (3d that provides a make2d like drawing) and then taken directly to Photoshop (where we had a lot of textures and objects). Everyone in the office works in the same way with the 2d drawings, since it is very easy and intuitive. ‘
15
9. Renderings and illustrations from Fala Atelier, www.falaatelier.com
16
10. Courtyard interventions in Saint-Gilles, Brussels
17
11. Europan Bergen- ‘ A Story of Mollendal’- Rendering of our entryatmosphere image
18
IN TIMIČ˜OARA, there are... (the equivalent of the following graphics)
students who recently won a competition
students who constantly participate
students who constantly win
...among the people I KNOW. 12.
20
THERE’S A BUZZ
Without a certain intention of following the contest stage, I kept hearing about a lot of my colleagues winning important prizes in well-known architecture competitions lately - people from Timisoara, of my age or a bit older. These being the results, I assume there are a lot of people participating as well. Even before leaving for Brussels, I remember at school, in Timisoara, everywhere I turned my head, I could see people working for competitions in their free time. I don’t know if it is the introducing of C.A.S.A contest ( The Annual Competition for Architecture Students) in the second year project class or that of Europan 13 in the fourth year (in the case of my year), but students started to keep track of the popular competitions- like Velux or 120 hours for example- and constantly participated ever since. The official way I know this is from the student association in our school. Since two years ago, they started organizing an evening dedicated to architecture competitions where students can come and talk about their projects, no matter the result. The purpose was to learn from each other, to see what are the possible competitions we can take part in, together with some approaches. At the first edition of this event, while we were preparing our presentations for Velux and Premio Piranesi, we were amazed to see how many other colleagues were ready to present as well. It was a nice gathering that was extended until late in the night because the questions wouldn’t stop coming and they gave birth to interesting talks in a sort of cozy, ‘after event’ atmosphere. People were interested. In what I am concerned, participating to The Annual Competition for Architecture Students, in the second year, was a great thing for my development. I went to bed every evening thinking how to solve that creepy, dark courtyard in the back of my house and I knew that if I do it right, there is more to it than having a good grade. I never stopped searching for the best solution of every detail I considered relevant. It was also the first time I cried in the architecture school. Maybe it happened because I wanted too much to win and I hadn’t imagined how complex the design should be in order for that to happen.
21
Also, last year our teachers introduced Europan 13 to the project class. We participated to a competition to get to the real contest. The idea was to pass the school selection. We had to analyze the three possible sites, to choose a site and try to shape the right team, to understand a sixty-page brief and work the whole semester, having in mind that only one project in each group gets to participate in the real competition. That creates a constant pressure which changes everything from the working rhythm to the number of questions we asked ourselves before settling on an idea. Every time I looked around, I could feel everyone was enjoying it. After I moved to Brussels, I realized I started missing the enthusiasm of my colleagues from Timisoara, and the sense of community that was created around every cultural event that made noise and needed participants. Thinking of myself back in Timisoara, I realized that, while enjoying everything I worked on there, I always kept wondering how architecture is learned in other institutions, being curious to compare things. I had the chance to see fragments from other systems in the last years and to work in some international teams for a few competitions. There is always a sort of novelty that teaches you a lot, but I kept missing the atmosphere from my school, where people seem to be somehow educated to wish at least, to be among the best in their generations. I am not saying that the architecture school that I followed so far couldn’t be better at many of its chapters, I am just grateful for the openness some teachers had, to push our learning process outside the school boundaries in order to make sure our contact with the real world starts early enough for us to have a healthy development as students. Therefore, I believe it is in ourselves something that makes us want more than following the courses of our school. Either it is about taking some time to go to a conference or participating to a workshop, we seem to believe some events from the ‘real’ world will teach us things, since we take precious hours from our school dedicated time to attend them. I feel that this territory of the competitions should be exploited more, as it pushes the student into a problem-solving area that deals with real problems,with urgent social and cultural issues.
It has been a while since I am thinking: if every competition represents an impressive learning process, that walks the student through every step of a school project- often being less abstract, with closer-to-reality parameters- wouldn’t it be worth developing an organized learning process structured around the multitude of competitions that already offer substantial material to be dealt with, in terms of architectural demands?
22
I picture this as an extra-curricular, different kind of school developed by a team that has the competition experience for some time, where first year architecture, design and engineering students are invited to come and learn about every step a project requires in order to be completed, while getting involved in the process themselves. A thorough selection of the right competition can easily provide suitable material to learn to make research on, or to develop teamwork skills as well as computer skills, for example. In this hypothetic studio (or school, as I prefer to call it), the prize remains the goal as long as we are aware of the fact that our participation implies learning to be better; as students, as thinkers, as future architects.
There are hundreds of details I added to this hypothetic school in my mind, in time. Some of them concern the supervisors, others the location of the work space, the guest speakers or even the shape of the working table. For now though, I made a simple sketch, a snapshot of what I have been thinking lately, while looking forward to more intricate and fascinating learning processes in the future.
23
working in public space/participating to cultural events as a team
THE WORK SPACE guest speakers in our work space
h ont em on
one mo nt h
last year students and young architects
engineering and design students
ďŹ rst and second year architecture students
teachers/ coordinaters
13. The vision of a learning process organized around architecture competitions- The workspace
24
14. Europan 13 - GRAZ WINNER- authors: Tovissi Marton, Mihai Buse- former students of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism Timisoara
25
15. Europan 13 - OS -RUNNER-UP - authors: Oprea Alexandra, Tudor Bogdan, Nistor Dragos, Voica Alexandru, Poloca Denis, Simionescu Oana, Demetrescu Bogdan- students and teachers of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism Timisoara
26
CONCLUSION
In a photography workshop I participated some time ago, someone said that to take a good photo you need to be in the right place, at the right time and also, to have some luck- all three at the same time. On an extended timeline, I think the educational process is somehow similar. It has a lot to do with the times and the environment we are growing up in, and sometimes we need to be lucky to learn from the right people or to be thrown in the right teaching processes. My intention was to present the usefulness of the educational process I experienced by participating in architecture competitions, not as an alternative to the exercises we make in the real school, but as a mechanism that can work in parallel with it and provide support. Even if I am not even close to having a formula of what the perfect school should have in order to make us the architects we have dreamed to become, I do believe it has something to do with extending our horizons, sharing our ideas, being aware of the world we are living in, seeing the bigger picture all the time and working hard in order to be able understand how we can make ourselves useful in it. Therefore, I think that every step of an architecture contest described- the research part, the concept finding, the design itself and the representation part- can be a separate class in a school, but it is a sort of beautiful collaboration required by the idea of competing that showed me, every time a bit more, that something useful can come out only the moment we start making connections. About great schools, more specifically, about the one to be considered the greatest, I will let this fragment from DeyanSudijc’s book, B is for Bauhaus give a temporary answer: ‘Perhaps the most difficult question that the Bauhaus poses is why no subsequent art school has been able to match its impact. Many schools have managed to produce a generation of students with something to say(…) But what the Bauhaus had that no other school has had before is the combination of successful leadership from three of the leading designers of their time, a building that embodied the philosophy of its founder in a single, unmistakable image, and an unshakable place at the heart of modernism , the dominant movement of the twentieth-century culture. Other schools have had strong leaders who have themselves been leading practitioners, though there are fewer now than there were. A few schools have been associated with movements in design- such as the Domus Academy in Milan, which in the 1980s was closely identified with postmodernism. And there are schools with architecturally distinguished buildings – from Glasgow’s Charles Rennie Mackintosh landmark to the Art Center in Pasadena. But the Bauhaus had all three: a landmark building , a student body drawn from around the world, and a celebrated faculty which, as Tom Wolfe memorably put it, were treated like ‘Silver Princes’ by an awestruck America when they moved en masse across the Atlantic at the end of the 1930s.’ 28
REFERENCES
1. Architectural Research Centers Consortium(ARCC), Between Research and Practice, Architectural competitions and new reflexive practices, Dublin, 2004 2. Senett, Richard, The Fall of Public Man. New York, Knopf, 1974 3. Montgomery, Charles, Happy City, Penguin Books, 2015 4. Diana Budds (2016, May 21), Rem Koolhaas: “Architecture Has A Serious Problem Today”, Retrieved from www.fastcodesign.com 5. How does the design process ‘start’?, Retrieved from www.archlighting.com 6. Sudjic, Dejan, B is for Bauhaus, K is forKaplicky, Penguin Books, 2015
Portfolio link: https://issuu.com/lorenabreaza/docs/1._portfolio
30