Interview with Dean Polyzoides

Interview Dean Stefanos Polyzoides

In the same way this demonstration issue introduces the personality, philosophies, goals, and values of the new Stoa magazine, our interview with Stefanos Polyzoides presents the new Dean of the School of Architecture to its community. We spoke to Dean Polyzoides about his personal life, his public role, and his plans for the future. This interview follows the Dean through his childhood in Greece, accompanies him through his years of learning and activism at Princeton, explores the genesis of New Urbanism and its wider implications, and arrives at the University of Notre Dame, where we ask, simply: “Why here? Why now?”

Beginnings process of education and subsequent architectural practice resulted in the building of Childhood in Athens a very beautiful neoclassical city of two- and three-story townhouses, public squares, civic

Stoa Magazine (SM): To start, we’d like buildings, and commercial districts, covering to ask about your experience growing up. How over five or six square miles. When the civil war did the built environment in your hometown started, the people pouring into Athens had influence you as an architect? Did you have no place to stay. So the way that was invented any particularly favorite buildings or spaces? to actually regenerate the economy and house them was to tear down the townhouses and to

Stefanos Polyzoides (SP): The Second build six- and seven-story apartment buildings World War and occupation of Greece took place in their place. Within twenty years, this between 1941 and 1945, and then from 1945 to magnificent traditional city was completely 1949 there was a very brutal civil war. By 1950, flattened: all the new buildings were built on with 80% unemployment, the entire country the same streets and blocks, and designed by was just completely destroyed. Over that brutal mostly civil engineers in a stripped-down, undecade, there were more than 300,000 people distinguished modernist style. who died of war-inflicted violence in a country of 7 million. The civil war started in Athens, I was a ten-year-old kid in 1955. I attended and as the communists were driven out of the only American school in the city, and there the capital city, they continued their fight in were no classes on Saturdays. Every weekend, the mountains and the countryside. With the I stood on the balcony of the second story of conflict intensifying, more and more people my house and looked out across the street at from the provinces decided to seek the safety the house of my music teacher. My mother had of the capital city. After the end of a decade sent me to her to learn how to play the piano. of war, with widespread hunger and poverty Every time I visited her to have a lesson, I came everywhere, people continued to move to through this beautiful neoclassical door into a Athens in search of work. In about fifteen years, well-formed hallway with patterned black and the population grew white marble floors, from 1.25 million to 2.5 million. This is “I spent every Saturday magnificent marble stairs, incredible iron the place I grew up in. watching this magnificent railings, and at least

The first king of stone mountain just coming a twenty-foot ceiling. The second floor Greece was German: down floor by floor...” living room at the King Otto, the son top of the stairs was of Ludwig the Mad large, ornate, and of Bavaria, who was an extraordinary patron formally furnished. In its furthest corner was of architecture. Otto arrived in Greece in 1829 the grand piano used for the lessons. The place and, in the next ten years, engaged the three seemed like a museum to me. Not too long greatest German architects of the 19th century: after I began my lessons, the house was sold Schinkel, von Klenze, and von Gärtner. and shuttered; some months later the process These architects ended up visiting Greece of its demolition began. I spent every Saturday and designing half a dozen spectacular civic watching this magnificent stone mountain just projects, very few of which were built, but they coming down floor by floor, eventually all the invited back to Germany a whole generation way down to the ground. of Greek students to study architecture who eventually returned to Athens to practice. And then, people began to build a This went on for three generations. This building of an entirely different kind: first

the foundations, and then, the thin concrete education was not on most people’s minds. Corbusian frame of a high- rise Maison Students were so angry that they refused to Domino. The robust neoclassical house was go to class. They demanded that the more replaced by a characterless building, three traditional form of education then, in effect, times as big. Once in a while, my father would be replaced. Students made their own courses say at the dinner table, “I can’t stand these and ran their own studios. And in the end, who matchboxes. I can’t stand these matchboxes suffered? The students, of course. Because that pretend to be architecture.” At age ten, architecture cannot be learned without serious standing at that balcony, I began to think to instruction. It is rare to learn how to become myself, “Why would they do this? What can an architect by oneself. I do about it?” I had figured out there was School of Architecture was badly shaken by something wrong about this shocking metaI was very lucky that there were three or morphosis. I didn’t know exactly what, but I four brilliant professors in the school who decided to find out. resisted the downward spiral of destruction of the program. Michael Graves was one of

Every day, being bussed to school on the them. I was a teaching assistant assigned to edge of the city, I would watch the traditional him. Every Monday, I would go to his office city being demolished, and receive a little and a new, ugly, and “It was then that I dedicated piece of paper with chaotic city being built. It was not very my life to reclaiming the idea the names of books to check out from the clear to a kid of my of architecture as design in Art Library. One day age what exactly balance between the building, his note had three was going on; it took me ten, maybe the city, and nature.” names written on it, “Ledoux, Boullée, fifteen more years of Durand.” The three schooling, and then at least ten more years as great French architects—Classicists—of the an architect, to realize what a cultural crime late eighteenth century. I had no idea what had been perpetrated in Athens between 1945 these three words meant, and I did not ask any and 1975. It was then that I dedicated my life to questions. I found the books and took them reclaiming the idea of architecture as design in to the checkout desk. Before the librarian balance between building, the city, and nature. stamped the return date on the little card at the back of each book, I noticed that the last time the books had been checked out was

Architecture School Experience in 1921. For fifty-plus years, they had not circulated. No professor or student had been

SM: How would you describe your time in interested in the ideas and projects of these architecture school? most prominent classical architects. That

SP: I was in school at Princeton between resurgence of traditionalism emerged in this 1965 and 1972, during the Vietnam War. The country. should tell you everything about when the the political activism of its students. Most of us I had a couple of very interesting teachers, felt the deepest despair and pessimism about Hanno Weber and Lance Brown, who anything possibly being done about the deep introduced me to the concept of the traditional injustices and violence reigning around us, city. They looked at it from the point of view of particularly after 1968, when Martin Luther housing and preservation. Additionally, they King and Robert Kennedy were killed. It was were resistant to the crimes that were then a tragic and extraordinary time and, therefore, being committed towards poor and mostly Af

rican-American people by directing freeways The academic opportunities we are all and urban renewal demolition through afforded change over time. Your education will their neighborhoods. In the process of living not be like mine. What we have in common, during these politically extreme times, many though, is that aspiring architects must discern Princeton architecture students became which are the two, three, or four architectural heavily radicalized. The school passively seeds: the kind of inspiration that will launch supported a group of us to set up a participatotheir architectural and professional lives, and ry design workshop, “The People’s Workshop”, then follow in their course. in what was then the Black ghetto of the city of New Brunswick, New Jersey. We did a number of interesting housing, day care, and clinical projects while there; we worked with the deeply suffering people in this neighborhood. While we learned a lot and were able to understand what it meant for architecture to Forming New Urbanism be in the service of all people, this educational experiment did not last long. After our Founding the Congress for class graduated in 1972, the School and the the New Urbanism University abandoned the People’s Workshop and the students turned to more conventional SM: What led you to co-found the Congress education pursuits. I’m telling you all of this for the New Urbanism, and how were you able because every education, even a deeply flawed to start such a movement? one, if taken to heart, can provide a significant direction to a student’s life. SP: What is the way to ensure that something that you believe in strongly can

While my studio instruction was disastrous, remain a force beyond your lifetime? It is course offerings were rich and inspiring. generating institutions by working together History and theory with your peers. When were taught in four memorable courses by the last generation “The idea of architecture as the design of autonomous an institution is formed, its influence spreads immediately of classically-trained architects and historians: Stillwell, and fashionable objects was an aesthetic, social, beyond its framers: its importance is beyond narrow individual Bucher, Coffin, environmental, and interests, its ideals and Egbert. Their teachings resonated economic dead end.” and programs are adopted by many in with my experiences the world, and its growing up in a homeland so central to the influence becomes a force beyond that of definition and evolution of world architecture. any individual. That was my introduction to the activist side of planning and urbanism. And then there was During the trajectory of my professional my contact with Michael Graves who, after life—with the pain that followed the final his white modernist period, began to teach a destruction of the neighborhood I grew up in contextual version of architecture based on and the outrage I felt at the injustices of Urban precedent and urban disposition. These three Renewal as I experienced them in the US experiences became the seeds that drove my (portions of South Bend are still demolished life as an architect forward. and not yet reconstructed)—I needed to find a reformist outlet. In the 1980’s and while

teaching at USC, it had already become clear in writing, and then dedicated ourselves to to me that the idea of architecture as the like-minded practices, often using the charrette design of autonomous and fashionable objects as the favorite process for engaging the public. was an aesthetic, social, environmental, and Like all vital ideas, New Urbanism was economic dead end. adopted first by dozens of colleagues, then

Architecture had to be something more too many people to count. Thirty years after profound. Based on the diverse cultures of the founding of the CNU, urbanism is firmly humanity, and the many places where people established as a discipline and a key ingredient had settled in the world, architecture had to of design and at all scales. Here’s the question become the building block for constructing for all of you: What is vital to your generation the human habitat as a whole, for structuring at this moment in time? What needs to be human life on earth by assembling towns and done about it in the next 10 or 20 years? How cities and establishing their relationship with does our society get there faster and more connature. The Congress for New Urbanism was sequentially? born under this generational awareness.

My partner and wife Liz Moule and I we build a better city, a better country, and sought out like-minded colleagues and set out a regenerated nature? That is what your to establish the terms of a new professional generation will eventually have to address for engagement with the world. There were initially the rest of us. By building the institutions that four more founders: Liz Plater-Zyberk, Andres focus on your common concerns, you will also Duany, Peter Calthorpe, and Dan Solomon. be able to spread the ideas that can address Together, we established the basic terms and these concerns decisively. scope of a regenerated discipline of urbanism: the region, the neighborhood, the district and corridor, the block, the lot, and the building. Bringing “New” Urbanist We argued that the role of architecture Perspectives to Notre Dame was generating an urban fabric of common buildings and an occasional monument, SM: Why is New Urbanism called ‘New’ making the public realm among them, and Urbanism? controlling settlement patterns to regenerate by hundreds, then thousands, and finally by As architects and as citizens, how do cities and stop sprawl. Almost immediately, SP: I think the answer is both substantive our example and direction attracted a small and political. ‘Urbanism’ refers to a process group of like-minded and detailed form professionals. All together, we then “What is vital to your of urbanization that has existed for a long imagined urbanism generation at this moment time now. It is rooted as operating along a complex transect in time? What needs to be in a tradition of more than 2,500 years from nature to done about it in the next 10 of designing and metropolitan centers. We established or 20 years? How does our building livable and durable cities in high a relationship society get there faster and balance with nature. with many other professions critical more consequentially?” The New Urbanism is ‘New’ because it to the form, function, is immersed in the and management of cities. We eventually social and technical dimensions of the society put together a charter, established it further we live in, and accommodates its life in every

detail: its means of mobility, its informational and utility networks, its social conventions, its diverse cultures, and its functional needs. Every last aspect of our contemporary existence is served by this New Urbanism. While it would be familiar to Haussmann or Vauban, in its details, it is unique to us.

The word ‘new’ was also chosen to attract the attention of our colleagues and have them approach it with a heightened degree of curiosity, and in order to shake the intellectual in to the principles of New Urbanism? How

ground that the architectural opposition was interests alone, but also affects the lives of all the service of our society and of humanity. You

standing on. We used the word ‘new’ to mean constantly renewed, although its current more common use is to mean ‘from scratch.’

SM: Should we be referring to our architecture as ‘New’ Architecture as well?

SP: My experience has been that through a classical education, one can learn how to design buildings and places in the most integrated of the history, theory, technology, environmental and social dimensions of architecture results in a form of invention that interprets received knowledge and transforms it into notable new objects and places. Contextual specificity further enhances the uniqueness of that architecture.

In that sense, the words ‘new’ and ‘architecture’ are rightfully paired here in describing new traditional projects. It just happens to be a definition of newness different from that used by others, in that it thrives on cultural continuity and place definition. Using the word ‘traditional’ is just a moniker for describing the kind of architecture that is focused on our discipline’s original purposes: structuring human life through the design of buildings, using these buildings to constantly reconfigure the form of cities, and deploying cities to secure life in balance with nature, of which we are a part.

Social Responsibilities of an Architect

Listening to the Community

SM: Would you expand upon the idea of listening to your community and how that ties do you build as an architect, and how should we, as students, practice designing for varying communities now so that we’re ready as professionals?

SP: You have to see yourselves as architects who are thoughtful, first and foremost. Understanding that your work is not about your others that come into contact with it. You have to think of yourselves as constantly acting in and inventive way possible. Deep awareness

need to get to know our society in its diversity and complexity, and have a clear sense on how you are going to best operate within it.

To be an excellent listener, you need to have the skill to decipher the words that you are hearing in all of their varieties. If you’re working with a general audience, or a particular one, say, a Black community in Ohio, a Japanese-American community in Hawaii, a Latino community in California, or a White community in rural Louisiana, you will be engaged with people that have different understandings, express different needs, and use different words to describe them. You must be completely prepared to listen to what they are all telling you before you can exercise your design and planning ideas on their behalf. This is a matter of both skill and empathy. Almost like an old-fashioned family doctor, you must understand what they are telling you in order to imagine and then dispense remedies. The words you are hearing should also be balanced by what people don’t know. It is a major responsibility of an architect or an urbanist to dispense information and knowledge about how the built environment affects people’s lives, advising them on how they can seek ways to improve the state of their family, their

neighborhood, and their city. Architects are in the business of designing buildings and places, and, through them, nurturing the ways in which people can improve their lot without giving up their culture or their interests. Whatever an architect’s formal interests are, whether one is a classicist or a modernist, practice is not about imposing normative preconceptions upon a diverse society.

Understanding the circumstances and settings of each project is a good place to begin. Over the centuries, culture, climate, resources, needs, expectations have combined to deliver buildings and places of great variety and beauty. A classical City Hall is not the same in Paris, New York, or Los Angeles. A residential street is not the same in Santa Barbara, Santa Fe, or Savannah. We need to become expert at discovering the subtle differences that render our world a marvel of complexity and variety again, as it was before 1945.

Understanding Boundaries

SM: What’s the limit of the architect, and what’s the responsibility? We have all these social responsibilities, but we also have to collaborate with other people; is there a boundary that we should recognize?

SP: I will give you some examples of boundaries that the work of architects needs to operate within. Sometimes our architecture can be loud, but at other times it should remain quiet. Sometimes we need to lead, and at other times we need to follow. Sometimes we need to interpret cultures we are unfamiliar with, and other times not.

‘Loud’ and ‘Quiet’: On occasion an architect can claim that they know they are justified to be proposing a grand and appropriate building. At other times, they can do a building and whisper, ‘I’m doing this so quietly, I don’t want anybody to know,’ not because what has been done is questionable, but because it does not need to be known as the work of a particular author. A city can be like a lake on a beautiful calm day. Often, throwing a pebble into it can disturb its perfectly clear waters.

‘Leading’ and ‘Following’: During charrettes, there always has to be one person who acts as a leader. This kind of leading has nothing to do with exercising power over others. All complex design, both urban and architectural, is about establishing and projecting ideas with uncertain prospects for ultimate success. In the very constrained week-long schedule of a charrette, all kinds of ideas of uncertain consequences must be discussed and, sometimes, tested. ‘Leading’ and ‘following’ become two faces of the same coin: resolving team design opportunities and conflicts in the most time-efficient way. Sometimes, a leader imposes a point of view, or a direction. At other times, the best idea or point of view comes from an unexpected source; for example, a traffic engineer suggesting a brilliant solution for designing a street and block that generates a terminated vista site as the location of a major new public building. At that point, the leader becomes a follower, accepting the best point of view on a given subject, whoever may have been its source.

‘Importing’ and ‘Exporting’: In an open and interconnected world, ideas travel more rapidly than there is time to consider their validity or their longevity. How ideas emanating in one nation are applied to another has long been the subject of debate. In an ideal world, every culture everywhere may get the opportunity to self-regulate and to generate an environment appropriate to its needs and ambitions. Throughout history, this has not been a very common occurrence. In the rough and tumble of political and economic domination, architectural ideas have typically been imposed as a sign of progress or prosperity. For instance, in the case of colonial powers building all over their possessions, there are ways that delivered models of livability and new identity which have proven resilient beyond political independence, as in

the work of Lutyens in Delhi. And then, there are in school in order to discover your place is the thoughtless importation of the culture in this discipline and profession. One of the of commercial exploitation by individuals, tragedies of architecture, unlike medicine or institutions, and states in the developing world, law, is that its body of precedent is not being such as China. They are inviting development taught in the overwhelming majority of US in a homogenizing, globalizing aesthetic that schools. What we are focusing on in our school erases their particular cultural identity. The is learning about our history and theory, in lesson in all of this is that we should not be both its theoretical and empirical dimensions. crossing the boundary Learning about one where self-promotion and the opportunity “There are some things that in terms of the other is the most balanced to impose our architects should never limit way of discovering work become more important than the themselves on: the ambition to architecture and eventually becoming work itself and its learn, the humbleness to talk to an expert academic ability to enable and represent the lives others and consider their view and professional practitioner of it. of your clients and at all times, the obligation to In the process, it is their community. Then, there are some teach, the passion to serve, and very important to become immersed in things that architects the urgency to undo injustice.” its totality—history, should never limit theory, technology, themselves on: the economy, sociology, ambition to learn, the humbleness to talk to psychology, and so on—to touch all kinds of others and consider their views at all times, enlightening perspectives and knowledge that the obligation to teach, the passion to serve, help you frame your design work. and the urgency to undo injustice. There is a tendency in Academia to limit

Unfortunately in our profession, we often one’s research to abstract subjects and, by have it in reverse, with obligations taking extension, to focus on matters that are not second place to self-promotion and starchitecimmediately relevant. A thesis on the design ture. It is vitally important for your generation of corners in the work of Mies Van de Rohe to try to practice and serve in a more generous is not exactly important, in a world burdened and giving way. with crises of all kinds. In your own inquiries, you should be focusing on subjects that are by far more immediately relevant: Ones that The Balance Between move the world in a direction that provides Thinking and Doing intelligent relief from burdens, and doing so with the utmost respect for the imaginative

SM: In a previous interview, you rethinking of old ideas and the bold mentioned that you wished to encourage the entertaining of new ones. SoA to engage more with real-world practices, as well as various schools and departments Being asked to act as an expert architect, within Notre Dame. Could you tell us more one has to be at home in the presence of a about the balance between architecture as blank sheet of paper or a hyper-complicated a tangible practice and architecture as an urban setting. There is no doubt about it: to be abstracted theoretical study? a good architect, your mind must be balanced

SP: I’m not advocating the practical over between thinking and doing. Absolutely the theoretical, or the other way around. You balanced. At the same time, we must insist

that as practicing architects, academics, entrepreneurs, politicians, or as students of architecture, we act with integrity and effectiveness. Ideating, writing, designing, and building are miracles happening every day in and around our lives. I often pause while writing a few cogent pages or producing a beautiful quick architectural sketch and think, ‘My God, where did that come from?” Often I marvel when in the presence of a completed building: I remember it having emerged from the seed of a tiny drawing, or a set of small-size construction documents, then having been realized by an extraordinary degree of physical skill by a legion of craftspeople. We must both design on paper and enable a particular and elegant process of construction.

On Reading and Books

SM: What books influenced you the most? Would you recommend a few books for students to read?

SP: Our engagement with books is not about which three of them may have changed our lives. The key question is how one chooses to navigate the infinite seas of knowledge effectively. A long time ago, Liz Moule and I decided to start collecting and reading two kinds of books. First: those that we knew would enrich our knowledge and understanding of architecture and urbanism as we have defined it already and pursued for decades. Second: others that we imagined could enrich our understanding beyond the limits of what we already know. We started gathering this latter set of books, through the recommendations of colleagues and friends, and through traveling all over the U.S. and the world. Every book in both collections in our 8,000-volume library is now essential to our understanding of ourselves. We have not read them all cover to cover, but we know exactly why they are in our possession. There is a good reason why they are all resting comfortably on the shelves, ready to be consulted as the opportunity arises. For an architect, knowing where to look for book evidence of ideas or drawings is by far more important than fetishizing the importance of any singular book source.

I am looking forward to following Ingrid Rowland’s class on Vitruvius this semester. I have read Vitruvius, but it was a long time ago. I am curious to understand how relevant his writings are to me today. Every time I walk through Rome, I feel like I am seeing it for the first time. Every time I hold a significant book in my hands, it feels like I have never read it before.

In both cases, it is because it is we who are constantly changing in our capacity to fully appreciate what cities, buildings, and books are imparting to us. So, please, seek a reason for collecting and reading the kinds of books that are both central to and beyond your interests, and never imagine that you have exhausted the ways in which they may someday change the course of your life as an architect.

Coming to Notre Dame

Why Now? Why Here?

SM: You have experience in a wide range of practices and in different aspects of academia; how do all these lead you to ND? Why now? Why specifically the University of Notre Dame?

SP: Our School is a place where the faculty members are in general agreement about what they teach, how they teach it, and what they expect their students to be eventually capable of doing with these lessons once they find themselves practicing in the world. You are a part of this unique school. Its ideology is firm, but allows its students the freedom and time

to understand it and to embrace it. You are of chaos and nature is under assault almost being taught under a classical curriculum that everywhere on the planet. A very small group instructs you in the trajectory of architecture of American architecture schools, with Notre from the beginning of time to today. It Dame in the lead, stand resolute against this imparts respect for all traditions, classical and worldwide urban and environmental crisis. vernacular, Western and those of the rest of the world. There is an expectation here that I’m seventy-four years old, and I sought school graduates will be eventually engaged in the deanship not as a new career, but as a way the service of people and societies worldwide, to join in on the struggle to save the world and with the same dedication as the teaching by design. That can only be done through that was imparted to them here. education—not so much through practice, which is highly constrained by the limitations

This is not the way that architecture is being of each commission. I am deeply honored taught in most of the rest of the country and and very excited to have been given the the world. In the post-war era, little by little, opportunity to lead the school. My goals at the teaching architecture based on the Classical point of departure are three: to safeguard the tradition was diminished and eventually accomplishments of the school over the last abandoned. It was replaced by a method that generation; to seek the renewal of its pedagogy, encouraged students to engage in a perpetual as there is no tradition without renewal; to search for new forms—unprecedented forms introduce the program refinements that can based on high technology, the total rejection elevate the school to the pinnacle of American of precedent, and the maximizing of personal architectural education. expression. The essential links between architectural, urban, and ecological design were The more effectively we direct our program also severed, each topical area eventually within the school, the more we will be able to becoming a separate university department, develop our knowledge, moral purposes as a offering its subject matter in isolated and community, and our focus on servicing the incomplete ways. This is the reason why needs of our society. One of the great goals architecture has become so disconnected from to accomplish under my leadership would its historical role as be to energize the the carrier of meaning “I sought the deanship not as faculty to work more for institutions, communities, and a new career, but as a way cooperatively in support of a number states, and is now to join in on the struggle to of new academic typically present in the same sleek save the world by design.” initiatives: recasting the graduate program, form everywhere. making Rome a more Independent of climate, culture, or location, important center of learning and a true Global the building traditions of the world have been Gateway, finding ways to study the architecturdevastated one design and one development al, urban, and environmental endowment and at a time. Fashion rules, meaning is barely deep history of our country more extensively. decipherable, and permanence and resilience Institutions and their initiatives are forever. are eclipsed in the interest of short-term fame and fortune. Conserving nature, assembling For me, a personal ambition is to see beautiful cities, and designing buildings the school continue for thirty more years on that represent common values have virtually the path it set for itself thirty years ago, as a disappeared for thirty years now. As a result, commitment to an evolving academic ideal, place and cultural identity are in deep not a closed pedagogy. We must produce recession. The world’s cities are in a state leaders, not just competent practitioners.

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