ROSE
PEDAGOGICAL CONFLICT Henry Rose, M.Arch
T
he built environment is not the architect’s playground. It is our common property, and it follows that when architects operate on this common property they have a duty to act for its betterment. Why? Because too much is at stake, and because architects can do something about it. It is hard to overstate how directly healthy, resilient built environments contribute to the well-being of those who inhabit them, especially given the frequency of catastrophic climate events and the great flows of migration that these trigger. Similarly, the crisis of ‘affordability’ in certain cities is destroying lives, and is impossible to ignore. These are not just problems for policy-makers and economists. They are architectural in scope, too. Architects have the unique ability to work creatively in difficult spaces, to resolve complexity across disciplines, to advocate for quality of life and, finally, to deliver the product. On the whole, though, I do not find the field has risen to the challenge. Despite decades of protestation, the discipline seems as self-absorbed as ever: too easily consumed with its own problems, the factionalized pursuit of aesthetic agenda, and with winning self-congratulatory awards. Beauty, aesthetics, or “design intent,” as it is known in contract documents, are tools. They are not ends in themselves. Here I draw a hard line: architecture is only worth the good that it does for the world. Whatever abstract interest it holds in the minds of academics is no more valuable to the rest of us than a curation of trivialities, no more important than a fine collection of vintage stamps. Until it acts, it is simply a hobby. Schools have an important role to play. First: the distinction between teaching architecture as a fine art and teaching architecture as a social
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