Henry Rose Pedagocial Conflict

PEDAGOGICAL CONFLICT

Henry Rose, M.Arch

The 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

science needs to be made clear. This would engender more precise and fruitful discourse. Following this, I would hope to see a curriculum that stops denigrating pragmatism in favor of ‘design,’ that commits to teaching substantial technical proficiency across multiple platforms, and finally, which eschews the antiquated pageant of critiques as the seminal evaluation of student work. Changing the name to “reviews” is hardly enough. We need to develop new ways of measuring, and delivering, real value.

I firmly believe it is the invisible, basic, utilitarian aspects of our world that define its greatness, not its glittering anomalies.

Until this dictum is embedded deep into the mission of our institution—that ours is a profession of service—we will continue to validate the intellectualist art-object nonsense that has been suffocating the field for decades, and fueled its oft-lamented marginalization. I encourage UTSOA to make the hard choice, to cut the hero-worship, reject the ivy-colored glow and the allure of slick displays of personal genius in favor of something that is less obvious, and more noble. This also means we must develop new markets for this architecture, and new ways to service these markets. But that is what schools do best, they innovate. UTSOA has been in the vanguard before. We should do it again.