ARTICLE COLLATERAL CREATION
INBETWIXT
ACADEMIA AND PRACTICE: THESIS
T
ypically, there is a great divide between the architecture of Practice and the architecture of Academia. In school, we emphasize the possibilities of a project when a student works individually without the constraints of building it. However, this does not reflect the typical design experience in Practice. Project schedule demands, service to the client and building regulations can limit creativity in executing a design idea in a fully constructed building. Few academic practitioners are able to bridge this divide, and those who do, are an anomaly. In my 20 years of teaching in architecture schools and engaging in Practice, I have found many opportunities for students to engage with the realities of Practice. But none is as strong as Thesis, the moment between Academia and Practice. It is the rare opportunity to simultaneously adopt strategies from Practice to create rich dialogue and architectural proposals with the potential to advance knowledge in the field. The future of thesis depends on a positive reciprocal relationship between Academia and Practice, one where research, an interested public community, collaboration and full scale testing are integrated into the work. The role of Thesis is a challenging one because it is a moment of transition. There is pressure to encapsulate everything that a particular curriculum or pedagogy embodies and to demonstrate the potential of the individual within the profession. The nature of thesis is constantly evolving and is not consistent throughout academia. Architecture firms are often critical of the academic work which is meant to support a young architect’s portfolio and set a foundation in their path towards licensure. Professional architects routinely review portfolios where architectural ideas are not buildable and have no basis in reality. This leaves thesis as a malleable opportunity for impact. At its best, thesis can be a showcase for realizing architectural concepts by balancing influences from the profession and the realities of the built environment. Two examples that exemplify an impactful relationship between academia and practice can be found in the following projects: The Project on the City at Harvard University and Rural Studio at Auburn University. Both have created a paradigm shift in the production of architecture.
Rem Koolhaas’ Project on the City at Harvard University, is known as “a commitment to research as a prelude to design, like two things that are almost bonded or laminated together.”1 Conducted collaboratively by Harvard Graduate School of Design thesis students, it was clear from the outset that there would be no connection to design; instead, the work sought to investigate a series of issues and phenomena which affect the
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CONNECTION
THE ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN JOURNAL OF THE YOUNG ARCHITECTS FORUM
Figure 1: Glass Chapel
development of architecture and the city. The result was a wealth of information presented in a series of graphically intense, hefty tomes that were ultimately published for public dissemination and consumption. This model has resulted in a legitimization of research that creates context for any design problem in Thesis. Specifically this is evident in the logical formation of the Thesis Framework; the creation of a design problem and assertion, which can be solved through an architectural proposition. Thesis proposals are expected to have evidence of design research, contextual information related to social conditions, infrastructural connections to global concerns and documentation of many political and economic situations that surround architecture. Further, there is a demand for graphic legibility that forces exhaustive data documentation to be abstracted into digestible pieces of information. Research in thesis needs to reach far beyond the typical precedent studies, programming and site documentation and analysis of previous decades as a contextual basis. This broader worldview trains young architects to approach spatial problem-solving from a