AzF6 - Educator of the Year Award

Matt Salenger:

Congratulations on the Educator of the Year Award. What I enjoyed about what you brought to ASU was that kind of historic way of looking at things over time and understanding architecture, not just as what's popular today, but what the appreciation is over many years.

John Meunier:

I think the important thing for me was the recognition that architecture isn't only a practical problem-solving thing, it's a contribution to the general culture. At all levels, both sociologically and aesthetically. Of course when you're thinking about something from that point of view you have to take a very wide historical and geographic point of departure because you're not just dealing with it in terms of its immediate meaning and purpose.

Matt:

I was curious about is what brought you to the United States? Was it really the curriculum that you were offered at Cincinnati or was there something else bringing you here?

John:

Well, there were really two things. One is a purely personal. I married an American woman when I was a graduate student at Harvard and we went to live in Germany for a couple of years after I graduated. Then we went to Cambridge, we stayed there for 14 years, so she was 16 years away from her cultural home base. There was a sort of general sense that it really was her turn to be in a place where it was her home base rather than mine. That's one side of it.

The other side of it was that my career had actually taken me not only into teaching, but also into the whole issue of architectural education and education generally. While I was at Cambridge I got involved in a lot of things at the RIBA, the Royal Institute of British Architects. I was on their Practice and Education Committee and that meant that I got involved in accreditation visits to a lot of different schools.

About that time I met the Dean of the College of Design Architecture, Art and Planning at the University of Cincinnati at a conference. Later he contacted me saying that he was in London and would like to go to lunch to discuss the headship of the architecture program at Cincinnati. I didn't know much about Cincinnati, but the one thing that did attract me was this business of the co-op program. I came to the conclusion that there was something really rather good about this idea of a more intimate relationship between the educational enterprise and the apprenticeship that people got while they were working in practice.

I really enjoyed my 11 years at Cincinnati and being the director of that program there and I think it was a great preparation for me for when I finally ended up as dean at Arizona State University.

Matt:

I was fascinated to read about the project you had in Cincinnati, giving students cardboard and string and asking them to design a structure.

John:

One of the problems is that students come to university with all kinds of creative ideas about what architecture is. It's one of those very sexy careers that people think they

might be interested in. They've done well at art in school, they're reasonably good at mathematics, and their parents and their teachers encourage them, but to actually confront the reality of architecture, which is that it really starts with the need to create shelter and then it moves on to the higher goals of embodying values.

I thought that particular exercise made a very important point. It was paired along with a very long trip that we took all the first year students from Cincinnati to Fallingwater in Pennsylvania. It was about a 6-hour drive and it was worth the drive. The students spent a couple of hours at Fallingwater and saw architecture at its very best there.

I wanted them on the one hand to get used to the idea that architecture involved the creation of shelter and on the other hand it, at its best, was a major contribution to the culture of the community.

Matt:

The part about the cardboard structure project that find most interesting is that it wasn't just about supplying shelter, but actually forcing young students to think about their values and how to portray that in cardboard.

John:

Actually you're talking about something that is very important to me. It's inevitable that students are going to be reading the magazines and looking online and wanting to do something that looks like what Zaha Hadid would do or what Frank Gehry would do or who's ever they admire. That's inescapable. The question is how do you get through that to the deeper stuff? That's where that exercise comes where you say, "Okay. If you're really going to admire somebody let's really take it seriously. Let's find out what was in their library? Who had they seen? What had they written? What were they actually thinking about? What was their socioeconomic political context?" You actually begin to take the whole thing much more profoundly, far less superficially.

Matt:

Could you talk about your interest in multidisciplinary study and having command over the schools of interior design, and graphic design and landscape architecture?

John:

One of the traditions in England is when the new head of department is appointed at some point they ask that person to give an inaugural lecture. That is supposed to be an opportunity to lay your cards on the table. It wasn't required when I came here, but I thought I should do it and it would be a very useful exercise. One of the first things I had to do was to say, okay, you're now responsible for a very wide array of disciplines.

Matt:

Design is about speculating change. Change which intends to produce value and a better situation than what existed before. So design is about change, but it's not just any old change, it's what I call culturally responsible change. In other words the change should improve the situation in a way that responds to both economic, sociological, environmental and ecological principles. Change is the common denominator whether you are a planner, or an industrial designer, or an interior designer and so on. That issue of cultural responsibility is the key proposition for me, which means we have to be aware of the culture within which we exist. Not just the culture of our own discipline but the larger culture within which the discipline is nested.

What have you seen change in the architectural landscape?

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John:

I think a couple of really, really gratifying things have happened. It gives me a lot of pleasure to see a generation of architects beginning to emerge as major players in this community for whom ASU was an important springboard. The sense that there is a community of architects here who have very high ambitions for their work, not just regional ambitions, but very high ambitions at the highest possible level, I think that's very gratifying. I think that Phoenix in the nearly 30 years that I've been here has become a much more sophisticated city. It has many of the problems that it always had, but I think it has become a more sophisticated city and I think that you can see the results of that in the environment.

Matt:

Can you talk a little bit about the way that Phoenix has gotten more sophisticated and the way that has affected the city?

John:

Well, I think you were kind enough to say some nice things about my influence. One of the things that I talk about is when light rail came to Phoenix. They imported the team of people from Portland to do it, and in many ways that really scared me because far too often in Phoenix when something new is attempted they bring a team of people in from somewhere else to do it. I was, at that time, fortunately in a position where I was heavily involved in the City of Phoenix and we said, "Hey, wait a minute, these light rail stations have a very important role to play in the community. We want to make sure that the light rail stations that are developed are appropriate for this place, and this climate." We put together a little studio and brought a lot of interesting people to bear.

We also established the Central City Architecture Review Panel with the Mayor Terry Goddard. The Central City Architecture Review Panel was the group that made it possible to do so well with the money that came in from the bond issue of '88. That's how we got the Science Center, Burton Barr Library, the Phoenix Art Museum, and the History Museum. They all came out of that process and it was the university's involvement through me that help that all to happen.

This is one of the problems of the current structure of the Design School. When I came as Dean I was automatically involved in important events in the city. As I was invited to go to a groundbreaking and I met Terry Goddard and the 1988 bond issue had just been passed. I had a little chat with Terry and I said, "Terry, how are you going to make sure that that money is well spent?" As any good politician would he turned the question around and he said, "Have you got any ideas?" Out of that came the Central City Architecture Review Panel.

One of the things that I decided was that we needed to have a strong voice on that panel, not just me, but others, so that we could be heavily involved in the selection of architects. Because review boards are no good if you've not got good architects coming up with good ideas. A review board never made a bad architect into a good architect.

You have to have a good architect.

Matt:

One of the things that you've demonstrated is how important it is to get involved with the community and I wonder if you can provide some advice to us about why it's

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important to get involved with the community and how to do it?

John:

Well, the first and most important thing is to recognize where the levers of influence and power are. One of the things I was very interested to discover was how important the general plan is in all of our communities. Anybody who's involved in the general plan and has influence on their community. I think getting involved in that kind of process is hugely important.

I'm also a great advocate of using the mass media. You know, you've got to use the mass media and not just write for your own small circle. You've got to get out there and do it.

We're so fortunate that we are in a major city with a strong professional community.

When you think about good architecture schools, how important that professional community is, whether you're talking about New York, or whether you're talking about San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Chicago. The professional community and the school have got to be linked. That doesn't mean to say that the school and the professional community should be in alignment. The school's job is to maybe make the comfortable afflicted and comfort the afflicted. Our job is to ask a bunch of tough questions and our job is not to just make sure that there's work for local architects.

One of the nicest compliments that was paid to me when I left Cincinnati and people were saying, "Well, okay, what did you do while you were in Cincinnati?" The thing I was proudest of was that I felt I'd, to a certain extent, elevated the discourse about architecture. That is emphatically my goal, whether it's within the school or out in the community, to just elevate the discourse about what architecture is, what it should be, and how it can contribute.

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