aae2016 Research Based Education - Volume Two
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project, group, or account. Hashtags also encourage audience participation, thus serve to create a dialog about a given topic and are considered the main driver behind connecting users who might not be following the account. One of the interesting trends as well is “re-gram” or “re-post”, where users can re-publish an image from an account they are following, and if their followers see it, they might end up following the account. The interactive aspect of Instagram is that viewers can express approval of images by clicking on a tiny outlined heart below each image, which shows as a “like”. Additionally, viewers subscribe and “follow” particular accounts, receiving instantaneous images on their smart phones and tablets. Some viewers write comments, which are most often in a casual, nearly spoken tone – and many are emotionally charged. Remarkably few are vulgar or offensive and there is no mechanism for “disliking” an image. We illustrate with a typical example. In the case of Norway-based Todd Saunders’ image of his studio on Fogo Island, 288 viewers liked the image and a viewer named “downsworks” added: “love, love, love”. Saunders’ hashtags, a modest list, include his own name, the name of his office, the place, and the client. Saunders has 10,000 Instagram followers. Similarly, the Mexico City-based architecture firm Rojkind Arquitectos has about 14,000 Instagram followers. The account also uses a short list of hashtags, sometimes only one or two, including the project name, or describing the action taking place in the picture (for example, staff members meeting or sketching). What is also interesting about this account is that it posts pictures of work by other architects, including a project by BIG, and a presentation by Sou Fujimoto at the World Architecture Festival in Singapore in 2015. From the perspective of architectural education, the subject of our conference, Instagram is a growing and hugely useful database of student work and school information from around the world. On Instagram we see the studios and studio work of other schools and they see ours. This image posted by Columbia University (figure 5) for example, posted thirteen weeks previously, is typical, showing the Ivy League school’s architecture studio: tables, laptops, glue, Perrier, coffee, half-completed models, lots of backs of students (a particularly irksome characteristic of architecture school photos). It is the educational equivalent to the OMA construction image, a spontaneous, backstage view of how architecture gets made. More than 60 school of architecture across North America run active Instagram accounts. The popularity Instagram is gaining among architecture schools raises questions about the benefits to architectural education of engaging in social media platforms. We believe that Instagram offers a mode of exposure that goes beyond conventional studio life, connecting with other schools, with architectural firms, and with university alumni (especially those who are potential donors).
@MCGILL_ARCHITECTURE At McGill University’s School of Architecture in Montreal, we have firsthand experience of Instagram. The two of us, Bassem Eid Mohamed (then a postdoc fellow and now an Assistant Professor in Abu Dhabi) and I (then the school director and now a happy sabbaticant) started a school account in November 2014: @mcgill_architecture. Basem, already familiar with Instagram, suggested that it would be good PR for the school; Annmarie was a complete novice. Our basic models were the popular accounts of two American schools: Columbia University (@columbiagsapp) in New York and Sci-Arc (@sciarcinside) in Los Angeles. The Bartlett also has a very active and interesting site, @bartlettarchucl, to which we have often looked for inspiration. It has nearly 5500 followers with only 258 posts.