the end of the day, the schools of architecture? We are producing students that can do gazillion things; it’s an open-ended field. The ways it’s being taught; the diversity of topics … theoretical, historical, technical, that your teaching the students and … AZP: This is what everybody says. That finally, you need architects to organize all these engineers and specialists that are there, and finally, you need to the mind of an architect who can engage with the community, and social sciences, and technology, and things like that … AG: … do you agree with that … that synthesis?
The Sniper’s Log, by Alejandro Zaera-Polo, 2013.
to SEE the product of our collectivity as humanity because the built environment is what we do, it’s what we leave behind … and no other field gives them that capacity to look at it critically … maybe through urban studies or anthropology in certain areas … but they’re given a set of tools that should be able to go beyond that scope and they are doing it. Not all graduates are willing to be limited by the practice and … AZP: … this is what you were saying … AG: … we’re giving them tools and what are we generating? Are we generating … our goal is not – especially in experimental schools and schools that are highly theoretical – it’s not necessarily generating practitioners but thinkers. I think Toshiko Mori said in her interview that John Hedjuk would speak about offering students timeless knowledge instead of obsolete knowledge; knowledge that is applicable anywhere at any time and not necessarily within those very structured or limited notions of what an architect has to do and there are a lot of architecture graduates who are doing different things. AZP: … I’m so against Toshiko, I can tell you, conceptually … AG: ... but, they are applying their knowledge in other areas, it’s not necessarily practicing architecture, what are we producing at 124
CHRONOLOGIES OF AN ARCHITECTURAL PEDAGOGY | CRONOLOGÍAS DE UNA PEDAGOGÍA ARQUITECTÓNICA
AZP: Yes, I agree with that, but at the same time to say that again, I find it boring, because that’s what everybody says. So, I try to find something more interesting to say. I heard the same thing the day before yesterday in the auditorium. Paul Lewis, one of the members of the faculty, was explaining his work and he ended up saying – he’s very interested in practice and building’s and things like that – and he was saying, “Well, now we are collaborating with social groups, we are actually building with our own hands certain parts of the buildings…” He was basically saying that … stating AGAIN that this is what is relevant about architecture, which is that we know a little bit of everything and we can bring all these forms of expertise together … and it’s fine, its true, and I agree with him, he’s a very good architect … but … I’m wondering whether what we should be exploring is actually what happens if we become specialists as an alternative to the idea of the architect as somebody who is universal, all-encompassing … it’s a kind of trying to play the devil’s advocate … AG: … I think the knowledge that we are giving our students doesn’t necessarily aim at them becoming universal. I think it actually helps them specialize because they have such a diversity of skills and abilities that they are going into very particular fields that have nothing to do with architecture and they ARE specializing in different areas because the education gives them tools. Which isn’t necessarily to build but to … AZP: … This is what happens here … have you seen the poster? This is the lecture series … I told you about the lecture series, no? … the eighty-five … this is spring … and this fall … (he pulls out the fresh-off-the-burner posters of his upcoming lecture series) … and it is called alternative practices … AG: … exactly …
AZP: … it breaks into pieces of … “What I did next.” … and these are the names of all the graduates of the Princeton School of architecture in the last twenty-five years that are in the poster … the idea is that we have sessions and one is about critical politics, one is about media agency, one is about practice, one is about pen power, urbanism, inanimate matter, greens, digital geometries… So, every session is about one type of practice. AG: … specialization … AZP: … to a degree … it’s a specialization … not that I think that we should necessarily specialize people here. What is interesting about Princeton is that it produces all these different people. It produces people who are urbanists, it produces landscape architects, it produces writers, and it produces media agents. It produces all kinds of people and, maybe, that is a quality, and that’s the quality of the school. Now … does this mean that the way to teach that is to give them a varnish of a many different things? I don’t think so. I think that what produces that is what I was telling you before. It’s the capacity to create a project and to develop and specialize your tools to develop a certain project. If you are good at writing, you may end up being a writer, if you’re good talking in public or networking … you may end up being a media agent. I’m interested in that moment in which people are not necessarily being taught structures, and mechanical services and professional practice and this and that, which is what happens in a professional school; but people are taught how to MAKE a project and what is the intensity that you need to make a project, and how do you understand who your audience is and how do you understand what your capacity is and how do you understand what your tools need to be and where are your tools, are they here or are they in astrophysics or in robotics or in history or science. //