The teaching of architecture
This video was going around a while back:
It’s Wolf Pricks rolling over before Peter Flies-undone and them both verbally onanising in front of some poor student who has just presented her scheme. Besides its general horribleness (which is unfortunately not unusual in the sick world of architectural education), the bit that stood out for me was where Wolfy says “I don’t believe you can teach architecture” (to which Flies-undone agrees).
Excuse me?
Did anyone tell that to the poor student you’re ignoring when she signed up for a $50k+ per annum M.Arch?
Is “we don’t believe architecture can be taught” written in the Yale prospectus?
They’re lying, of course, to effect a laugh and a snigger out of boredom and pomposity at the expense of a lesser mortal who pays their salaries and who “needs her character building.”
Of course you can teach architecture, just as you can teach any discipline.
People who say you can’t are the vacuous hand-wavers who believe only in genius. There will always be architectural geniuses just as there will be those who learn to do a good job and those who will never get it. Just as in, for example, maths. Does anyone say that you can’t teach maths? There are lots of people who don’t get maths. And lots who do. You may not be able to re-wire the brain to think in that weird mathematical way that they have, but there is a body of knowledge and a discipline with methods and techniques. Just like architecture (more perhaps on “the discipline of architecture” later - another myth that insecure geniuses believe doesn’t exist).
This blogster would agree that you can’t teach genius and that, he thinks, is what Tricksy Pricksy and Flies-undone really mean.
Starchitects are lousy teachers.
Being a starchitect is all about “me, me, me” but being a great teacher is all about “you, you, you”.
Which is why getting starchitects like Flies-undone and Tricksy Pricksy to try and teach architecture is such a waste of time and money - because THEY really CAN’T teach architecture. They should go back to their lecture circuit and write their next publication.
They don’t even have a clue what teaching is, they’re so wrapped up in their own “genius”.
But some people can teach architecture - and they’re not necessarily the ones who are great designers.
in this video Eisenman shows how poorly his mind works.
nando said this on April 29th, 2008 at 02:07
Too right, Sir Norm. Most of my tutors were too busy scoring points off each other, or competing for the title of Mr Nasty to notice what exactly the poor student was trying to do. ‘Change it!’ they would cry. So I would, in the way they suggested. At the next crit ‘What is this? Change it!’
Moronic gibbons sound more reasonable.
Alice Architect said this on April 29th, 2008 at 08:03
And see in the background more big egos: Ross Lovegroves and Greg Lynn. They all seem to enjoy torturing students (without teaching). BTW – studying at the University of Applied Arts Vienna is almost free (363,36 Euro / Semester - it’s the fee for all public universities in Austria). Nevertheless it doesn’t affect the teacher’s salaries..
Christoph said this on April 30th, 2008 at 07:53
So lovely for them to acknowledge the work the student put in, simply to provide a sounding board for their egos (consisting mostly of a speech which doesn’t even have a hook into the preceding presentation and sounds very much like sleep-addled wonderings on the bus (sorry, SilverJet) over to the Big Apple). Are you imparting knowledge? Showing relevance? Allowing this person to gain anything other than being able to say “I was the student being torn apart in the YouTube clip”? Nah.
So why exactly are you there then?
As that great cinematographic educator, Thumper, would say “If you aint going to say nuttin’ nice, don’t say nuttin’ at all”
(Actually, I’m all for criticism, but it’s got to have direction otherwise it’s merely an attack)
WTF Palladio and Borromini had to do with it either, I have no idea…
Beaver said this on May 1st, 2008 at 13:44
[...] vía PartIV [...]
Enseñar Arquitectura » Plataforma Arquitectura said this on May 14th, 2008 at 06:12
the students have to listening to their teachers,but that doesnt means that the students have to believe everything that the teachers says
enzo piero said this on May 17th, 2008 at 03:55
I don’t know Prix, but having been in several studios and lectures with Eisenman, I can attest to his incompetence and down right mean spiritedness.
Nevermind the fact that he contradicts himself completely in this video; he is just an insulting ass and his architecture is rubbish.
On the first point, he is totally at odds with himself. First he says “this student doesn’t know anything about ordinization”, etc. (’Ordinization isn’t even a real word btw, although I assume he is referring to the classical orders). This implies that there is a structure, order, and logic to architecture that can be learned. He by implication must know about this order, the student obviously doesn’t, therefore she is crap. Later he says “You can’t teach architecture”.
Of course nothing he says makes sense. He makes anti-sense, which is his whole point. Design Observer has a great piece on his work in Cincinnati. I highly recommend it:
What’s That Crashing Sound, Or, Eisenman in Cincinnati
http://www.designobserver.com/archives/018092.html
Nikos Salingaros has a more theoretical critique in his book “Anti-Architecture and Deconstruction”. In it he equates Eisenman, Tschumi, et al. to cult leaders propogating their own power through manipulation, obsfucation, and domination of their students and clients.
http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Architecture-Deconstruction-Nikos-Salingaros/dp/3937954082
He and the class he represents are liars and thieves. The appropriate response would have been to punch him in the face or spit on him, but by this point in the poor woman’s architectural career any sort of free spirit, independent thinking or self respect will have been ground out by crits such as this one. Poor woman…
Noah said this on May 23rd, 2008 at 14:38
I’ve heard of Buckminster-Fuller (who I believe has a molecule named after him), and I’d never heard of this Eisenman bore.
At least he manages the impressive feat of talking out of his arse whilst sitting on it.
Mearso said this on June 27th, 2008 at 18:22
This is the Ego dilenima of too much to say and not enough to do. His (Eisenman’s) hackneyed 1970’s social scientists cliche of the monkeys at a type writer, shows him to also be an unoriginal thinker. That is a problem of relying on ones own ego as a referance point in design, and judging by the depth of his own adulation in Eisenmans case, it affects all facets of his life.
To construct a sentence as aptly as one can construct a building requires the same suspension of and resistance to self referancing cliches.
If he truely believes that one cannot teach architecture then from the point of view of a completely self referancing arschloch, most likely unconsciously talking about himself, then that might have been the most honest statement we are likely to see from the man.
He is right, he cannot teach self referancing bullshit and we know from what he is saying about the attempt at transferance that that is actually his definition of architecture, That is himself ‘ordinized’. I don’t think it has anything to do with the classical orders. I think he believes himself to be the classical ‘ordinaire’.
Unfortunately, due to the nature of emotional and phsychological cannabalism inherent to the rampantness of a self referancing Ego of his scale, he is most distant from the ability to empathise, which is a pre-requisite of teaching and particularly good design.
I feel sorry for him, because most likely he was terribly bullied in the playground and he is still in compensating mode.
simon seasons said this on June 29th, 2008 at 11:58