FOUNDATIONS: A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT THE FIRST YEAR OF ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION

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I’m happily surrounded by architecture teachers at the moment. The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) has assembled here in New Orleans for a few days of sharing ideas and enjoying a collegial time.

Some have even escaped the building to get a taste of New Orleans itself, its rich culture and music and food.  My wife and I went with our local connection to Rock&Bowl, literally a bowling alley with a large open space for a 1980’s-style, very loud, very impressive rock band. The next night, after a perfect sazerac and excellent oysters, we heard a jazz trio led by stupendous keyboard master John Cleary. Speaking as a C+ piano player, this guy was A+ to the third power.

Back here, in the much tamer conference, the subject of teaching new students came up repeatedly, prompting me to focus on it. Here’s a bit of what I think about it. 

With architecture being an enormously multifaceted topic, it’s pretty easy to pick out a few pieces of the architectural education puzzle and reflect on those. Here are some thoughts about helping students, whether fresh from high school or arriving with other degrees, a good launch into what is, for most of them anyway, the terra incognita of architectural education. What students imagine their education to be is often wrong, to say the least.

There are many ways to begin, and obviously, there are many seasoned teachers and well-considered approaches to meeting this challenge and capturing its opportunities. As a 10-year veteran of teaching first-year students. I’ve had a great deal of time to observe and consider what works and doesn’t, both in the moment of courses and as fuel for their progress through a variety of later courses.

Lots of programs are reevaluating how to help students begin and transition from pre-college to college-level. Those recent high school grads already have nearly two decades of experience with the built world, from the places they grew up, their schools, and, more generally, their communities. Some have already begun through high school programs. Very likely, there are none with a vocabulary that allows them to say what they’ve seen and experienced. Some have advanced a bit farther with travel, though that may have just added layers of impressions without advancing understanding.

In the process of teaching, like most teachers, I’ve learned from students who progressed and made it through programs. Those who succeed illuminate, and so do those who don’t. Regardless, we owe them all our best efforts, including careful listening. We are teachers, a fact that can, and hopefully does, mean that we’re mentors.

The first year is, too often, an exhausting boot camp. It doesn’t need to be. One of the casualties of no sleep is a loss of individual students’ sense of direction and agency. Exhaustion and reflection are not kindred. Work/life balance can start early. Mental health promotes student health and their capacity to achieve, and some schools of architecture recognize the problem and don’t let it just exist as an unspoken background. Too few make student health a priority. If they did, perhaps courses and course loads, particularly for first-year students, would be reexamined. More attention is paid to the stresses of going away to college, probably leaving home and hearth for the first time, which is part of being their humane stewards. They need time to get their sea legs.

How to Begin: Moving from Unconscious to Conscious Understandings

While these new architecture students have so much experience, their experience is usually entirely unconscious and, for the most part, inarticulate. One extremely effective goal for them is learning to transform their unconscious understandings to conscious ones, becoming articulate as a preface to learning how to manipulate the pieces that constitute architecture.

We and they can dissect what we experience. We can develop the ability to identify the essence of experiences and differentiate among the moments that move us. We can become adept at conversations about design. We can learn to connect dots, including those between gut feelings and more refined thought. 

I encourage my students to trust their gut feelings as a starting point for analysis. Can I reflect on what stirs me to engage? Gut feelings are powerful indicators. Do I love what I see? Do I hate it? Do I not care? I encourage them to trust the authenticity of their own reactions and value the reactions of others, including non-architects. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration that this approach helped students learn early what many programs believe can’t be learned until much later: what makes wise architecture?

Learning a language, including the languages of architecture, is a necessary foundation, really a prelude, to competence and then eloquence. That language comes in different clothes, words, and images and forms among them.

They also need help building on the energy they bring to programs, helping them make the most of their motivation. Inspiration helps them keep their energy and passion fed. Knowing about wise architects and wonderful architecture isn’t the sole province of history and theory courses. Some of that, landing at the beginning, is precious.

I’m not suggesting that such monitoring and excavation is the only valid path for beginning students. Getting introduced to how architects think, and skill-building, and getting a foothold in the process of idea development – all of those, and many more, draw students into the arc of architectural education. They also need to gain perspective about that arc or, rather, the variety of arcs that they can pursue. Architectural thinking is a framework that can support many pursuits. Early education is fuel for launch trajectories that students can see and gauge what resonates with them as they move forward.

Starting in Three Dimensions

I believe 3-D should come first in early projects, because that’s the world we all live in and know best by far. That helps make it an apt starting point. 2-D is by definition an abstraction and, because it’s removed from the realities students arrive with, harder to connect with.  So, it’s better to leverage what students already have a handle on and, after making good use of 3-D projects, especially those that exploit how we perceive the world, and then to move from that solid ground to the more abstract. Examples of those projects are in my book.

One example is “figure/ground,” usually explored in 2-D projects, relating black and white zones/areas in an image. In those exercises, some shape is made dominant, acting as “figure,” while the rest is background, or “ground.” In some cases, the job is making the black and white areas equal in impact. But is that the right tack? Neither of those exercises really approach real reality.

“Figure” in perceptual terms, including the world of architecture, which is very much 3-D, is the thing your perception and cognition “attends to,” in other words, gives attention to as the primary focus. Think of the strongest part of an architectural composition, the thing you would begin describing if you were on the phone, telling a friend about a building you see. THAT is figure. In general, whatever disturbs ground is, by definition, figure.

Design often involves creating a pattern of repeating elements and then, disrupting them, creating a point of attention, a figure. Without the pattern, the ground, figure doesn’t emerge as easily. One way to think of architecture is that it is manipulation of what takes, even demands, attention, and what doesn’t.  Meaning can’t happen if the object conveying it isn’t seen. 

I elaborate on the benefits of starting with exercises in 3-D in my book (the Enhancing Education chapter), but in brief, that gives students the opportunity to move from their own experiences, which are in at least 3 dimensions, a way to segue into architecture. The still-abiding tradition of beginning with two-dimensional exercises has always struck me as too disconnected from the real world to serve students well as a starting point. Instead, through 3-D work, students gain a grounding that is the foundation for leveraging in design as they progress.

I hope you’ll take a moment to let me know what you think about the topic and the notions I’ve presented here. Future blogs will address other facets of architectural education.

With you in the pursuit,

Milton Shinberg