In Reply to: Re: material intuition in architecture posted by Kevin Matthews on December 08, 2001 at 14:59:43:
I have experienced the same feeling·:-)
The workshop we have is also unused! And though we have a very good librarian, (an ãopenä type) even making ãsidewalkä sales of old disposed books (instead of throwing them away), most of our students are reluctant in reading.
Thatâs why I have decreeted to have all the work done in my studio to be on an html format (instead of the usual paper poster)! Iâm not comparing to Christopher Alexander, but Iâm still ãfinger pointedä by other teachers as the ãlunatic guyä one step from the looney bin! Some even believe that Iâm ãspoilingä the students for future use in architecture (What? No wooden model? No very big site plan 1X2 meters of colored paper? Only hand drawings or computed oneâs, no good old technical pen on tracing paper?)!
In my belief and my experience, most of the students who have undergone this process in my studio, say afterward they have never worked as much in another studio. Of course their designs could be better (as always), but usually they begin to understand the ãprocessä of designing, ãhackingä (the Indiana Jones variety) their way through explaining the project on a web site·
They usually discover that you canât escape ãwritingä, that links are useful (sort of new way of having references or bibliography), that you canât be lazy about organization or in hierarchising your ideas!
On the other hand, Iâve done a special workshop on ãnew tensile fiber concreteä with the people who designed this concrete, transforming the studio in a laboratory were small quantities of this extraordinary concrete where molded and tested.
Afterward, the students had to either do a design of their kind or take an existing ãfamedä concrete structure and show what it could have been if it was realized with this new material (for example, the lily-pad columns of the Johnson wax building could have been multiplied by three in height without any change in diameter·).
Of course, students had a ãcraveä for that sort of work·:-)
But the ãdismayä I showed in the precedent post was/is in the fact that the ãnew technologiesä (i.e. computers, DAO, etc·) are felt by most teachers as an ãnecessary evilä, or worse, as a way to have a good technical drawing worker and not an ãauthorä! Instead of reacting to that, most students just undergo an ãAutocadä training as if there was no other way of competing in design!
In Architecture Weekâs design tools, most examples are quite specific and not of the usual ãeverydayä sort of working process (even if I know thatâs what you are teaching in your studio in Oregon or ãelsewhereä·:-):-):-)).
I have the feeling we have to ãorganizeä this culture drift. Most of us have already been experimenting different strategies in this matter, maybe it would be the proper time to say something publicly about it· A book, a site, a theory, whatever· But itâs become necessary or scores of students will, time passing by, be more and more in inadequation to their future practice·.
Jacques Pochoy