Posted by Roger Emmerson on June 30, 2001 at 09:35:11:Thanks for all responses.
My point, I suppose, was that we fondly imagine that design is what sets us apart, our defining characteristic as architects, what we and no others bring to the table, the value we add to the building project, the contribution we make to society as a whole, etc. But as we all find in our lives these values are not widely shared in society at large or, at least, not in the present (Richard's point) or at a cost society is prepared to pay. Decisions on architectural quality are, consequently, managerial: that is, the works created may satisfy the bare functional requirements, they may do it efficiently, even, in a Taylorist view, elegantly but they leave the spirit untouched and unmoved (sometimes, faintly depressed that human activity can so easily be represented in such reductive structures).
Back to school. Simple choices in the architectural hothouse. Out to work. Not so easy. Uninvolved students who have recorded no successes on the design scale are released with supressed energy, frustrated ambition and no measure of assessing the value of the skills they do have because they were never properly valued or tested in school. No wonder then that crude process becomes the driving force of many practices. Design, or as much of it as they are prepared to countenance, is there to make paltable the unpalatable compact they have entered into with a soulless managerial society.
In as much as all students are put on the design rack, some always to fail (think of this, in year one, probably in term one, a student knows he or she is to be an also-ran in the privileged measure of design success, what probably drew them to the subject in the first place) it would benefit the pure design high-fliers if they were rather more rigorously tested in other areas. It would certainly make them more receptive to the totality of architecture, would place them in real competition with their fellow students of the less high-flying sort and might provide them with the strength in work to understand and take charge of the process/spirituality conundrum. Or, then again, not.
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