As is its nature, architecture has found itself in a state of crisis once again. Inextricably tied to the whims of the real estate and financial markets, architecture has been particularly hard hit by the extended recession, with publications like Salon[1] and The Washington Post[2] chronicling the perceived implosion of a profession regarded by many as a luxury service for the so-called “one percent.” And if things weren’t already bad for those of us in the profession, a recent Georgetown University study[3] has found an architecture degree to have the worst return on investment among all degrees surveyed, below even such notorious “underachievers” as drama, fine art, and journalism. Now is arguably the worst time to study architecture in a generation, which is precisely what makes the release of Architecture School so relevant, not only for potential students and recent graduates but for anyone with the slightest interest in the history, and the future, of architecture in North America.
Architecture School: Three Centuries of Educating Architects in North America
MIT Press
400 pages
$1,500.00
Published in support of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture to coincide with the organization’s centennial, Architecture School is the most comprehensive survey of the history of architectural pedagogy in North America to date. Divided into two main sections—a “Chronological Overview” and a “Thematic Lexicon”—the book manages to tell two versions of the same story: a conventional linear historiography, on one hand, and a dense, topical dialogue on the other. Rather than a “pomo” gimmick, this methodology adds a considerable layer of richness as it allows one to move through each chronological section while cross-referencing topics and reading the work of multiple scholars. Joan Ockman, the editor of the volume, and a refreshingly ecumenical list of contributors have done an exemplary job here.
Western architecture maintains a sometimes uneasy tension between the abstract realm of organization, composition, and “concepts” and the physical realm of structure, function, and “reality.” For the Roman architect Vitruvius, who worked in the 1st century BC, architecture was a matter of “Order, Arrangement, Eurythmy, Symmetry, Propriety, and Economy,” with the latter being “the proper management of materials and of site, as well as a thrifty balancing of cost and common sense in the construction of works.”[4] Already we see the tension between the economic and artistic drives within the discipline, a tension that has only become more acute with the passage of time—and has generated any number of theories attempting to reconcile the two.
From its very beginning, architectural education in North America has been dominated by an unstable amalgamation of three rival pedagogies, each a response to this perennial antithesis: the English apprenticeship model, stressing “hard work and practicality”; the German polytechnic model, emphasizing mathematics and engineering; and the French Beaux Arts model, privileging artistic genius and grueling competition. These models, European in their inception but thoroughly American in their execution, have set the fitful pace for the discipline’s 300-year evolution from a gentlemanly pastime to a rigorous profession in service to the public good.
Until the early 19th century, there was in fact no agreement on exactly what an architect was. Most individuals calling themselves “architects” were skilled masons, carpenters, or delineators, or, alternately, charlatans and hucksters. Nearly all architectural knowledge in America at this time was acquired either through working in apprenticeship to an architect or through books imported from Europe. These books were largely reinterpretations of the work of the aforementioned Vitruvius, or of the writing of Renaissance architects such as Andrea Palladio or Leon Battista Alberti, who were themselves indebted to Vitruvius. Thomas A. Tefft (1826-1859), an architect in Providence, Rhode Island, lamented the state of the discipline:
[A]n architect with us, is too often a kind of chance production. The period when he arrives at that distinction, is only known to himself or the public, when he puts forth his “shingle” or professional “card.” He may have been a successful or disappointed builder, a draughtsman (you cannot say student) in some architect’s office for a year or two, or a stranger, who has come to this country as to “a field of missionary enterprise,” with more confidence than professional accomplishment, or with more knowledge of details than of general principles. If he gets commissions, he commences experimenting at the expense of “somebody,” and his buildings not infrequently stand as monuments of his client’s prodigality, and his own imbecility.
Still, by the 1860s, this ad hoc training had begun to be augmented by collegiate schools modeled after the German and French academies. In 1865, under the guidance of Boston architect William R. Ware, the first degree-awarding American school of architecture was established at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, based largely on the model of the École de Beaux Arts. Competing institutions quickly followed suit, and by the 1930s nearly every major university in North America had some form of architecture school. Generally, the curricula of these early schools emphasized drawing and the study of architecture history, which at the time meant the study of precedents from the Renaissance and antiquity. Engineering and “technical studies,” while always present, took a secondary role to the budding virtuosity in the drafting rooms.
All this was destined to change. By the beginning of the 20th century, the Beaux Arts model was already beginning to collapse under its own weight. The 1920s the saw the emergence new architectural styles, such as Art Deco, De Stijl, and early Modernism, which made the historicist emphasis of the Beaux Arts tradition appear increasingly stodgy and irrelevant. But it was the GI Bill that would finally prove to be the death knell for the Beaux Arts in America, as returning veterans flooded schools, eager to “solve real problems” and forgo the “paper architecture” that was so much a part of architectural education up to that time.
The eager students had eager teachers, notably Walter Gropius at Harvard and Mies van der Rohe at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Both men were directors of the legendary Bauhaus in the Weimar Republic before the school’s closure by the Nazis in 1933. Both came to epitomize what Philip Johnson would later describe as “the International Style”: austere, unornamented buildings with clear structural and architectural expression. In their respective schools, both men would set about redefining the pedagogy, virtually eliminating architectural history and bringing a renewed emphasis on engineering a construction. Again, in a matter of years, change swept through the discipline, and virtually every American school of architecture was espousing some version of International Style Modernism by the late 1940s.
The influence of the Bauhaus signaled a fundamental shift in the discipline; from this point on, the trajectory of architecture in North America would be led, in large part, by the schools. It would be the schools, not simply the offices, where new theories and ideologies would be tested and disseminated.
While the reorientation of the architectural zeitgeist away from the office and toward the institution has, to this point, endured, the ideological guidance of the Bauhaus masters would come to be questioned with the passing of Mies and Gropius, both in 1969. By this time, amid widespread campus upheaval, there was a perception that Modernism, originally conceived as a progressive social as well as architectural movement, had lost its way. In response, architecture schools returned to a more “hands on” ethos. Hearkening back, in a way, to the informal architectural education of the 1800s, schools such as Yale and UC Berkeley began to offer courses and studios geared to getting students directly involved in the building process and acting as (perceived) catalysts of social change. History, too, would enjoy a resurgence of sorts with the rise of the “postmodern.”
Architecture was dealt a severe blow during the oil crises and recessions that hit North America in the late 1970s and early ’80s. With a dearth of “real” clients, many architects placed their emphasis on teaching, further enriching the discourse of the time while virtually ignoring professional practice. Influential figures such as Daniel Libeskind at the Cranbrook Academy and Jennifer Bloomer at the Georgia Institute of Technology pushed abstract, “theoretical” architecture to the limit—so much so that visiting jurors refused to critique the work of the 1985 Georgia Tech students on the grounds that the work simply “wasn’t architecture,” which ultimately triggered a series of high-profile resignations within the school. While highly controversial, these abstract explorations laid the groundwork for the penultimate crisis within the academy, the introduction of computer-based design.
A revolution in the truest sense, digital design has upended many of the most sacred of architectural traditions. While relatively popular since the 1980s and used mainly for automating the production of construction drawings, computer-aided drafting (CAD), and 3D modeling software exploded onto the educational scene with the mass production of new, powerful desktop computers in the ’90s. Schools like UCLA, MIT the Southern California Institute of Architecture, and Columbia University were the first to adopt these new technologies. Freed from the demands of professional practice, students began to use these new techniques not only to generate drawings but also to create entire projects. While the scholastic rhetoric was one of “smoothness” and “continuity,” the legacy of the abstract excess of the fragmented, “deconstructivist” ’80s and early ’90s laid the groundwork for explorations into rarefied form-making, often at the expense of what Vitruvius would refer to as “propriety and economy.”
In the early years of the 21st century, the profession of architecture was experiencing an unprecedented explosion in growth. Offices were snapping up each new crop of digitally savvy graduates. Sensing market demand, schools expanded their programs, throwing out the old drafting tables and installing computer workstations. Then, like clockwork, architecture entered a new phase of crisis: the onset of worldwide economic crisis in 2008 and the ongoing global recession have had a devastating impact on the profession. As offices laid off young workers in droves, many initially fled back to school in an attempt to weather the storm. Unfortunately, what they thought would be a bad year or two has turned into a lingering malaise, made worse as successive waves of already disenfranchised young architects pour back into the system.
It would be difficult to deny that the discipline of architecture is facing serious challenges and a highly uncertain future. The schools must bear some of the blame for what was, in many cases, overeager recruitment, and for flooding the profession with students who may not have been trained to adapt to the wiles of the marketplace.
And yet, what Architecture School reveals is the uncanny ability of architecture to constantly reinvent itself, in large part due to the nature of architectural education as a systematic attempt to overcome, or at least understand, the contradictions at the heart of the field. Architecture schools have been the testing ground for the ideas that have challenged and defined the future of the discipline; its history and struggles parallel and in many cases presage developments that will continue to transform the way we understand architecture and its critical role within a constantly evolving society. If the current prognosis appears bleak, Ockman’s book provides compelling historical evidence that this crisis is only the latest episode in an ongoing story, and may prove to be yet another invitation for architecture to create itself anew.
Andrew Smith-Rasmussen is a graduate of the Yale School of Architecture. He lives and works in Los Angeles.
1. Scott Timberg, “The Architecture Meltdown,” Salon, February 4, 2012, salon.com/2012/02/04/the_architecture_meltdown/.
2. Peter Whoriskey, “New Study Shows Architecture, Arts Degrees Yield Highest Unemployment,” The Washington Post, January 3, 2012, washingtonpost.com/business/economy/new-study-shows-architecture-arts-degrees-yield-highest-unemployment/2012/01/03/gIQAwpaXZP_story.html.
3. Anthony P. Carnevale, Ban Cheah, and Jeff Strohl, Hard Times: Not All College Degrees are Created Equal (Georgetown University Center for Education and the Workforce, 2012).
4. Vitruvius, Ten Books On Architecture, Book I, Chapter II, Sec. 8.
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