Back To School, Again
It’s that time of the year for many PLATFORM readers. The sun is still high in the sky but as the days shorten, a new feel in the breeze suggests autumn is around the corner. Another academic year starts. This is also a busy time at PLATFORM as we observe, with delight, that our pages are abuzz with activity. Sitting behind the proverbial counter, we see colleagues from around the world looking for readings to assign their students. In this back-to-school post, we revisit some of the articles that we published in the last twelve months about the challenges of teaching, classifying, and designing the built environment, as well as writing about it.
Figure 1. A street in the heart of the Centro Histórico, Quito. Photograph by Jennifer Hock, 2023.
Two inspiring pieces about pedagogy appeared on our site in September and October last year. The first one, by Jennifer Hock, entitled “Walking as a Form of Architectural Learning: A Stroll Through Quito, Ecuador,” considers taking the class outside, into the world of experiences, sounds, sights, and smells, reminding readers that to know architecture calls for experiencing it personally. Here, Hock reflects on a summer vacation in the Central American capital where, as she explored, she pondered the question of what being somewhere reveals that mediation obscures. What, ultimately, do we learn from being somewhere?
Figure 2. Students presenting during the Public Forum, March 24, 2023. Photograph courtesy of Sean McNeely.
Jessica Mace, in contrast, invites the world into the classroom. Although studying architectural history builds valuable career skills, she argues, it is often difficult to have students understand this. To change this perception, Mace champions organization-partnered projects in “Community Partners in the Classroom.” Reflecting on her experience in a course at the University of Toronto in which students worked with the Ontario Heritage Trust, Mace explores just how much undergraduates can benefit from “real-world” projects and experiential learning.
Figure 3. Campaign posters for the 2022 Swedish elections in central Stockholm, Sept. 2022. Many Swedish politicians focused on crime, especially from gang members, in the campaigns and the idea of “safety” [trygghet], seen here. Notably, posters for the Christian Democrat politician at center include the slogan: “Build beautifully — no more concrete boxes.” Photograph by Jennifer Mack.
How does society make sense of and categorize, the built environment — and what are the implications, on the ground, of different filters, especially when adopted by the state? In Scandinavia, Jennifer Mack argues, a managerial approach to governance relies on taxonomies of people and of neighborhoods to generate policy. As she discusses in “Words and Things: Taxonomies of Demolition in Scandinavia,” recent Swedish and Danish reports have labeled neighborhoods (mostly post-WWII suburbs) with categories like “especially vulnerable” and “ghettos.” Simultaneously, and in part as a consequence, politicians have called for extreme physical and social interventions into housing and landscapes, including privatization, renovation, and demolition, ostensibly to address angst about immigration, gang warfare, and crime. How, Mack asks, do official categories justify these actions?
Figure 4 . Iterations of the prompt “contemporary style architecture, volumetric, minimal, panoramic windows, housing block” from Midjourney, April 5, 2024.
Matthew Stewart, meanwhile, navigates an entirely different context of language, syntax and taxonomy as he entertains the role of writing in contemporary architectural practice in “Text Prompt: On the Peculiarities of Writing and Technique.” Since the rise of computer-aided design, text (in the form of command prompts) has played a central role in drafting and design software. This reliance on text has extended to text-prompt AI tools, like Midjourney, that allow users to generate complex images from a simple assortment of words or phrases. Simultaneously, much of contemporary design production is defined by an “avalanche” of bland PR statements and social media posts. What, he asks, does this mean for the architectural field? Has writing in architecture become overly rationalized or stunted?
Figure 5. Yusaf and Rajagopalan at work, mapping their essay
Last but not least, we revisit an article on the difficult and often lonely process of writing — or rather, an antidote to its implied solitude. “Writing in Kinship” shares a feminist recipe for writing while navigating the demands of academic life that is grounded not in competition and solitary exploration, but in mutual support, generosity, and companionship. Written as a conversation between two architectural historians, Mrinalini Rajagopalan and Shundana Yusaf, who are deeply invested in each other’s aspirations and scholarship, it shows how to transform writing from a punishing exercise into nourishing care work.
We hope that those of you who teach and write — and many others — enjoy (re)visiting these articles, along with others in PLATFORM’s different sections and that you find inspiration for fall courses and other end-of-summer projects. We will, in the meantime, continue soliciting and publishing articles on pedagogy, productivity, and more. And, if you are interested, please consider contributing too — we are always looking for new ideas!
Wishing everyone a productive and rewarding academic year!
PLATFORM Editorial Team
Citation
“Back to School, Again,” PLATFORM, September 2, 2024.
