Rethinking history in design education through the history of materials (Part 1)
This essay is the first of a two-part series. Follow the link to read part two.
Architectural education has been the object of debate in recent years. Beatriz Colomina argues that schools are timid and stale, cranking out architectural worker bees, leaving behind the educational experiments of earlier eras. Mark Jarzombek argues that elite architecture schools have insulated themselves from new ideas by following a “neoliberal model of labor,” leaving most teaching to adjuncts who have little vested interest in and no influence on the curriculum. Joanne Pouzenc argues further that the contemporary framing of education as a competitive business drives an architectural pedagogy related to market position rather than to education. Students increasingly demand more job-related training. School administrators create curricula based on accreditation requirements, student demands, and high-profile design trends in order to ensure their market share. Students and schools alike tend to address pedagogy from a pragmatic point of view, rather than starting from the question of how to educate an architect.
Figure 1. The Bauhaus curriculum began with a basic course focused on the elementary study of form and materials. English translation of Bauhaus curriculum chart. Drawn by Jessica Sewell.
Architectural history and its relationship to architectural education has also been a subject of discussion, notably in the 2018 issue of e-flux architecture on history/theory. While architectural history is typically part of accredited programs (certified by a national accrediting body, NAAB in the United States, to confer a professionally recognized degree), it is often taught by non-specialists or adjuncts and is rarely integrated into the design curriculum. It is typically treated pragmatically as a box that must be checked for accreditation purposes; this necessary but inconsequential requirement is often taught in large survey lecture courses in which many students sleep off their late nights in studio. Architectural history is still largely conceptualized in architecture schools as the presentation of a vocabulary of styles and types to be borrowed from by designers, a “storehouse in which one can find forms to imitate.”[1] This model of architectural history in no way reflects contemporary architectural history research, which approaches architectural practice and the built environment as embedded within social, cultural, and political history. In contrast, architecture students are often encouraged to dehistoricize, looking to history for models of design abstracted from their cultural and political context. This lack of historical understanding feeds into a broader problem of depoliticized architectural design, in which architecture is valued for its aesthetic qualities, while its social, political, and ecological effects are ignored.
Figure 2. Architecture students wearing hats they made out of paper as a foundation studio assignment at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China. Photograph by Jessica Sewell, 2012.
To engage with the dilemma of how to integrate history and design and to reinvigorate the role of history in architectural education, we argue for reinventing the architectural foundation course by starting from the history of materials. Starting from materials radically rejects the outdated idea that architectural history exists to provide a vocabulary of forms and types for designers; we avoid questions of style and type and instead engage with the social and cultural grounding of architectural practice, both in the past and in the present. In addition, centering the history of materials grounds architectural education in the physicality of the built environment, which has been increasingly neglected in favor of parametric design and computational tools that allow for abstract formal play.
“Materials, however, have histories, and these histories deeply affect the ways they have been used, the meanings they carry, and the consequences of their use. ”
We propose this transformation in part because introductory design courses in architecture schools are typically inspired by the Bauhaus’s century-old pedagogical innovations, in which students are presented with a “candy shop of materials” that have been purposively extracted from their context (figure 1).[2] The students’ task is to develop a design language and perhaps a process of assembly based on knowledge gained from a series of formal exercises manipulating these abstracted materials (figure 2). For the last one hundred years this and similar formal explorations have been successful pedagogical tools employed across the spectrum of design education.[3] In these courses, materials are presented as media devoid of human meaning, and understood abstractly; data on materials performance is shared without exploration of where they come from and why they behave the way they do. Materials, however, have histories, and these histories deeply affect the ways they have been used, the meanings they carry, and the consequences of their use. In our rethinking of the foundation course, the histories of materials move to the center, so that materials, and architectural practice more broadly, are understood as always embedded in history, culture, and politics.
Figure 3. Architecture students at the University of Virginia using an electron microscope to scan and examine historic metal samples. Photograph by Andrew Johnston, 2017.
Too often in studio education architectural history is treated simply as a precedent, providing students with a vocabulary of forms and types. However, the practice of architectural history does not concern itself primarily with form and quality, but rather with broader questions of social and cultural meaning. By using history not as a repository of forms, but as a world of ideas, of embedded meanings that can serve as generators of design, history can serve to enrich design practice. Through this new class, students become informed design decision makers, benefiting from the insight and inspiration provided by contemporary architectural historians. Similarly, hands-on design practices can enliven and invigorate historical research, reminding us that buildings in the past, just like those in the present, are the result of a design process. By reimagining a materials-focused studio that integrates design with the history of materials, we are suggesting how to reinvigorate the relationship between history and design and revolutionize studio education.
“In our rethinking of the foundation course, the histories of materials move to the center, so that materials, and architectural practice more broadly, are understood as always embedded in history, culture, and politics ”
We argue for the integration of the history of materials with design decision making in the studio. We see each material as having multiple histories, including the history of its extraction, of its use, and of its social meanings. The history of a material’s extraction enlightens us about a material’s ecological and human footprints, informing a designer’s ethical choices. The history of how materials have been used informs a designer about the qualities of a material and what it takes to work it. The history of a material’s cultural meanings allows a designer to exploit and play with meanings. All of these histories can inform the design process. The question for students in a design studio where design process is integrated with historical understandings of materials is “How is your design informed by your historical knowledge?”
“The question for students in a design studio where design process is integrated with historical understandings of materials is “How is your design informed by your historical knowledge?””
For students to explore this question, instructors must introduce a studio model in which design decision making is keyed explicitly to historical knowledge. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. While studio classes often begin with a module of research and analysis into the themes and problems that will be explored in the studio, including historical precedents, this research is used as background information, not as a generator of design. Research is understood as a phase to get through in the beginning of design, rather than as an investigation that can inform a designer and her decisions throughout the design process. The transition from research and analysis to design is crucial to the exploration of the course theme—however, too often this transition is ill-defined, left to somehow happen by itself. In order to assure design truly responds to research, we need to move to a model in which research and analysis and design are not separate modules in the semester, but instead are collaborative and ongoing, constantly informing each other. Instructors and students need to explicitly explore the relationship between their research and their design, reflecting on their learning process. They can explore, for example, how the hands-on exploration of materials informs and transforms their understanding of architectural history and the ways that architecture has always been tied to structures of labor, inequality, politics, and sustainable or destructive use of resources. Similarly, they can explicitly make use of their historical research as a generator of concepts to explore through design.
Figure 4. Student using a draw knife to shape wood riven from a log, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia. Photograph by Andrew Johnston, 2017.
A hybrid model of studio teaching with a focus on the history of materials would move beyond the studio and traditional studio work, desk critiques, and pin-ups. It would make use of standard classrooms, labs, and shops at strategic times in the design process, allowing for lectures, discussions, and student presentations on the history of materials; experimentation in the lab; and hands-on workshops where students work with and discover various aspects of the materials (figures 3, 4). Students might also incorporate field research to understand first-hand where a material comes from, how it has been used, and the meanings it carries.
In the second part of this essay, we explore the histories of materials and their promise for design studio in more depth.
