photo: Tim Waters, Flickr
The conference on architectural education in Oxford has good intentions, but that is not enough I am afraid. The idea is literally to save the planet form artist-architects in the name of sustainability. The answer to this rather old good will is, again, in the historical avant-garde: “they claim to defend nature while poets respect it much more than gardeners”, used to say avant-garde artists at the beginning of the 20th century in defense of artistic abstraction. It is evident that there is still the need of explaining the precise artistic nature of architecture in contemporary times. A good start would be not to
It is a pity that the conference does not take place at the St. Catherine´s College, the wonderful master piece by Arnee Jacobsen located precisely in Oxford. That work of architecture is capable of defending contemporary art all alone. By the way, the moralist stand of this 2008 Oxford Conference reminds me of the struggle against Jacobsen´s project in the oxfordian press of the time when the building was being constructed. Fortunately, some English schools have responded to the spirit of the conference: Brett Steele (Architectural Association) and Iain Borden (Bartlett) have struck back.
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