Education Affordability

The best educational system in the world is so, among other reasons, because the President, the first citizen and his wife, would not have been so if it was not for the grants and loans that give everybody a chance.

The speech at University of Michigan is about the importance of an affordable educational system.

Student Engagement

Information on student engagement. It is done by the NSSE Institute for Effective Educational Practice of USA. At the end of the brochure there are some web sites very useful. You can tailor your own report with the Report Builder to hit the subject you want to measure.

There is also a Spanish version of the Guide to Choosing a College: Questions to ask on your college visits. It is very useful to learn criteria on choosing your educational institution, in spite the Spanish there is even worse than the English in this blog, I am afraid.

Plot Against America

An excellent reading for this summer: "The plot against America", by Philip Roth. It opens our imagination on what could have happened as well as what could happen in the future.

Faculty Salaries in USA

USA has the best education: it pays better. Follow the link.

Looking for Today's Roosevelt

If you are a politician and would dear to pronounce a speech like this today: please, launch yourself.

Franklin Roosevelt’s Address, October 1936

"We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace–business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me–and I welcome their hatred."

The whole speech is in the link.

Smart Power

This 18' talk of ex-dean of Harvard Government School is cheering up. We need certain amount of optimism also to keep us going. The main message: yes we can do something.

2010 Ranking of Doctoral Programs in USA

A very interesting tool that compares doctoral programs in USA has been launched by The Chronicle of Higher Education. It is extremely easy to compare how long does it take to get a doctoral degree in architecture at Columbia and compare it to Cornell or Harvard. The link takes strait ahead to the tool.

Re-writting History in Texas Education?

Daguerreotype of Susan B. Anthony by Southworth & Hawes, circa 1850. From Wikipedia

Two days ago El País published the news that Texas Education Agency was changing text books with a clear ideological purpose. Next day I received from the Chronicle of Higher Education the news that billions of fresh dollars were being put aside by Texans for their universities. It was quite disturbing the sum of both news: piles of money for manipulating education?.

I have checked.

First of all, Texas Education Agency is brilliant: hope we get something like it with our Quality Agencies. Second, the agency do not impose anything, it only recommends what external experts suggest. Now, talking about the contents, in the particular case of Carrie Capman Catt, El País says:

Se borrarán las iniciativas de la sufragista Carrie Chapman Catt

Well, the fact is that TEA suggests to delete her (see it here) but it also recommends to introduce Susan B. Anthony, earlier and rather more important that Capman (there is much more bibliography and much more material for further readings).

So in the particular case of women rights the TEA is clearly improving the education in Texas: ¡Así se escribe la historia!

PD By the way the TEA has made efforts to correct what the media says about what they are doing. In this case is the right-wing FOX that has distorted some of their initiatives.

Sundance Channel Architecture School

The initiative of Sundance Channel called Architecture School is of great interest.

The thing is that images, movement, visual contemplation are essential in architecture, however, it is really difficult to find good examples of filming architecture. Internet is the perfect media for making visual contents available, specially those in which architecture is unbeatable. To find the proper tone, the rhythm, the suitable filming style for architecture is not easy. Sundance AS gets really close the ideal.

The link takes you to the presentations of the protopypes done by the students of Tulane University for a house in New Orleans.

Light and movement

Digital animation in architecture is misleading: it "explains" so realistically a building that architectural values normally vanish automatically. The experience of architecture is synthetic and to animate an architectural representation requires truly creative skills. As it is an aesthetic fruition what is at stake an animation of architecture requires an artistic approach to give an account of it.

Just by chance, I am afraid, the video below has this value. It is by Henrik Wann Jensen (Stanford University) and Stephen Duck (MIT) and is intended to show the differences between Ray Tracing and Photon Mapping (the latter invented by Wann). The thing is that the model chosen is a unbuilt work of Mies van der Rohe and the video shows, besides the features of the computational tool, the living spirit of a non existing architectural masterpiece: light.

The Global and the Blog

Well, this is the first post in English in this blog. Restricted and opened that was the question, and finally the solution is going to be two blogs: one restricted in Spanish for the design studio group, with the students as co-authors, and this one open, in English. The theme of the post could not be better for the opening: A Global History of Architecture by F. Ching, Mark Jarzombek, and Vikramaditya Prakash.

I am going to comment the book after the summer vacations. Now I just want to point out that if we believe in an education centered in the learning process, and need to count on what the students already know, his/her cultural background are essential. If our students come form all over the world a global vision of the history of architecture is basic. The only way European thinking can be useful in global era is converting Eurocentrism in a responsible stand. Welcome to globalization.

Arquitectura integral

Make it Right (work in progress)

Iglesia Holy Rosary (2004)

St. Jean Viannery Church, Baton Rouge, Lousiana, USA, 1999

A través de Archinet me entero de la obra y el pensamiento de Trey Trahan, joven arquitecto norteamericano asentado en Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Da gusto toparse con un post como este por tres razones. Primero: la obra de Trey es ejemplar por su frescura, su compromiso y por su belleza. En segundo lugar: cuando Trey habla de su trabajo describe el punto de vista de un proyectista contemporáneo ejemplar (su mantra es la búsqueda paciente de la que hablaba Corbu). En tercer lugar la entrevista en sí misma es ejemplar: en ella se focaliza la atención en la arquitectura, la creación y la sociedad. La entrevistadora es Liz Martin, profesora del Southern Polytechnic State University que está en Georgia.

La arquitectura de Trey recoge el testigo de la buena época del despacho de Kevin Roche y John Dinkeloo (cuando hicieron la Ford Foundation de New York) e incorpora un toque sureño que reivindica lo local. La casa Make it Right es el encargo que le hizo Brad Pitt a Trahan a través de su fundación para reunir propuestas para reconstruir New Orleans: este sí que es el Star System con sensibilidad social.

Polémica corrección de proyectos

Esta "corrección de proyectos" de Peter Eisenman y Wolf D. Prix, fundador de Coop Himmelb(l)au y decano de la escuela de arquitectura de Viena, a una alumna del master de arquitectura de Yale University está dando la vuelta al mundo en internet. La fracción que muestra el video no es precisamente un ejemplo de lo que debe ser una sesión de crítica de proyectos: no se le da el trato adecuado al alumno y no se habla del proyecto. Vaya por delante que se trata de dos arquitectos de primera linea, esenciales para comprender la contemporaneidad arquitectónica y de una de las mejores escuelas del mundo, como ya he dicho en clase repetidas veces. Sin embargo se dicen cosas muy importantes en este jury: ¿se puede enseñar la arquitectura?, ¿cuales son sus principios?, ¿hay que ser clásico para después ser moderno?. Estas preguntas son verdaderamente esenciales. Tanto que Stanford Anderson en su curso de master de MIT de este año se pregunta cosas similares:

" Does examination of architectural production reveal characteristics that are unique to architectural thought — that cannot be reduced to the application of other disciplines? Are these architectural contributions consequential? Is there a discipline of architecture, and if so, how has, how can it be characterized? Is there a uniqueness to architecture and how can it be theorized? If there are to be schools of architecture, there had better be some affirmative, substantial answers to these questions. But it is not so easy."

El título del curso del profesor Anderson no puede ser más elocuente: Does Architecture Exists?

Koyaanisqatsi - Pruitt Igoe

Este vídeo es un fragmento de una excelente película con nombre imposible que sirve de ejemplo de cómo la crítica a la modernización ha salpicado al modernismo (Habermas). Es parte de una trilogía de un cineasta norteamericano, Godfrey Reggio, apadrinado nada menos que por Francis Ford Coppola, y que se dedica a criticar la vida moderna de una manera muy pero muy efectista y efectiva. La música es de un minimalista llamado Philip Glass. En el film aparece el conjunto residencial de Pruitt-Igoe, en St. Louis, Missouri, cuya demolición Charles Jenks usa en su libro El lenguaje de la arquitectura Postmoderna para anunciar la muerte de la arquitectura moderna, con hora y minuto de la defunción. Este es el link de un artículo que sostiene que el fracaso de Pruitt-Igoe tiene poco que ver con su premiado diseño y mucho con la gestión que de él se hizo: la pobre ejecución de las obras, la inexperiencia en integración, la coincidencia en el tiempo con la derogación por parte de un juez de las leyes de segregación racial, el regreso masivo de veteranos de Vietnam, la crisis economíca. PD: en el post del 27/03/09 está el trozo del video con la demolición de Pruitt-Igoe narrado por Robert Hudge el famoso crítico de arte australiano del New York Times.

¿Cuanto vale una casa de Kahn?

Con este titular encabeza el New YorK Times (What Price an Authentic Louis Kahn House?) la noticia de que la casa Esherick (1959) de Louis Kahn ha sido tasada en 3 millones de dolares. No es de extrañar que sea noticia porque sus actuales propietarios pagaron por ella 152.500 dolares en 1981. La casa está situada en Chestnut Hill en Philadelphia, la misma zona en la que Robert Venturi (su aventajado alumno) construyó la casa de su madre y de la cual hablaremos la próxima conferencia. Lo que son las cosas de la vida, Kahn hizo dos o tres casas en toda su carrera, y su despacho estuvo casi siempre al borde de la quiebra. De todas formas con Kahn pasa como con Woody Allen, se le aprecia más en Europa que en los propios EEUU: el precio que pagó el señor Gallagher por esa casa en los años ochenta denota que esa liebre estaba agazapada entre los muchos gatos de Chestnut Hill.