Wanted: architects trained in placemaking

University architecture schools need a new emphasis on contextual urbanism, vernacular and classical architecture, and a Modernism that supports the fabric of the community, according to participants at the Windsor Forum on Design Education, which took place in the Town of Windsor in Vero Beach, Florida, April 12-14, 2002. Sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Town of Windsor, the JM Kaplan Fund, and The University of Miami School of Architecture, the forum was attended by about 40 participants, including architecture deans and professors, private architects, academics in other fields, and other professionals. The forum focused on proposals for reform of the architectural curriculum. Participants suggested strategies for reestablishing the urban context as the foundation for the teaching and study of architecture. Working with urban forms requires a discipline that students need, according to Paul Murrain, a director of the Prince’s Urban Network in London. “Creativity comes from constraint,” Murrain says. “You give (architecture students) the constraint of the city, and that’s what takes them beyond self-conscious originality to creativity.” In arguing for reform, many participants cited the 1996 Boyer Report, funded by the Carnegie Foundation, which faulted architecture education for its lack of connection to architecture practice, and for producing students ill prepared for the real world. Attending professionals told stories of young designers who could not draw, measure buildings, calculate the foundation required for a brick wall, or, especially, design buildings in context. Many participants added that schools don’t teach classical and vernacular architectural styles — the result is a gap in knowledge among professional architects in these areas. In its attempt to bring back the art and craft of making interconnected neighborhoods, the New Urbanism relies to a great degree on classical and vernacular design ideas. When Modernism is employed in new urbanist communities, it is usually a Modernism restrained by codes and guidelines. The one exception is civic buildings, which tend not to be coded in new urban communities. The bottom line is that the New Urbanism needs architects capable of designing modernist, classical, and vernacular buildings in context. Architects might benefit from the New Urbanism, too. For a profession that is increasingly marginalized to designing a relatively small number of buildings for wealthy patrons and clients, the New Urbanism and smart growth promise a broader impact on the built environment. Mainstream architectural education serves neither smart growth nor the profession adequately, according to many participants. Contextual Modernism Presenters at the forum offered models for reform. One example is the Cornell University architecture and urban planning program under the leadership of the late Colin Rowe from the 1960s through the 1980s. Steven Hurtt, dean of the University of Maryland architecture school, who attended Cornell in the 1960s, reports that Cornell’s teaching was based on the assumption that “modern architecture could be an urban architecture, and could be informed by context.” Cornell had a strong site planning tradition and emphasized the exploration of the block and the street. “Space and object were held in more of a balance (than in other schools), and finally there was more of an emphasis on space than object.” When Postmodernism brought the “architecture of cultural critique” to the forefront of the typical curriculum, the Cornell school went against the grain. The program taught a method of critique “referring to a body of knowledge within architecture, as opposed to a critique using purely cultural references.” Hurtt refers to this school as “contextualism.” Architect Andres Duany says Cornell produced “just plain old good architects.” With the departure of Colin Rowe, Cornell turned to a more conventional postmodernist paradigm, but its model lives on to a degree in places like the University of Maryland. The University of Miami, under the leadership of dean Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, teaches students by taking them into the field — often to historic places with pressing problems to be solved. Students study, measure, and catalog vernacular architecture in towns and cities throughout the US and as far away as Turkey, Japan, and Germany. Students draw urban plans and design buildings to fit within those plans, while partnering with nonprofit developers. Miami professor Joanna Lombard compares the approach of conventional architecture schools to a highly refined form of plastic surgery. “While they are doing tummy tucks, we’re in the emergency room,” she says. The University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, and the Institute of Classical Architecture in New York City were presented as model programs grounded in the principles of classicism. Notre Dame students spend a year in Rome, immersed in the best examples of classical architecture. A hallmark of all these programs is their eagerness to influence the built environment using practical, hands-on methods. Notre Dame is directly involved in community planning through its South Bend Community Design Center. The University of Maryland launched the National Smart Growth Education and Research Center. The Institute for Classical Architecture is working with major Florida builders to improve the exterior of their home designs. Miami is directly involved with community planning through its curriculum. Creating model curricula Five alternative curricula were suggested — all of which incorporated, at least to some degree, the rural-urban Transect concept as a means to teach students contextual design. The Transect is an organizing system for urbanism developed by Duany, which suggests design conventions and building typologies based on the intensity of the surrounding urban environment. The Transect does not depend on any architectural style, but it is based on observable urban patterns that have been built throughout history and continue to be in use today all over the world. Some proposals suggested strengthening landscape and environmental education, e.g., with courses on design for stormwater management in urban and suburban contexts. Participants stressed the need for making basic drawing skills central in all the alternative curricula. “I’m glad to see that most people agree that drawing is still an essential skill not to be replaced by the computer,” says Dhiru Thadani, a former academic at three universities who is now in private architectural practice. Forum organizers will publish a synthesis of the sessions to be distributed to architectural schools — in the hopes that it will prompt discourse and change. Thadani believes that the suggested reforms will take the form of a set of goals, from which schools can choose pieces that serve their needs. Another potential point of influence is to seek changes through the National Architectural Accrediting Board, which meets every three years and sets curriculum requirements for architecture programs. Ultimately, more urbanists are needed in faculty positions, says Ellen Dunham-Jones, director of the Georgia Tech program. David Mohney, dean of the College of Architecture at the University of Kentucky, believes that a shift is taking place in design education, and that many schools will be open to the ideas presented at Windsor. “This is an encouraging first step,” he says. “But I don’t think it is as long a journey as people think.”