On Architecture Schools

Today was an interesting day of firsts.

I used the laser cutter for the first time. Ever. When I was at ASU, which had one laser cutter, it was a pretty big deal to use it and pretty much only upperclassmen were allowed access to it and they really only used it for final models. I was never interested in it because it was such a machined product, it sucked the life out of a handmade model, it made our architecture look like something mass-produced in China. I was also biased against it in that kind of luddite-pride-conflated-with-technological-ignorance. I just never learned to use it as a tool.

Three years down the road, at Wash U, with three laser cutters, people use the laser cutters even for desk critiques, which is pretty much every week. Almost everything at this school is laser cut, and the smell of burning plastic and wood is prevalent. I still don't like it- it is useful for cutting contour topographies, but I would never want to use it for buildings.

There is a kind of material palate native to each architecture school- the laser cutter is obviously one of them. Back at ASU, there were the usual basswood, chipboard, and cardboard models. But there was also use of concrete and plaster, which I have not seen here. Wash U is a lot more toxic- the heavier use of laser cutting opens up a wide range of plastics to form, burn, (and inhale). HDPE, acrylic, plexiglass. Styrene is in huge use here. It's kind of a neat material to make models from- one ends up with a smooth white object, but the glue is a toxic nightmare with the consistency of water that chemically melts the styrene to bond it. Students apply it with metal syringes and they call it "poison". The MSDSs for it are terrifying.

Actually, I had to make a run to Walgreens to pick up some syringes, as I was in fact, cutting styrene and needing to use poison to put it together. Walgreen's sells a variety of medical grade syringes, and pretty cheaply too, actually. I'm not sure how I came across when I asked "do you sell syringes? I need a syringe with a large resivoir." but oh well. At least they are pretty cheap, although the long sharp needle is a constant safety concern for me. I move very carefully and slowly with the syringe. The only thing I would imagine worse than ingesting this poison is accidently injecting it.

I'm taking a history of the Architectural Association class which has an incredible amount of reading as homework. However, the readings are absolutely astounding and astonishing, texts that have shaped architecture and proposed ideas that strike me as incredibly radical compared to those of which I have been exposed as a student. Bourdieu's Distinction: a Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, which is an extremely intense look at why we judge taste the way we do. The AA, Peter Cook, and Alvin Boyarsky who set themselves up at heretics- there's a reason why we don't read them in school:

Peter Cook- "You have to be some kind of nut to create good architecture."
Alvin Boyarsky- "I think students working together in large studios is one of the most stultifying things that you can imagine- that's why so much architectural education is so poor. It's trade union stuff. You know you go into a studio and students are all working on the same project. They more or less decide how many sheets of paper they're going to hand in and how its going to be drawn. They watch each other every day of the week, every hour of the day to see what's new, so that there are never any novel moves possible and the teachers can walk around the studio in each other's shoes, saying approximately the same things."

Boyarsky gets better: "I would never use professional standards as a measure for education. I mean, if you think of what all those whores out there are doing....professionalism is a curious thing. You get some crummy office that's been doing the same thing for ten years- figuring how to get through the codes or whatever, and just because they're doing it, that doesn't make them professionals."

Boyarsky, by the way, was the director of the AA, who really lead the school out of its worst state imaginable in the mid 1970s to the institution it is today.