On collaboration

Halloween weekend was fun; we ended up going to two parties. Friday night, we went to the party hosted by the joint graduate councils of the fine arts and architecture schools. The stated vision of the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts centers on an idea of (Kemper art) museum, art, and architecture supporting and building on each other. So far by my experience, this is the only time I've seen art and architecture graduates interacting, let alone collaborating or sharing experience or whatever it is that the websites vision says we should do.
I must admit they did put on a great party. A grotesque severed head hung on a rack spewed forth rum punch, the ground was full of chalk outlines splattered with blood and odd missing parts, and the bathrooms were marked by a curtian of creepy mangled toy dolls hanging by thief necks. Better than that were the costumes as each tried either for obscure cinematic references, minutely detailed costumery, or absurd humor. The art students really liked our painted masks I have to say.

Saturday we drove to CWE, where there was a huge block party occupying a long stretch of street, comparable in scale and density to Tempe's Mill Ave. Lots of fun costumes, the most creative which took four actors to convey a hidden red light camera capturing a motorist. There were a few Nav'i who must have been cold, and the usual armies of captain Jack Sparrow. Our costumes attracted a lot of attention, and we posed for pictures several times.

Party at Dew's afterwards, which is always a wonderful mix of Asian food and students, guitars, social workers, booze, and architecture. Got into an interesting conversation with one of my Chinese studio mates who was decrying the state of the practice in China. There, the professional demand is so great that architects command a salary comparable to a lawyer or doctor. This has created an overwhelming majority of students who simply go to architecture for the money without any of the passion for the field. The schools, for thier part, are techical institutions where architectural theory and conceptual experimentation is ridiculed. I've actually heard this from other Chinese students.

It does impress on me a deeper respect for these students who are sacrificing easy positions and paying outrageous tuition to study architecture in a foriegn language, out of thier love of architecture and thier desire to study with students who share their passion.

Speaking of the school, and based on the comments of a few teachers as well as the work i have been doing, it would appear that there is a concerted push by the faculty to encourage group work. Actually, thus far, I have had group projects in every class, including studio, but only as far as site research goes. I am not opposed to group work; I do think the school is going abou it in the wrong way. First, in the professional environment, group work is hierarchical- there is an understood taskmaster or final arbiter. Without this hierarchy in an academic setting, group work is characterized by the leader who makes all the decisions and does a lot of the work, the student who would like to contribute but is marginalized by the over dominating leader, and the student who doesn't give a plying puck.

Some groups actually fall back on overly rigorous democracy, holding mini competitions and consensus based decision making to advance design. There is possibly a time and place for this, but if you are trying to teach students to work collaboratively, they need more teaching. It wouldn't take more than a few hours workshop to teach some basic principals and organizational strategies. The most helpful thing any teacher has said regarding group work is that group work doesn't make less work per person, it actually creates more work, but that the value lay in the collision of ideas and viewpoints.

Studio is definately taking it's toll on my weight- I've lost about 5-10 pounds, bringing me back to my undergraduate weight. On the plus side, I have a really nice pair of D&G jeans that fit me perfectly now.