From the moment you walk through the doors there is this smell about the place, it smells clean almost overpoweringly so, but looking around at the dimly lit lecture hall, the magic box, the warehouse’s concrete material you get a sense immediately that you are in some sort of strange lab. It reaches an almost disturbing level when you are walking down a corridor with nothing but empty chairs and piles of unused desks under some parametric fabric ceiling design with little to no one around except for a few creepy models that are moving and filling the void in the building with their mechanical shifting. Then some ‘LA looking’ guys ride by you on their scooters with their pit bull. For me, this all felt very familiar. From the work to the environment to the people, I grew up around all of this. The design school, a refurbished warehouse environment, immediately brought me back to all the long nights I spent in South Campus at Art Center, minus the AC. The work surprisingly was familiar as well, it seemed like the kind of work the Andy from a year ago, just getting into architecture school would strive to make. He wanted to make a statement and be different in the design world which accurately sums up the design culture at SCI-Arc.
After a month-long program, Making and Meaning, I now have time to reflect on what exactly happened. SCI-Arc is a dangerous institution. Not dangerous as in shady-neighborhood-dangerous, but as a school it operates on a knife’s edge between avant-garde and atrociously bad work. Like many of my professors have said time and time again, “if SCI-Arc didn’t exist, a school just like it would have to.” A school that pushes the possibilities in architecture and design will always exist in one form and another; it just so happens to be in LA. This sort of understanding of what the school overall does from my observations seems to infest the minds of the students, whether they know it or not, and it tells them they need to be unique, their work needs to be different and that in that novelty lies some form of success. It is this mentality that makes SCI-Arc so dangerous.
Over the years SCI-Arc has slowly built up a reputation that has given their alumni a certain skillset that has become a known quantity in the field to some degree. This reputation has also begun to affect the students who come to the school. In preparation for the program I read a short essay by Orhan Ayyuce, a SCI-Arc alumni, titled SCI-Arc, Nightmare of Sameness. Walking through thesis projects and through gallery work his words were fixed in my mind, “After the first few, you have seen them all look. My friend and I kept walking and hoping to see perhaps a different section but, really, only the instructors names stenciled above the pedestaled groupings were changed.” I had a similar experience to this going through the final review for the Making and Meaning program. As designs, all the projects looked similar. There were variations on typologies, but largely they resembled one another. Which doesn’t mean that good work was nowhere to be seen, just that the parameters of the assignment only allowed for so many permutations. Though if you only listened to the presentations and not the work, you would never have guessed that. Every project had its own special characteristic or some unique process that distinguished each person’s results from ‘the rest,’ to such a degree that most presentations began with, “so looking around the studio I saw that everyone was going this way and I wanted to go my different way.” Words that, when the work came into the equation, didn’t hold up.
This desire to push the field and innovate in the context of design school today creates an inherent struggle in the student’s projects which I see as Identity v. Design. The decisions the SCI-Arc students make to advance a project are either a result of their desire to separate their work from their classmates, or for the design of the project itself. Though I would need to spend more time observing their actual studio and thesis classes and reviews, from what I have seen so far it seems that 95% of the work tends more towards Identity, which is most likely even higher in introductory studios with beginner designers. I am familiar with this project approach because I spent an entire year using it at Syracuse and immediately recognized it when I saw it rear its ugly head at SCI-Arc. As I have come to learn, Identity driven projects produce lesser designs. Identity driven projects are not about advancing the field or producing beautiful work, it is a selfish mission to separate ‘your’ project from an entire studio’s work which at SCI-Arc happens to be what everyone else in the studio is also doing. Design driven projects are about making decisions to elevate what is inherently good or beautiful about the project itself, to me a more mature and ego-less aspiration that I believe some SCI-Arc students can or have definitely reached with the amazing faculty there, but what about the other 95% of the students? I think for those students who don’t go on to work at big firms, for those students who feel like they have wasted their money and time I think the issue lies in today’s design education as a whole.
Everything is too rushed. Do you expect a world class architect to come straight out of a five year program anywhere? To do so requires an understanding, sensibility, and ability to design at a professional level; a knowledge of architectural history and theory at a professional level; a traveled person who has experienced tons of different environments built and natural, and on and on go the qualifications. It is impossible, but those are the expectations we set for design schools. Scaling the issue down to this Making and Meaning program in this case. The program is designed to be “a four-week summer program … that introduces the principles of architecture in hands-on exploration of spatial experimentation, design methodologies and the creative process.” An introduction to architecture in four weeks is insanity. What do you possibly teach? Much credit is due to the program’s coordinators for figuring out an elegant solution, but their list of the omitted topics would stretch longer than SCI-Arc’s unending hallway. I think the argument I am trying to make here is that a lifelong pursuit of learning should be encouraged over a five year period of study that will prepare one to be a professional designer, but that is not what students want and that is not what schools are paid to do. Design schools are career prep. It is all for the end goal of getting a job, and during that process, hopefully, learn how to design,. But if we look at reviews for example, each person in the month-long program presented their final project for three to five minutes together with three of their classmates to a jury of ten. The jury then talked about the studio’s work overall for twenty minutes with just a few sentences referencing a project or two and then it was time to move on. The only option to succeed in this sort of system it seems is to stand out. Perhaps that is why SCI-Arc’s philosophy resonates so strongly with their students. Each want their work to be their own and to be great, but with the rush of their education, the reality of this is unlikely.
Design culture aside, I thoroughly enjoyed my time at SCI-Arc. If there is a fun place to learn architecture, it is without a doubt there. The atmosphere is always buzzing with activity of friendly, but stressed out, faces everywhere you go, whether its faculty, first years, or grad students. Without a doubt one of the main reasons if I were to ever come to SCI-Arc in the future would be for its faculty. My introduction to their roster was through Alexis Rochas, Matthew Au, and Emmett Zeifman. In four short weeks they managed to push me to realize new things about my design process and also as Alexis puts it they, “started to chip away at [my] stubbornness.” Each brought a wealth of experience and knowledge that made me suspicious as to why this quality of teaching, if indicative of the rest of the faculty at SCI-Arc, could produce such hit-or-miss student work, which led me to my conclusions in the past few paragraphs. Another big upside to being at SCI-Arc are the twins, Chris and Paris, who run the Black Fig. Greatest architecture school café in the world – hands down. Syracuse’s Slocum Hall café is alright. Cornell’s Green Dragon is ok. I’m definitely driving the half an hour to SCI-Arc whenever I come back to have a burger and some mac and cheese and chat with the twins. All-in-all from facilities, to faculty, to the atmosphere, to the people at the school this really is a one-of-a-kind genuinely fun place to learn. Would I go here though? As of now, no.
If I had grown up around architecture and architects with a lifelong dream of becoming an architect, perhaps getting to SCI-Arc would have been my goal, perhaps it would be where I felt I belonged. I fully believe that I would love my time there, I could see myself growing so much, and I could see myself melting from the heat. If I spent my first year at SCI-Arc my life would be so different now. I would be trapped in the Identity vs. Design dilemma with my ‘crazy’ work trying its best to stand out above the rest of the work trying to do the same. If I went now, the professors would be pushing me to new heights and I would be pushing the program. But I think going to SCI-Arc is, as I said, dangerous. I felt that I could get trapped in the LA architectural design tag that seems to follow anyone who comes out of this system. Perhaps in the future, when I know what I want to do with my design, when I know that SCI-Arc has who and what I need to grow further, but as of now I won’t be transferring again anytime soon.
All throughout the program, Alexis has stressed the guiding principle behind Making and Meaning that we were, “executing half formed ideas fully.” After this summer I have come to understand that SCI-Arc as an architecture school tries to redefine design with half formed designers.
After a month-long program, Making and Meaning, I now have time to reflect on what exactly happened. SCI-Arc is a dangerous institution. Not dangerous as in shady-neighborhood-dangerous, but as a school it operates on a knife’s edge between avant-garde and atrociously bad work. Like many of my professors have said time and time again, “if SCI-Arc didn’t exist, a school just like it would have to.” A school that pushes the possibilities in architecture and design will always exist in one form and another; it just so happens to be in LA. This sort of understanding of what the school overall does from my observations seems to infest the minds of the students, whether they know it or not, and it tells them they need to be unique, their work needs to be different and that in that novelty lies some form of success. It is this mentality that makes SCI-Arc so dangerous.
Over the years SCI-Arc has slowly built up a reputation that has given their alumni a certain skillset that has become a known quantity in the field to some degree. This reputation has also begun to affect the students who come to the school. In preparation for the program I read a short essay by Orhan Ayyuce, a SCI-Arc alumni, titled SCI-Arc, Nightmare of Sameness. Walking through thesis projects and through gallery work his words were fixed in my mind, “After the first few, you have seen them all look. My friend and I kept walking and hoping to see perhaps a different section but, really, only the instructors names stenciled above the pedestaled groupings were changed.” I had a similar experience to this going through the final review for the Making and Meaning program. As designs, all the projects looked similar. There were variations on typologies, but largely they resembled one another. Which doesn’t mean that good work was nowhere to be seen, just that the parameters of the assignment only allowed for so many permutations. Though if you only listened to the presentations and not the work, you would never have guessed that. Every project had its own special characteristic or some unique process that distinguished each person’s results from ‘the rest,’ to such a degree that most presentations began with, “so looking around the studio I saw that everyone was going this way and I wanted to go my different way.” Words that, when the work came into the equation, didn’t hold up.
This desire to push the field and innovate in the context of design school today creates an inherent struggle in the student’s projects which I see as Identity v. Design. The decisions the SCI-Arc students make to advance a project are either a result of their desire to separate their work from their classmates, or for the design of the project itself. Though I would need to spend more time observing their actual studio and thesis classes and reviews, from what I have seen so far it seems that 95% of the work tends more towards Identity, which is most likely even higher in introductory studios with beginner designers. I am familiar with this project approach because I spent an entire year using it at Syracuse and immediately recognized it when I saw it rear its ugly head at SCI-Arc. As I have come to learn, Identity driven projects produce lesser designs. Identity driven projects are not about advancing the field or producing beautiful work, it is a selfish mission to separate ‘your’ project from an entire studio’s work which at SCI-Arc happens to be what everyone else in the studio is also doing. Design driven projects are about making decisions to elevate what is inherently good or beautiful about the project itself, to me a more mature and ego-less aspiration that I believe some SCI-Arc students can or have definitely reached with the amazing faculty there, but what about the other 95% of the students? I think for those students who don’t go on to work at big firms, for those students who feel like they have wasted their money and time I think the issue lies in today’s design education as a whole.
Everything is too rushed. Do you expect a world class architect to come straight out of a five year program anywhere? To do so requires an understanding, sensibility, and ability to design at a professional level; a knowledge of architectural history and theory at a professional level; a traveled person who has experienced tons of different environments built and natural, and on and on go the qualifications. It is impossible, but those are the expectations we set for design schools. Scaling the issue down to this Making and Meaning program in this case. The program is designed to be “a four-week summer program … that introduces the principles of architecture in hands-on exploration of spatial experimentation, design methodologies and the creative process.” An introduction to architecture in four weeks is insanity. What do you possibly teach? Much credit is due to the program’s coordinators for figuring out an elegant solution, but their list of the omitted topics would stretch longer than SCI-Arc’s unending hallway. I think the argument I am trying to make here is that a lifelong pursuit of learning should be encouraged over a five year period of study that will prepare one to be a professional designer, but that is not what students want and that is not what schools are paid to do. Design schools are career prep. It is all for the end goal of getting a job, and during that process, hopefully, learn how to design,. But if we look at reviews for example, each person in the month-long program presented their final project for three to five minutes together with three of their classmates to a jury of ten. The jury then talked about the studio’s work overall for twenty minutes with just a few sentences referencing a project or two and then it was time to move on. The only option to succeed in this sort of system it seems is to stand out. Perhaps that is why SCI-Arc’s philosophy resonates so strongly with their students. Each want their work to be their own and to be great, but with the rush of their education, the reality of this is unlikely.
Design culture aside, I thoroughly enjoyed my time at SCI-Arc. If there is a fun place to learn architecture, it is without a doubt there. The atmosphere is always buzzing with activity of friendly, but stressed out, faces everywhere you go, whether its faculty, first years, or grad students. Without a doubt one of the main reasons if I were to ever come to SCI-Arc in the future would be for its faculty. My introduction to their roster was through Alexis Rochas, Matthew Au, and Emmett Zeifman. In four short weeks they managed to push me to realize new things about my design process and also as Alexis puts it they, “started to chip away at [my] stubbornness.” Each brought a wealth of experience and knowledge that made me suspicious as to why this quality of teaching, if indicative of the rest of the faculty at SCI-Arc, could produce such hit-or-miss student work, which led me to my conclusions in the past few paragraphs. Another big upside to being at SCI-Arc are the twins, Chris and Paris, who run the Black Fig. Greatest architecture school café in the world – hands down. Syracuse’s Slocum Hall café is alright. Cornell’s Green Dragon is ok. I’m definitely driving the half an hour to SCI-Arc whenever I come back to have a burger and some mac and cheese and chat with the twins. All-in-all from facilities, to faculty, to the atmosphere, to the people at the school this really is a one-of-a-kind genuinely fun place to learn. Would I go here though? As of now, no.
If I had grown up around architecture and architects with a lifelong dream of becoming an architect, perhaps getting to SCI-Arc would have been my goal, perhaps it would be where I felt I belonged. I fully believe that I would love my time there, I could see myself growing so much, and I could see myself melting from the heat. If I spent my first year at SCI-Arc my life would be so different now. I would be trapped in the Identity vs. Design dilemma with my ‘crazy’ work trying its best to stand out above the rest of the work trying to do the same. If I went now, the professors would be pushing me to new heights and I would be pushing the program. But I think going to SCI-Arc is, as I said, dangerous. I felt that I could get trapped in the LA architectural design tag that seems to follow anyone who comes out of this system. Perhaps in the future, when I know what I want to do with my design, when I know that SCI-Arc has who and what I need to grow further, but as of now I won’t be transferring again anytime soon.
All throughout the program, Alexis has stressed the guiding principle behind Making and Meaning that we were, “executing half formed ideas fully.” After this summer I have come to understand that SCI-Arc as an architecture school tries to redefine design with half formed designers.