Thread by @kevinklink

The big lie of architectural education

Last week I had the opportunity to visit a bucket list place of mine, @LasCatalinas in Costa Rica. This new community was conceived of by @charlesbrew and dates only to 2006 for the property acquisition. So in less than 20 years, his team has built what’s in the photos.

Simply put, the community is gorgeous. It’s humane, being largely car-free. It’s kid-friendly. It’s beautifully integrated into the hilly landscape.

But mostly what was on my mind is what this place tells me about the six years of architecture school I had, way back when….

What most non-architects don’t understand, and would find crazy, is that architecture school is mostly an exercise in ideological indoctrination.

Nearly every school in the US, and most in other countries, teaches an ideology that came out of the wreckage of WWI. It’s simply that we are in a new, modern era, and we can’t look to the past anymore. We are just can’t build buildings like our ancestors, nor should we. That’s the sum and substance of school, along with the notion that every individual is his or her own creative genius.

You think you’re going to school to learn how to make beautiful buildings, but you’re actually paying to become a cult member.

In architecture school, you literally get poor grades for drawing a well-executed, simple design based off of historic traditions that the majority of people would find lovely.

No joke: I once listened to my professors critique a fellow student’s work that was nothing more than a single line on paper. So you also learn how to be an expert bullshitter.

The entire point of education at times appears to be creating bizarre self-referential work that only your fellow inmates can appreciate.

It’s long been known there’s an enormous gulf between what architects like and what the public likes.

So when you visit a new place designed on old principles, it’s like a glitch in the matrix. How is this possible? You mean we can build buildings and communities like this? This does not compute!

The New Urbanism gets more than its fair share of criticisms, and it’s ok - bring it on. But at its core it’s always been about just making more places that humans love, instead of so much mass-produced garbage of the last 100 years.

Make no mistake, it’s really hard, and it’s expensive to do this. But if we had a few hundred developers doing it, instead of a handful, it would rapidly become more affordable and accessible.

What I simply can’t tolerate anymore are the really dumb arguments that beauty doesn’t matter, or it’s not possible, or blah blah blah “of our time.” In the aftermath of time, it’s so clear those are just ideologies meant to create conformity and ugliness, while degrading anything our ancestors built.

Yes of course we must build with what we have, it’s smart to use some of our modern materials and methods, but it should all be in service of creating what @stevemouzon calls “lovable places.”

I look forward to having @charlesbrew on the Messy City podcast soon to talk about his experience building this incredible community and gift to humanity.

These are just my gut reactions as an architect, I expect we will talk about his thoughts and the nuts and bolts.