as much as I loved my grad arch school, part of this project needs to be about understanding how the formal/aesthetic aspects of my architectural pedagogy might be deeply racist, or denialist in the privileging of form, concept, agency, design in architectural spaces
design focused on authorship, identity, difference is deeply problematic. It treats space as being about trying to be as “non-fungible” as possible, a “unique product” rather than a living thing that is deeply connected to our notions of community and relation
the notion of “new designs” is also deeply problematic; (I forget whose argument this is)
The focus on newness is a fundamentally market driven understanding of architecture, where value is achieved through distinction from other spaces. Spaces $ because they’re not like others
The focus on newness is a fundamentally market driven understanding of architecture, where value is achieved through distinction from other spaces. Spaces $ because they’re not like others
most of architectural pedagogy is a kind of giant commodity fetishizaton of a space. architecture is valued by a logic that is a logic of the market, not about SPACE ITSELF. How space is monetarily priced becomes how space is valued.
Or in other words: in architecture, instead of really caring about space first, then understanding second that different spaces might have different prices on a real estate market..
we are conditioned to care about space based on how much a profit oriented market pays for it
we are conditioned to care about space based on how much a profit oriented market pays for it
And the qualities of the market have actually become transmuted into the default pedagogical philosophies of most “”top”” architecture schools. This is what Marx calls reification - things appearing to have inherent ‘properties’ that actually come from social relations
A real estate market being reified into pedagogy would focus on newness and innovation in the studio pinup as a method to have unique and desirable “products” of space, teach implicitly that we should strive to have designs that are different from each other, a product mindset
A property-ist pedagogy influenced by fine art historical (art market) discourse would focus on authorship, and celebrate designers by tossing around their names, or focus on their bodies of work, or focus on the idea of “The Practice”
The commodity-ist architecture pedagogy/discourse that we seem to have is all about space, design, form, concept, all about space itself, focusing on the qualities of the commodity, not its relations, not its participation within an ecology of social relations and politics
Let me be specific: are architects trained for spatial contexts where “not designing anything” is the right answer? NO. Hence the “design a better border wall / design a better prison trap”. What would design pedagogy be if it was open to the possibility of not designing?
And I don’t mean some sort of shitty paper architecture conceptual play (very fun and meaningless tbh). I mean not designing where the “design” is the problematic part, the “architecture as commodity” is the part to transform
What would an architecture school, a spatial school look like, when commodity logics aren’t absorbed and taken as pedagogical logics??
What would an architecture school look like if space was defetishized, seen for what it actually FEELS, SUPPORTS, CREATES between people - and we used that logic of social relations and politics instead?
At this school, the anticapitalist, the antiracist, decolonialist, abolitionist, transformative justice school of my dreams, our dreams, design projects would not result in a jury or a critic. Instead, you would have a group that you’re working with, and the end of the project ..
would result in the entire group just saying thoughtful and nice things about the group’s project. This would be because the whole POINT of the semester would be about learning to facilitate a conversation, to cooperate and listen, and find a consensus around the shared project.
Projects would not be thought of as “design” projects and representations would focus on social systems, politics, emotions, proxemics, rather than just visual aesthetics. Like Fanon’s sociogeny but applied onto space
As the coordinator of an exploratory arch representation course for all M.Archs at Columbia GSAPP, I’m working on this, but want to push it further. Every architectural representation should involve a discussion on the politics of that type of representation.
Not just the politics of renderings, say, but even asking the question: why the fuck is it that in architecture school, pedagogy continues to focus on an examination of even a drawing “about” the building - plans, sections, diagrams, renderings, etc etc
Why do attempts to answer this question often seem to land in a politics-bereft and easily instrumentalized paper architecture that just continues the commodity fetish space, then playing back into boosting architectural representation even further
I know what I’m saying might seem like an “old topic” in arch and the same argument gets rehashed over and over — but I am talking about arch pedagogy’s need to deeply connect to to radical politics and social justice and the pedagogy thst would emerge from it
(This is getting strangely long-winded, so I will try to summarize in another thread)
(Actually, I may just have to keep on going for now and summarize later)
tldr: arch pedagogy logic is real estate logic
tldr: arch pedagogy logic is real estate logic
Context: I’ve been down at #OccupyCityHall / #abolitionplaza for a few days. It feels growing, shining, caring, safe, funny, excited, calm. I remember being at Occupy Wall Street during grad school days. No exaggeration - my understanding of space permanently changed afterwards
A friend - Demitra K - and I, after going to Zuccotti, would go into the @ColumbiaGSAPP studios and tried to tell our friends that going there was so much more important to our architectural education than a studio. We’d coax friends to come
Now I see: the societies that we can envision though OWS and occupy city hall are and have to be abolitionist futures, transformative justice futures, one in which our understanding of space needs to be DEEPLY connected to space, social relations, community care, repair
In a carceral society, our understandings of space are deeply connected to imprisonment, and also property and boundary. How has the PIC wormed its way into our architectural imaginations? How has white supremacy and fear of the Other fundamentally structured space?
At zuccotti, people mostly slept in enclosed tents; at abolition plaza everyone sleeps outside, next to each other. the abolitionist chant is that we keep us safe.
Is this just a coincidence, that the Black-led abolitionist occupation is about sharing space next to each other while the oft white-dominated Occupy was about having enclosed, personal territories?
IN ANY case, back to pedagogy. If we understand and see what space can ACTUALLY finally be about, then pedagogy needs to shift - from commodity pedagogy to transformative justice pedagogy
What would a transformative justice spatial pedagogy look like day to day, in its practice, not in theory? Some thoughts:
(caveat: I am still learning and I imagine that many people are probably doing this Work already. I can see how much more I can learn and am excited for it)
(caveat: I am still learning and I imagine that many people are probably doing this Work already. I can see how much more I can learn and am excited for it)
1. No final reviews. architectural review culture is real estate product culture. Communal collaboration culture would like discussing, listening, laughing, exploring. Like volunteer culture.
When you finish a project you should feel like you collaborated or facilitated an great time working on a hard project with people. Reviews being performances is deeply deeply problematic, the more we think about it.
2. No fucking grades. Not only do grades get in the way of learning, GRADING CULTURE IS COP CULTURE
In the grad students I’ve had in the past 6 years of teaching, SO Amuch of my teaching has been about undoing harm and trauma around grades so that we can actually LEARN and explore as a group, not as a coercive student-teacher power dynamic
At least, that’s what my own teaching has _attempted_, about pushing against grading culture within an already toxic environment of high pressure architecture Ivy League grad school.
(This isn’t a subtweet of GSAPP specifically, which at least has pass fail and a reportedly more thoughtful studio culture compared to other organizations, but an indictment of something endemic across Architectural Discourse and capA architectural pedagogy)
3. Spatial designs aren’t visual ones. Aesthetics and vision are de-emphasized. Architectural image culture is real estate commodity culture.
4. Projects aren’t expected to be “new” and “original”, nor are they expected to be historical. Architectural projects aren’t compared between each other, or at least done so to avoid commodity culture. Architectural newness culture is commodity branding culture.
5. Architecture teachers (if they exist) have roles based on the ideal ways that space is collectively altered:
facilitator-trainers (collaboration),
engineers (building &planning),
movement organizers (supporting & maintaining),
‘play’ers (joy, pleasure, connection)
facilitator-trainers (collaboration),
engineers (building &planning),
movement organizers (supporting & maintaining),
‘play’ers (joy, pleasure, connection)
6. Group classes (if they exist) are structured like collective research practices, specifically so that each person’s work benefits and enriches everyone else’s
(And I actually have specifc actionable ideas on how to structure a class like this, using Zoom and collaboration tools for the fall semester, and am planning my classes this way. Happy to share more)
The Jigsaw learning technique, developed as a racial desegregation learning practice in 1971 in the US, or @niloufar_s’s lab’s idea of a Hive collective formation process niloufar.org/publications/2… are inspiring me lately for ways to think about this kind of pedagogy and play
7. (should be #1 but I had thought it was too obvious)
The pedagogy curriculum is grounded in reading anti-racist, decolonialist, abolitionist thought, especially by Black feminist writers, being able to deeply SEE spaces of a deeply problematic history and a yearned-for future
The pedagogy curriculum is grounded in reading anti-racist, decolonialist, abolitionist thought, especially by Black feminist writers, being able to deeply SEE spaces of a deeply problematic history and a yearned-for future
every thought I read and encounter and learn from is personally and slowly blowing my mind, and I catch these really powerful glimpses of what that abolitionist future could be
8. Spatial projects are understood to be social, financial, racial, about gender, race, class, education, access, oppression, bias. Where is the STS (Science and Technology Studies) of architecture? (Is geography studies like this? is there a geography “design” studies?)
9. Spatial projects begin the conversation around MAINTENANCE, not construction. I mean: spaces are thought of as maintained ecologies and gardens, not as an environment that is “built”.
@stewartbrand: “A building is not something you finish. A building is something you start”
@stewartbrand: “A building is not something you finish. A building is something you start”
Thinking about the @The_Maintainers, @shannonmattern on maintenance and care (placesjournal.org/article/mainte…), Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s work, and @adriennemaree’s Emergent Strategy, connecting movement work to space
This is, of course, often feminized labor or termed ‘domestic labor’ and implied to be undesirable; this would be feminist antipatriarchical pedagogy, classes or reading groups would discuss how spatial discourse & pedagogy has been deeply distorted and limited by the patriarchy
10. At this school, conversations would fundamentally involve talking about space, exclusivity, access. How a space can aesthetically transmit hostility or exclusivity that align and PERFORM with racism and classism
Or how binary-gendered bathrooms are a spatial layout that actively construct and reinforce a gender binary, as @QSAPP_ and @QSPACEarch and @melanieh0ff have been thinking about
11. Oh and this should be #2, also too obvious I forgot:
architectural pedagogy would be explicitly grounded in studies and histories of spatial inequality, redlining, displacement, and systematic racism. (Not once in my time in M. Arch school did I learn about Seneca Village!)
architectural pedagogy would be explicitly grounded in studies and histories of spatial inequality, redlining, displacement, and systematic racism. (Not once in my time in M. Arch school did I learn about Seneca Village!)
Okay. And because I have to go to bed, I will end this list (even though there’s so much more) with my dream of a transformative abolitionist school:
The dream school isn’t a school.
An abolitionist society doesn’t need cops for us to be safe OR schools for us to learn. As bell hooks & Ivan Illich & Paulo Freire write: we can have deschooled society and liberatory & transgressive learning.
we keep us safe / we teach each other
An abolitionist society doesn’t need cops for us to be safe OR schools for us to learn. As bell hooks & Ivan Illich & Paulo Freire write: we can have deschooled society and liberatory & transgressive learning.
we keep us safe / we teach each other
The dream school is a society, a collective — thnking of @melanieh0ff’s heartful, touching Code Societies at @sfpc sfpc.io/codesocieties2…
This transformative architectural “school” or learning society would be about *taking care of a space together.*
Imagine this:
The learning collective is also a community center. We collectively run programs and maintain/change the building.
Imagine this:
The learning collective is also a community center. We collectively run programs and maintain/change the building.
We learn and discuss how to maintain, update, create community programs. How do we change the space accordingly? We discuss, listen, argue, laugh. We think about social, political, ecological impact. We renovate the building, or try new technologies if they help us serve others.
In this learning community, learning society, we learn about space by... making it. Shaping it. Creating it. Thinking about finances, space, accessibility, budget, anti-racism, decision-making process, transformative conflict resolution, harm repair. And we have fun doing so!
Perhaps this long thread is another way to say: I have been so honored and lucky to have been part of starting and maintaining and GROWing the communal and cooperative spaces of @primeproduce and Soft Surplus, and am grateful for my collaborators in our wild adventures
There are soo many collaborators that I feel like my heart sinks at the prospect of leaving someone out, so I almost do not want to say further and stop speaking for these projects with my voice. I talked a little bit about this here with @willak: thecreativeindependent.com/people/designe…
But want to shoutout my initial collaborators in @primeproduce, Jerone Hsu & @mr_tumnus, and Soft Surplus, @melanieh0ff & @_newcubes_ all whom I have laughed and debated and imagined with; whom I have also made mistakes to, disappointed, in my own neverending process of learning.
Starting and growing two spaces and collectives has deeply shifted and structured my understanding about space and architecture and community in powerful, fundamental ways that my schooling did not and was deeply incapable of.
It’s from this context and experience that I (stay up incredibly late and) articulate this vision of a transformative architecture school.. that is anti-racist, that actively works towards repair, and works to abolish the police and jails in our minds, because it GROWS.
spatial culture can be about societal care, about repair, about calling in, about invitation. We can see space as something we want to grow, garden, tend, care for, the way we do with our neighbors and strangers.
Okay, to conclude.
architecture culture and pedagogy can be real estate market culture
OR
spatial culture can be communal culture, play culture, abolition culture, transformative culture.
Which one do we want for our communities? In our neighborhoods? In our imaginations?
architecture culture and pedagogy can be real estate market culture
OR
spatial culture can be communal culture, play culture, abolition culture, transformative culture.
Which one do we want for our communities? In our neighborhoods? In our imaginations?
FINALLY:
In terms of starting tomorrow, the statement that @bsa_gsapp has written to GSAPP is crucial.
I’m vowing to find ways that I can support these in my role as (adjunct) faculty, integrating these thoughts deeply into my teaching.
In terms of starting tomorrow, the statement that @bsa_gsapp has written to GSAPP is crucial.
I’m vowing to find ways that I can support these in my role as (adjunct) faculty, integrating these thoughts deeply into my teaching.
And this powerful statement by the Black faculty of @ColumbiaGSAPP that rightly and justly calls for an examination of anti-Black racism and white supremacy within all modes of it at GSAPP:
Everything I have said above is NOT NEW either! It has already been thought of. The barriers to us approaching this kind of transformative school isn’t because we haven’t thought of it yet. It’s the lack of willingness to actively engage in this work together. 
The real #1 in my list is fundamental - a school should be centered around BIPOC & esp. Black and Indigenous faculty and students, and an understanding of the structural forces & racisms that make schools predominantly white in faculty, and white and East Asian in student makeup
