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What the Heck are Universities teaching?
Comments
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<p>I thought he was a carpenter <img src="http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a191/NightHawkZone/Emoticons/popcorn.gif" alt="" /></p>
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<p>got nothing against drafties except the smug all to comfortable in what they know types</p>
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Sod - here, here ...
pass a wine bottle would you -
<p>Oh dear, sorry to disappoint you Miles and the rest of you, but I have got two jobs now as a design assistant to seperate architects and I haven't even got my diploma yet, because I am good at design and they can't find a graduate architect who is. When I am done helping them I hand over the work to the draftie in one office and move on and in the other I draft-up myself because my boss has crippled hands. I also have a project managing job but that is bro bono. Yes, Kashmir, I am also a carpenter and I am a furniture joiner as well and I also do structural joinery, like that stuff you see on Japanese temples, I am also a trained welder and I have laid enough bricks to be able to build a chimney. Before and during that I was a trained chef (13 years to Souse) and I went to art school in my youth.</p>
<p>The point is that I arrived at architecture from the the other direction that you lot have and I can see what you lack, (by the words you write) and I fill the page in an attempt to help you understand what Murcutt so obviously dispairs of ever getting you to understand. (What is this penchant for word bites where as little as possible said on a complex issue is desireable. Does sound rather determinist to me. One would think there was nothing to argue about, Oh I get it; you think you're the last word!)</p>
<p>
Hairdresser-" I'm in no doubt the real reason that the word style is denigrated by aus architects and almost all staff draughtsmen (in a tone that says their shit doesn't stink), is so that the lazy f-----s and their business minded corporate bosses can rip some one elses off without moral issue. Thats where your argument against style goes SS - you'd be better off slicing style up into its various shades - its a pointless, unerudite, ill informed position you have - almost impossible to understand - like watching a child tossing a lollypop out of its pram."</p>
<p>Love the child tossing lollypop illusion, but from my point of view it's just as applicable to you, which brings me to your regard for style. If you can "rip-off' a style or feel you have been ripped off, then you are your self designing exactly as I described above. You have in mind a look and then that is what you achieve. You do not understand (it is not impossible if you relax and try a little) that I am talking about a method of designing that has no particular style in mind, because the primary concern is the fundamentals of structure and utility and fitness of purpose. I do not try and jam a job into an already arrived at style. I work a job until it done or economically done and voila, there is a bit of style. Look under the skin because style is only skin deep and means next to nothing compared to the bones of the matter.</p>
<p>You mistake Murcutts style for his own when in his own words (A Singular Practice. Beck and Cooper p17) "Design is not dependant on inspiration. We have to overcome this great twin myth of the architectural idea and the architectural ego. In fact anyone can design. Anyone can be taught to investigate and discover. It doesn't take great flair. Good design is more a matter of of ability to understand the issues-of pursuing the question until you make an appropriate discovery- and there are always more appropriate answers. If you understand how things are made and put together, you can at least produce good quality"</p>
<p>If you just dismiss those sort of words then of course it is impossible to understand what I am saying. If your ego is more important to you, then you are unlikely to let go of a design method that revolves around your ego. I know what I am talking about because I can read Murcutt and see he is essentially saying the same thing. <b>"Design is not dependant on inspiration."</b> Why? Because if it were presumed so, then you would be supposing that the issues of design to be contended with originated from your own head, 'Stylism', when they are not 'you', they are issues outside of you.</p>
<p>Inspiration is 'look at me' stylism. I do not deride it because it does not have a place in the physical reality of the world around us. I deride it (when I can be bothered to pay it any attention beyond exemplifying it in the above type disscussion) because it fails both art and design principals. The very principals that seem to be lacking in a university education these days so that philips lament could exist.</p> -
you can steal anything you want.
its whether you can get away with it.
thats my point herr seasons.
in 2 lines. 14 words.
A few people have generously suggested books you should read.
I won't. I like the idea that there a people in the dark. -
<p>"you can steal anything you want.
its whether you can get away with it.
Well bravo. I can steal a lot of hot air but by the time I get it home it's gone cold. That may be your Stylistic design principals and the only way to keep it warm is to apparently tweek it a bit and so "get away with it".</p>
<p>I have noted the books and when I have more time I will read them. Your welcome to your scissors of darkness Herr-dresser; it is only your own circuits that you are snipping.</p>
<p>In the meantime I will still suggest that there is wisdom in that thar word's of Murcutt and that your difficulty in understanding thier relevance is not my particular concern. I am concerned that forward looking graduates be fairly informed that there is another way of designing other than being a thief in the night trying to get away with Style stealing.</p>
<p>My point is that you don't have to steal anything as it's right in front of you if you care to reach out and take it. With design fundamentals taught well, you can design quite easily with a style that is all your own.</p>
<p> </p> -
you confuse looks/appearance with another word - style.
an education would help.
then again you could end up overqualified. -
<p>Your nit picking disguised as frayed end snippings on the floor, doesn't fool me.</p>
<p>Sorry herr-dresser but your wig is slipping.</p> -
<p>SS - GM's quote isn't that helpful. "If you understand how things are made and put together, you can at least produce good quality" - thats not exactly good architecture. Investigation and discovery are good earnest pursuits but GM doesn't exactly demonstrate how "investigation and discovery" guarantees good architecture.</p>
<p>GM's appeal and success is as a critical regionalist - mythologising and grafting romatic bush building imagery to modernism. It's image based work and superficial in nature but its hard to imagine GM talking about his work in anything other than firm moral terms.</p> -
no SS.
a word is a word. its not something for universal mangling and exchange.
style is the very opposite of appearance and look.
my answer to the question of what the heck are the universities teaching?
how to think I should imagine.
how not to think is the skill we are all born with.
As to GM. I extracted all I needed to know about him at a ladies hairdresser trends night in 1979.
he presented the kempsey house, unpublished, just built.
guess you had to be there.
your version is like listening to a slightly more irritating phillip drew.
which I would have thought was an impossibility until now. -
<p>Sod......."SS - GM's quote isn't that helpful. "If you understand how things are made and put together, you can at least produce good quality" - thats not exactly good architecture. Investigation and discovery are good earnest pursuits but GM doesn't exactly demonstrate how "investigation and discovery" guarantees good architecture.</p>
<p>GM's appeal and success is as a critical regionalist - mythologising and grafting romatic bush building imagery to modernism. It's image based work and superficial in nature but its hard to imagine GM talking about his work in anything other than firm moral terms."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He's not saying that that will produce good architecture, he is saying that that will at least produce good quality buildings. When he goes on to talk about investigation and discovery, he is talking about the method of design that revolves arpound thouroughly investigating and discovering all the parameters that may be involved in a particular project. More specifically, all and anything to do with the production of a design other than what could reasonably be called imagination or inspiration.</p>
<p>In other words he is talking about a method of design that does not revolve around personal assumptions of anything other than that no asumptions can be made. Investigate and discover the truth about the site the climate the materials the available skills the clients wishes, you name it but never start with a question that has its origins in your own assumptions.</p>
<p>I does not "guarentee" good architecture, no, because that involves an endless pursuit of what is good and that can not be guarenteed. By that I mean that Good architecture is itself an assumption that will tend to make you stop if you think you have arrived at it when in fact the quest is ever attainable when you leave it as simply the best you can do at this moment.</p>
<p>In that sense discovery and investigation becomes an end in itself and that is when you will really start to produce good architecture. In short you cannot rest on laurels if you want to find the best and the only reason he uses firm moral terms is that it is not for him to tell you how to investigate and discover as that is the job of each of us as artists. He can only use moral terms because they are universal and he doesn't have to therefore address you directly to tell you what he thinks you need to know. </p>
<p>It's common decency and simple phsychology to couch advise it terms that leave it up to the reciever to do something with it on thier own terms. He has a method to show you but he would not tell you how to handle it as that is the whole point of an egoless approach to design. Comprende?</p>
<p> </p> -
GM's quote isn't that helpful, nor the explanation of it.
Whose 'truth' and what are the parameters of the site. There is no universal truth to any given site or project. Send ten architects, or students to a site with the same project and they will all come back with a different answers, that is good: we are all different (ergo there is only one GM). It is up to each to assign importance, priority, appropriateness if you like, to the various discoveries they make and their influence on the project.
I'd even go so far as to say most of the ten would find some 'inspiration' in what they discover. God forbid a discovery should ever trigger the imagination.
This is not egotistical any more than GM is egotistical, for as his quote confirms: this is his method. It is also the method of most self respecting architects, incidentally the same used by ARM on Storyhall, they even have a word for those 'discoveries', I believe it is 'roadkill'. -
The question then becomes one of who judges what is good and what is not and on what basis, what is appropriate and what is not, again on what basis. Client, tutor, end user, planner, stakeholder, peer, public etc. Most of the time they disagree anyway.
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<p>There is only one you as well.</p>
<p>I never said that there is a universal truth that applies to all sites. I said you have to find the particular truths about a particular site. The method is to investigate and discover the truth of a particular site and to apply a rigorousness to the task for every single site by never approaching the task with any assumptions. No prior assumptions includes no guarentees about anything.</p>
<p>This method is the very opposite of stylism which demands that you plonk onto any site you come across regardless of its distinctions, one type of design or another that pleases you or yet another that pleases the client or the council or what ever. That is is unilateral universalism and I can't understand where you found that that was what I said?</p>
<p>Inspiration is a problem with the investigate and discover design method because 'inspiration' invariably occurs in a mist of predetermined assumptions. The method demands that you let the site tell what it needs by investigating and discovering it without predetermined assumptions. Therefore you leave your inspiration out of it until all the problems have been assessed and the design then needs your personal input to solve the problems you've discovered</p> -
Of which I'm glad.
I don't have a problem with the method outlined, as I've suggested it gives a lot of scope, most if not all self respecting architects use it. It is also the predominant method taught at uni. I'd would argue, though, that no one can approach a site or project with out any pre determined assumptions, beliefs or prejudices, however slight they be, no matter how much they might protest. -
<p>Ah, at last. Someone prepared to admit that the method outlined actually exists.</p>
<p>ss "Therefore you leave your inspiration out of it until all the problems have been assessed and the design then needs your personal input to solve the problems you've discovered"</p>
<p>b n "I'd would argue, though, that no one can approach a site or project with out any pre determined assumptions, beliefs or prejudices, however slight they be, no matter how much they might protest. "</p>
<p>Would you now be prepared to admit that those two quotes, are essentially admitting the same thing and that therefore of course I logically cannot assume a position of absolutism, even if i use that language sometimes and that therefore I actually respect your position thoroughly, and that I am therefore not your enemy.</p>
<p> Though I would argue about the degree that Uni's teach it, and the high level at which you say it is used by self respecting architects, and, ... as after all this is the 'what the heck' thread, I would also argue that your quote seems to admit that you bring so called 'inspiration' rather earlier to the task than I would.</p> -
I am not prepared to admit they essentially admit the same thing, because, quite simply, they don't.
All I can assume, therefore, is nothing except that the pertinacity of your belief, here and argued above, would seem to exemplify the sentiment contained within the quote of mine above. Which, I would further argue, seems to suggest that, quite apart from my 'inspiration', your belief or prejudices colour the conception of problems before even the site is selected or the project briefed.
I am unsure what qualifies your assumptions of the content of university teaching, for without qualification assumptions are all they can be. -
<p>I said you try to leave your inspirations (same thing as assumptions, predjudices and belief if you know your phsychology) out of it until the end of the design process,</p>
<p> and you said you can't approach a site without assumptions beliefs and prejudices (inspirations in a nutshell).</p>
<p>The only differance is that you seem to suggest that you impose your inspiration early in the design process.(former)</p>
<p> and I try not to impose my inspiration until late in the design process, (later)</p>
<p>The querulous thing is you suggested that all self respecting architects use the later method of design and you also said that it is the predominant method taught at uni's.</p>
<p>The whole point of this thread is that some architects are astounded at the lack of basics being taught at universities. I may be an unqualified commentator to your mind but I can reads the words above of those who have had direct experiance of completely ignorant architecture graduates. If by "without qualifications" you mean that I don't have a uni degree, then you are wrong as I have gained a differant qualification to talk about it. My own handiwork as a carpenter and joiner also gives me an insight into what is called the basics of construction. As a carpenter I have fixed up the unbelievable basic mistakes of architecture graduates. I may not have met the culprits first hand but I have met thier handiwork.</p>
<p> Now back to the querulous suggestion that it"s the predominate method taught at universities. I don't know that it was at your university, if you believe that you simply can't approach a site without first imposing yourself upon it. Did any teacher, lecturer, tutor or professor tell you that your inspirations should be listened to immediately or did they say wait a bit and find out what you are dealing with first.</p>
<p>A deeper case in point. I just met a graduate of Mumbai University who tells me that architecture students there have to do three years of basic science before they're allowed anywhere near the "inspiration" workshops. Do you see what i am getting at. I really am not meaning to be obscufactionate but as a carpenter retraining to become an architect I have met several architects so far who patently have a lack of the basic knowlege of how things go together. You can believe that that fact doesn't exist but I and others know that it does.</p>
<p>All I am suggesting is that I support philip in his letter asking universities to instill a fair bit more basics into thier architecture courses. Because i know that they need it and i believe that it makes for much better architecture. I never said that you can do without inspiration. I just think that you can't forgo the basics if you want your inspiration to be really effective. Hence Murcutts method is very, very effective and practically timeless like Corbusiers work just above, and certain other architects work is 'out of date' before the landscape gardening has settled in.</p>
<p> </p> -
.........and this is why India is overflowing with IT and Telcom Salespeople, not great Architects. I'm really seeing your point.
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<p>I agree that graduates should revieve a sound techinal education but I think Phillip is moaning about recieving unproductive staff straight out of school ( ie people he can't expolit) than laying the foundation for good architecture. I would guess his main concern is the state of his small business rather than the state of architectural culture and as such i don't give a stuff about his problem.</p>
<p>SS - GM is a good house architect and not much else. Corbs work is more the prouct of a strong visual imagination than the form follows fuction bollocks that you go on with.</p> -
<p>mr seasons. i hope your application process to enter university is going well. i hope you have your folio organised so you can gain a decent entry level that is comensurate with your technical knowledge. IF you manage to gain entry into a higher education architecture degree program, i hope for christs sake you dont take any exemptions from history. you need a firm hand to guide your wandering uneducated, reactionary sensibilty and diretribe through the wonderful history of architecture through every ism to where we are today. do yourself and your history tutor a favour. shut up and listen.</p>
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Amen
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20 years of haircutting - never seen a good australian carpenter.
hacks the lot of them.
want a carpenter - get a new zealander.
AS you claim - I imagine in your imagination you do know how to put things together SS.
just butt two bits of wood with a nail gun and use some no more gaps - hey.
And at smoke-oh time you go into the bog and wipe your arse with the drawings because your all illiterate anyway and can't read them. So whats it matter if the drawings are incompetent.
the only people more stupid on a building site are electricians.
the only people lazier are plumbers. -
hd_ whats your view on tilers? had some issues with them myself.
agree with the sparky malarky
however i do like a good painter....poet of the building site i'd say.
all that slow stroking of timber with wet and dry
plumbers tend to whine a bit but show me a good concrete guy and i'll show you the man!! -
<p>in this market any surfing bogan can become a millionaire tradie. meet a few good carpententers - they were old dutch blokes. i've only got despair when thinking about the future of the building industry</p>
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<p>tradies rock... most honest blokes on the building site.</p>
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<p>being an honest bloke is one thing - careful and skilled is another.</p>
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<p>true true... </p>
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SS "Hence Murcutts method is very, very effective and practically timeless like Corbusiers work just above"
You're looking at Corbusier rather narrowly if you think he's a pure form-follows-function character. He wasn't a pure funcionalist. He was a stylistic purist. He gave his buildings flat roofs to create pure geometeries to juxtapose the village picturesque> evoking ideas of progress (one picturesque versus another). Not because flat roofs shed water better than pitched roofs, as one member of the savoye family discovered when their stay in the villa was complemented by a stay in hospital to recover from a nasty case of pneumonia, which was caught thanks to a leaky flat roof.
Then again, maybe the leak was the carpenter's fault :P -
@ kashmir - subcontinental cab drivers are honest and likeable - they still can't get you from Bondi to the harbour bridge.
@ miles. painters. a lifetime ripped on fumes. off their faces with idiot grins.
Like you I admire the trance like state they get in with their work - which is about covering up everyone else's mistakes.
tilers - should be renamed water proof surface installers so that no one thinks their work is anything other than serviceable.
plasterers have come a long way in 2 decades. also says something about australia.
-@ andrew. not a carpenter. but definitely a membrane installation problem. it was 1929.
and he was pushing the envelope. who is doing that now? Glen fcuken Murcutt we are gonna hear any minute now.
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