arcCA asked AIA members to relate memorable moments in their architectural education. Among their responses were the following.
John Cage walking onto the podium in the Royal Festival Hall in London in 1979, smiling from ear to ear as if the whole auditorium were filled with his closest friends (n ever true in London). He said:
Nothing is accomplished by writing music.
Nothing is accomplished by playing music.
Nothing is accomplished by listening to music.
Our ears are now perfectly in tune.”
—Clive Wilkinson, AIA, Los Angeles
Minoru Takeyama, who now practices and teaches in Tokyo, is the most talented architect I have ever known. As a student at Harvard, his initial command of English (now excellent) was almost non-existent. He and I were teamed for a design project and had to communicate, despite the language barrier. He resorted to the use of graphic algebraic symbols (plus, minus, more, less, add, divide, subtract, approximate, infinity, differentiate, etc.). That graphic language was quickly extended to simple diagrams, precursors to the Pattern Language. If ever one were to suddenly, really understand the notion of “diagrams to architecture,” that was a seminal, learning experience!
—Robert Herman, FAIA, San Francisco
My Mom took me out to the garden one spring morning when I was four. She picked an iris and then sliced it into two halves with a razor blade, showing me the pistil and stamen, the stigma and the filaments. In this moment, she opened up a whole new world by showing me the wonder of looking beyond the surface of flowers, . . . of all things.
—Ruth Gilliland, AIA, Burbank
Charles Moore, FAIA, was simply the best teacher of his generation. He taught everyone to tune in to the world, and especially to popular culture, and to connect it to the deepest traditions and aspirations of history. He exemplified the teaching that engaging the world is essential and that meaning and value may exist everywhere and can be invested in places.
Bob Mather (Univ. of Texas) lived and taught the inevitable interdependence of architecture and social responsibility. His was not the consciousness of the moment, but rather a Quaker’s abiding and deep respect for the perpetuation of life and of wonder. His students and colleagues were continuously puzzled by his positions and actions, and subsequently informed by the power of his independent thoughtfulness.
—Robert S. Harris, FAIA, Los Angeles
“The same as those for a good person.” – Folke Bjorg, Assistant Professor of Architecture, Univ. of Hongkong, 1953, when asked by a student about the important ingredients for a good architect.
—Ted Wu, AIA-E, Los Angeles
In Drawing 101 at the Univ. of Idaho, we spent the first four class periods, of three hours each, drawing the same still life. I don’t recall anyone with exceptional artistic skills among us; however, after working the same drawing for twelve hours, everyone had developed a drawing worth keeping. Since that time, I have never been intimidated at trying something new, and I am always prepared to spend enough time to make it a success.
—Christopher Mehren, AIA, Los Angeles
Summer of 1949, as I stood in vestibule of train moving through New York state and commented to woman standing near me how unkempt the landscape appeared compared to what I’d been seeing in Europe, and she looked at me and asked, “So what are you going to do about it ?”
—Frank E. Hotchkiss, AIA, Laguna Niguel
The tone for the balance of my education was set at the end of my first quarter of design with Wes Ward at Cal Poly, SLO. The class was essentially the design-of-the-week club, with ten or eleven projects during the quarter. Half of my projects came out brilliantly, and the other half were miserable.
Wes debriefed each student before issuing final grades. I sat down for my appointment with him and he immediately asked, “So, what did you learn this quarter?”
I recounted my own observation of my erratic performance, then went through each project in order, identifying what I did successfully in those that came out well and what had gone wrong with those that did not. Wes listened patiently, nodding occasionally, with a faint smile on his lips. He paused very briefly at the end of my discourse, then remarked, “ Well, you’ve certainly learned this quarter,” and marked an A in his book.
Wes uttered all of two sentences in the whole conversation and made two stokes of his pen, but they formed the most profound learning experience of my adult life. At that moment, I realized it wasn’t about doing perfect work, but about learning.
—Greg Allen Barker, AIA, San Luis Obispo
My most memorable learning experience was the six-year period I spent working with the person I consider my mentor, Frank Tomsick, FAIA. I remember vividly one of his simple lessons: Never use one of anything (can be applied at all scales, from large formal devices down to simple fasteners).
—Jerry Veverka, AIA, San Francisco
My first visit to Kahn’s Yale Center for British Art in New Haven touched me in a profound way. As I walked through the formally precise spaces, so clearly oriented to one another, and looked at the splendid craftsmanship, I had the distinct impression, although clearly not actually possible, that the architect cared about me personally.
—Paul Adamson, AIA, San Francisco
While in graduate school at the Harvard GSD, I was fortunate enough to be able to take a studio from Jerzy Soltan, a Polish architect who had worked with Le Corbusier in Paris after being liberated from a German prisoner of war camp. More than anyone else, he taught me about the moral obligations we face as architects. The remark that really made an impact was one he credited to Le Corbusier.
It seems Le Corbusier was challenging the proposed design of a new major building in New York. Someone pointed out how well the building worked for the people who would be using it. He responded by saying that yes, the building worked for the few hundred people who would be inside it every day, but didn’t it have the greater obligation to work as well for the thousands who would walk by and look at it each day as well?
—Mark Schatz, AIA, San Francisco
I was truly amazed that I had made it through four years of architectural school at USC. We had a first year class of over two hundred and a potential graduating class of about forty. My first professor had said, “Look at the person to the left and to the right; only one of you will finish.” School became a challenge rather than an adventure.
The competition was fierce and took an emotional toll. By fifth year, I had lost my enthusiasm for architecture and was ready to admit that I was not cut out for this profession. Bill Pereira was head of the fifth year design studio and was assisted by John Rex, Bill Beckett, and A. Quincy Jones, all practicing architects spending a few hours each week at the school. I drew Quincy Jones as my critic. Talk about the luck of the draw. In my first session with Quincy, he complimented me on my planning concept but said that I was pushing too hard for an image. He told me to relax, let the forms flow naturally from the plan. I was guilty of “over design,” not knowing when to stop. “Simplicity and honesty in form and materials are not in conflict with meaningful architecture.” Words to live by.
Quincy Jones eliminated the doubt that I had about a career in architecture and renewed my desire to give it a go. He became not only my mentor but also a good friend. He left us far too soon.
—George Bissell, FAIA, Newport Beach
Lou Kahn was my thesis critic. He was a very kind man and inspirational in his criticism during the formation of the design concept, but he really wasn’t much interested in working out the details of an idea. In spite of that, he came in the drafting room one day late in the refinement stage of our work and could see the anguish on my face, so he came up to look at what I was doing. My thesis project was a museum and, try as I might, I couldn’t work it out so that the elevator doors opened in a good place on each of the three levels. I knew it wasn’t the sort of problem to ask him about, but he let me explain why each floor had to have the elevator in a different place. When I finished, he looked at me and said, “John, has it occurred to you that you are refining a mistake?”
—John L. Field, FAIA, San Francisco
I remember George Hasslein, founder of California Polytechnic State University, College of Architecture and Environmental Design, coming to the California Desert Chapter of the AIA board of directors installation dinner in 1986. A number of the board members were Cal Poly alumni. He read each board member’s answers to a questionnaire from his ARCH 101, Introduction to Architecture class for all first-year students. As new associate director of the chapter, I shared the realization that some of the top design professionals I’d come to admire were once just wide-eyed college students with the same dreams and ambitions I had. George’s presence always seemed to remind me that people, no matter their professional status, were just plain folks.
—Paul S. Anderson, AIA, Newport Beach
I was an unhappy business major and took a history of architecture course to fulfill a liberal arts requirement. I remember the first class where I became transfixed by architecture—not by soaring cathedrals, which came later in the course—but by the little mud huts, the earliest human efforts to provide shelter for ourselves.
—Andy Pease, AIA, San Luis Obispo
The most influential architecture professor for me was an outsider, William Garnett, the noted aerial landscape photographer. Garnett was a legendary master of black & white photography and was part of the nebulous ‘visual studies’ group at Berkeley. He did his work from the sky. I stumbled into his class one day, to fill out my schedule of undergraduate electives, and I was changed forever. He taught me to see. He understood light, shadow, form, and three-dimensional viewpoint better than most architects that I know. As a teacher, he accepted no excuses or cute cosmetic tricks in our work. He demanded old-fashioned excellence and rigorous technique. Buildings are frames of reference, like the photographer’s frame, and their perspective will be asserted for many years. Garnett understood this and burned it into my brain.
—Kurt Lavenson, AIA, Oakland
Wurster Hall Graduate Studio: Joseph Esherick addressing a couple of students at a desk “crit”: “Sure, beauty should be our concern as designers. However, I don’t think it can be about following rules, guidelines, and doctrines. If we were functioning properly, I think it should be just the way we do things normally, automatically. It should be more like breathing for architects. It keeps the work alive.”
—John Lucchesi, AIA, San Mateo
When I was just a freshman in my Basic Design class, a group of seniors came in to talk to us, representing themselves as teachers’ assistants for the day. They gave us a long list of items to purchase at the bookstore, consisting of the following: a T-Square, scales, erasers, and a set of “focal points.” Needless to say, I never found the “focal points” until my second year Perspective Graphics class!
—Maurice Camargo, AIA, San Jose
The best lesson I ever learned happened my last year at Cal Poly, SLO. I was taking a construction management course on project delivery. Our teacher, Barbara Jackson, had us work in groups of four (I represented the Architect and the others were C.M.s). Our challenge was to work together to present a proposal for a design/build project. We had many conflicts. It seemed that the C.M.s wanted things to go their way, and I wanted things my way. Our teacher brought us together to discuss the problems we were experiencing, and once we cleared the air about our differences and created our “team goals,” our team delivered a great presentation. We all got As for the project and parted as friends. I walked away from that experience with a new understanding: that everyone is valuable and has something valuable to contribute; and, furthermore, that if we share our perspectives openly, usually the outcome is extraordinary! I know that my parents told me this lesson many times before, but I needed to experience it first hand.
—Tina Bauer, Assoc. AIA, Long Beach
During one of our class juries at MIT, Alvar Aalto made a statement that helped me choose from the bewildering variety of possible design directions. Our sophomore class, largely made up of men seriously searching for answers to the design conundrum, had been asked to submit their solutions for a nursery school. The younger teachers all made perfunctory remarks about the required number of toilet fixtures, legal door swings, or the height of handrails. Aalto waited for the last word. “These are all very nice proposals, filled with very modern ideas of steel, bricks, and glass, but,” he continued, “Where do the children go when the lions come?” Most of the sixty student faces looked bewildered. Alvar explained, “Don’t you know the story about the little boy in the jungle? When the lions came, little Sambo went and hid under the trees. Where do the children go when the lions come?”
—Sherwood Stockwell, FAIA, Wolcott, Colorado
My grandparent’s home near Ann Arbor, Michigan, brings back vivid memories. The sequence of rooms allowed me to chase my sister from the kitchen to the living room through the master bedroom into a hallway leading back to the kitchen. I have always thought that a house for children should have such a circular plan . . . .
You may be conjuring up images of Currier and Ives or Kincade’s cottages. Not so! In the early ‘40s, my grandfather had built a long, low-slung, modern house, undoubtedly influenced by Wright’s popular Prairie style. My grandfather selected a slate roof with deep overhangs, stone and plaster walls, on a concrete slab with radiant floor heating. I was content to run toy trucks along the geometric patterns of the Oriental rug on the warm floor in front of the large stone fireplace. Curiously, I remember the small metal clips that fastened large panes of butted plate glass in the front bay window.
—Thomas J. Carleton, AIA, Salinas
Photo by Ragina Johnson.
Originally published 1st quarter 2003, in arcCA 03.1, “Common Knowledge.”
