Rolf, Jacque, Ben and colleagues
Ben's, point about bringing other commenters into a crit other than
the tutor is extremely important. We required our graduate students in
industrial design to have three outside advisers who would comment on
their work as it developed and participate in a critique at the final
presentation. The students enlisted their own advisers subject to
faculty approval.
I believe I learned at least as much from the dialogue between critics
as from my studio teacher. This was especially true when treated to
the exchanges between such architects as Lou Kahn, Robert Venturi and
Aldo Guirgola. In most cases the student's design was just a point of
departure for great insights into the problem. It was truly
informative to listen to Lou's reverent approach to material
phenomena as Venturi discussed pop cultural symbolism. Listeners had
to resolve their own understandings and preferences. At Penn these
critiques were open to all students and formed a major part of the
social cohesion of the school - events not to be missed. I never
witnessed any critic deliberately shame or embarass a student as
Jacque seems concerned about. I did experience (and grow wiser from)
the tremendous challenge of the public presentation of ideas followed
by discussion and reflection that persisted long after the crits were
over. Although many crits took place in the main entry hall of the
school with the audience sitting on the wide main stairway, I believe
that a large centrally located, ovoid space with movable chairs,
could serve extremely well as both gallery and critique space. (I
proposed such a space when teaching at Umea.)
I hope that the socializing, challenging, educational, dialogues of
design critiques will survive the bureaucratic desire for comparative
accountability and control of the learning experience.
Best wishes,
Chuck
On Sep 10, 2009, at 11:53 PM, Benjamin Pratt wrote:
> I'm new to this list--hi everyone!
>
> I agree largely with everything Jacques said. Over my 16 years of
> teaching I have changed the way I teach quite a bit. One of these
> changes has been to de-emphasize critiques and make them shorter. I
> often delay the crit until after the due date, so that they have some
> distance from their design, and are better rested. I also make sure
> they know well ahead of the deadline if I think their solution is
> poor. For some projects, I like to organize "post-it note critiques",
> where the projects are all on display. All the students write comments
> about things they see, and put those comments on or next to the
> projects. Another thing I like to do is bring in guests as much as
> possible. The student seems more inclined to listen when it's not the
> person giving out the grade who is commenting.
>
>
> Secondly, did some of you see: "My Architect"? There was a scene
> of Louis Kahn critiquing a student, and saying something like: "If you
> use a brick, you have to ask it: 'brick, what do you want to
> become...'" What did even those brilliant Ivy League Architecture
> students think when hearing this? Probably the same thing I thought:
> "The guy is a genius, but I'm not going to talk to bricks, and if I
> did, I wouldn't admit it..."
>
> -Ben
> Professor
> The University of Wisconsin-Stout
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