Lunchtime Lectures – Conversations on Education
Organised by Mark Morris and Mark Cousins
13 October 2017
Architectural Education as the Research Topic
Joan Ockman
Joan Ockman is Distinguished Senior Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design and Visiting Professor at Cooper Union and Cornell University School of Architecture. She taught for over two decades at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Educated at Harvard and Cooper Union, she began her career at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York in the 1970s, where she served as an editor of the journal Oppositions and was responsible for the Oppositions Books series.
“Two major systems have within the past fifty years enjoyed a conspicuous success – those of the École des Beaux-Arts and of the Bauhaus. This simple statement is by no means to commend the results of either but merely to observe that both have possessed to a high degree a generating power, and that both have to some extent been able to endow their techniques with universal significance. Neither in the light of the present day appears completely adequate for our requirements.” So wrote Colin Rowe of the dominant types architectural education about fifty years ago.
Could it be said that since that time a third system arose that has had a generating power and ability to endow its own techniques and methods of teaching across the globe? If that is so, how might the AA as a model of architectural education formulate its future in the midst of seeking taught degree-awarding powers and a new director? What potential trajectories should we consider? A series of lunchtime discussions will address the state of architectural education, the challenges and opportunities at hand, and the onus on the AA to lead the way in terms of innovation.
