In the All School Review an interesting discussion began around ideas of how “Thesis” is organized within the curriculums. A compelling argument was made by Professor Dümpelmann for “independent study” and for the value of students being decisive in proposing a thesis project that was of interest to them – the role of the faculty being to direct and to “coach” the student in the development of their work. A recent change to the Architecture Thesis recognizes that not all students are interested or prepared to do independent work. This is structured by offering independent thesis and directed studio options. A similar offering is in place for Landscape Architecture and will be continued next year. The question for me was, “Is the School, at the highest level of the program curriculums, the product of the individual interests of the students and faculty as represented by the independent thesis projects?” or “Is there some important aspect of the thesis project that characterizes the work done at this School?”

In a recent article in Harvard Design magazine by architect and historian Kenneth Frampton entitled The Work of Architecture in the Age of Commdification Professor Frampton questions: “…what might we mean, in this fungible age, by such terms as sustainable environmental design or let us say even tradition, in as much as the finest work of any epoch always amounts to a critical reinterpretation of tradition… To put it more evenhandedly, however: in what way may we modulate some future possible relationship between creativity and homeostasis or, let us say, between human imaginative capacity and the now all-too-evident limitations of the biosphere? This is surely the one question that the contemporary cult of the populist free-market is unable to address.”

Should the School have an identity that characterizes it in some way or is the school the collective result of the students and faculty’s interests? I answered, “It is not enough to be simply the product of our products.” Could we also be, to some degree, the product of our aspirations? Professor Nakhjavan suggested [paraphrased] “If you believe in everything, you are, at the very least, spread thin.” Professor Williams said that he believed in the students and Professor Smith was surprised by my statement pointing out my persistent belief in an Emergent Collective Practice – emergence being an intelligence or direction that is the product of local interactions propagated over a large number of people that can “feedback” the results of their actions. While I believe in the power of the individual extended through a network (collective) I also remain unsatisfied with the idea that the direction we end up heading is indeterminate or the destination simply where we end up. If this is the case, we have no worry. We will get where we are heading every time.

Would it be possible to inflect individual actions without losing the adaptability or emergence of the group? Could the thesis structure be a place where the School emerges? I suggested the following hastily considered example of how this could happen related to the Architecture Thesis structure (there would be others):

Requiring every thesis project to engage projects in the city of Auburn, Birmingham, and Hale County would reflect individual choice with a catch, and the following:

There is something important about where you are. Designers and planners can instigate things. There is value in working on projects that “push back.” The work of the students, faculty, and School has value as “practice” as well as value as an educational experience. At the Rural & Urban Studios this is exemplified by the fact that there is always something at stake outside the individual. While there may be no right answer, there are wrong ones.

Frampton suggests a different inflection: “On the one hand, then, political consciousness, in the broadest sense, ought to be as much a part of design education as any other component in an architectural curriculum; on the other hand, it is necessary to maintain an ethical dimension in the culture of design itself… It is a stark prospect and a difficult choice that not everyone in the design professions is equally free to make to the same degree, that is to say, the choice between going with the flow of the market or cultivating a self-conscious resistance along the lines of Ernst Bloch’s projected hope, his evocation of the “not yet.” Certainly living needs, as opposed to desires, demand to be met but surely not in such a way as to ruin the world for generations… ”

“Go Right?”