20040428
Harsh Criticism for Bush Adminstration
The Pultzer Prize winner Thomas Friedman criticised the Bush administration for its handling of foreign politics and the economy. In an article titled "Losing our edge?" published in the NYTimes this Monday, Friedman warned Americans that a misled economy pushes businesses out of the US and that the tougher Visa regulations, introduced in the name of the war against terror, holds back an international elite that used to come to the US to study and brought back the American way of life to their countries when returning after a few years.
NYTimes
.: gisela 3:23 PM
20040426
Steven Holl in China: Beijing Looped Hybrid
.: Jonas 11:43 AM
20040421
Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News
.: Jonas 7:01 PM
Congratulations OpenOffice ! and all finalists for the HighLine RFQ
.: Jonas 11:06 AM
20040416
Based on your Sketch the visual search engine finds shapes + models (thank you Andrea)
.: Jonas 1:39 PM
20040415
The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation today [04/13] announced the selection of Davis Brody Bond LLP as the Associate Architect for the World Trade Center Memorial, Reflecting Absence. Davis Brody Bond LLP will work with the Design Team of Michael Arad and Peter Walker in the realization of the design for the memorial. (LMDC)
.: Jonas 3:12 PM
20040411
Is the Ph.D. in Crisis?
Princeton University School of Architecture recently hosted a two-day symposium entitled Discipline Building: A Short History of the Ph.D. in Architecture.
“During the 1960s, a small number of prominent architectural schools initiated discussions about the need to train architectural historians able to contribute directly to the education of architects in professional schools, and subsequently moved towards having Ph.D. programs approved by their respective universities. The eventual establishment of these programs in the late 1960s and 1970s constituted a significant disciplinary shift. New forms of teaching and scholarship emerged.”
The conference was organized of 4 panels:
Panel 1: Writing Architecture: Architects vs. Historians
How does this new form of scholarship relate to the continuing tradition of practicing architects writing history? How does it relate to the tradition of architectural historians as protagonists in the re-shaping of contemporary practices?
Panelists: Diana Agrest, Peter Eisenman, Mark Jarzombek, Denise Scott Brown, Sarah Whiting
Moderator: Beatriz Colomina; Organizer: Shundana Yusaf
Panel 2: University Inscription: The Founding Programs
How did Ph.D. programs affect the status of architecture schools in the university and how did the new form of research change the training of architects?
Panelists: Stanford Anderson, Kathleen James-Chakraborty, Sylvia Lavin, Christian Otto, Anthony Vidler
Organizer: Michael Su
Panel 3: The Gatekeepers: Archives and Distribution
How have the books, conferences, and other forms of media produced by Ph.D. candidates and graduates affected the way that architecture is consumed outside of the academy?
Panelists: Michael Hays, Sanford Kwinter, Phyllis Lambert, Frederic Migayrou
Moderator: Felicity Scott; Organizer: AnnMarie Brennan
Panel 4: Intellectual Hospitality: The Interdisciplinary Politics of Ph.D. Programs
How did the establishment of Ph.D. programs codify what methods, theories, and concepts from other disciplines could become part of architectural discourse? What are the codes of hospitality of the discipline, and how can we think its ethics?
Panelists: Mark Cousins, Hal Foster, Catherine Ingraham, Robert Gutman
Moderator: Mark Wigley; Organizer: Meredith TenHoor
As I was attending UCLA’s Open House for incoming graduate students I was, unfortunately, unable to go. Hearing reports back from the conference, however, I was interested to learn of the general academic unrest surrounding the Ph.D. in Architecture program. Many recently successful, or at least immensely popular, research-based Master’s studio programs have increasingly used techniques of advanced research to explore design issues: Rem Koolhaas’ Harvard GSD Guide to Shopping and Project on the City, Thom Mayne’s UCLA / CalArts / Art Center collaborative “LA Now” projects. The result of these studio programs’ appropriation of doctorate-level research seems to be producing a level of anxiety that is throwing the Ph.D. in Architecture program into crisis.
Please forgive my second-hand report of the conference, and perhaps my general disdain of the preciousness of the academy, but I get the feeling that this growing concern for the crisis that the Ph.D. in Architecture is supposedly facing reflects just a little too much navel-gazing.
As Masters-level studio programs extend their critique to include tools of advanced research, should the Ph.D. faculty and students, instead of developing concerns over the autonomy and loss of status of the Ph.D. program, start looking towards Masters studio programs to add other layers of richness to their own critical research?
With the same interest I look forward to the UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design’s conference at the end of the month, entitled Architecture’s Media, Messages and Modes. Personally, after spending 7 years of using drawing, design, virtual and real modeling as critical tools in my own architectural academic education, it seems a little absurd to now throw those methodologies away as I advance towards a Ph.D. program that traditionally restricts research to the written word.
(Kirk Wooller)
.: kirk 1:27 PM
20040405
"Apocalypse Now: How a hologram, a blimp, and a massively multiplayer game could bring peace to the Holy Land." (Wired)
.: Jonas 11:48 AM
20040403
polygraph
.: Jonas 9:15 PM
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