Eric Owen Moss: New student welcome (August 28, 2013)

good morning nice to see all of you here again I think we talked but five six weeks ago at least some of you how many of you were in that session cheerleading session before making a meeting started just nobody yeah you can acknowledge it there's there's no punitive consequences I think in that this is not a rerun of that discussion but there was a point that I made and I want to make it again about building and the meaning of building I think in a certain fundamental way that over a period of five years or three and a half years or two and a half years and I think there are a few people that'll be here for one year but whatever the term of your term at sci-arc that one of the essentials one of the critical points is that the materialization of these ideas in the world you gotta build it you gotta build it or it doesn't count so this is a little bit hyperbole it's a little bit exaggeration we know and you'll see with levius Woods show and the installation we did that there are any number of architects who have contributed in terms of content discourse ideas imagination who haven't built buildings but I think from the point of view of this school however it's evolved however it's changed and you'll be part of that evolution and part of that change over the years it's essential that we understand that the the uncompromised result of this discussion is build it can you build it implement it how do you implement it I think that really moves the discussion of architecture from building to build over the course of time so I said that before to the making and meaning students I wanted to make that point again to you guys you're welcome we're happy to have you there are a lot of ways to look at the CyArk experience I'm not I could give you one rendition I was sitting in my office this morning just picking out a few images I could have picked any number of images on any number of topics if there are 200 people in this room there may be 201 renditions of what it means to be a student at CyArk five years from now or three and a half years from now or two and a half years from now because I think one of the essential operational principles here is that after all of this discussion life is personal and architecture is personal and although the discussions are in groups and collectives and juries and studios and seminars I would like to think that there's at least some aspect of this that differentiates you from you from you and that if we do our job and if you do your job we'll come we'll arrive it away we'll figure out how to pull out of you what is uniquely in you and that allows you uniquely to contribute to the discussion of architecture which is constantly in motion I think one of the one of the essential qualities of the experience here is a level of respect but not much reverence I think our ex Beit our expectations of you and your group is really simply this that you'll look at what I do and you'll listen to what I say and you look at what other architects do in lectures on juries and exhibits all of the all of the ways we have to share with you what the content of international architecture is in the world as it was as it is and then what it might be as a speculation so you look at all of that you'll listen to all of that you'll evaluate all of that but what you won't do is acquiesce in the face of all of that that means we're not trying to teach you that if you want to be a radical architect we're gonna talk about what radical means in two seconds if you want to be a radical architect here's what you do here's what you listen to here's who you copy here's how you draw it here's how you model it here's how you argue it that's really not the point the point is to familiarize yourselves with those perspective points of view strategies ways of thinking ways of working ways of seeing ways of imagining will help you to do that and then what you're gonna do and you'll see it when the school opens up in a week you'll see it in the thesis then you're gonna give your view of that back to us that's really what the thesis is the undergraduate program thesis is a little bit different than a graduate program thesis but the point of that is to say we've offered now you respond so what I would say is that the the approach in studios in seminars drawing classes and modeling classes and discussions of all kinds is that what we encourage you to do is to find a way to be you in the context of the discourse on architecture that's not always easy it's not always obvious your point of view might change should change will change but it's important that you understand that we think you have a role as individuals in a school like this where the discussion is always moving and in a profession like this where in a certain sense the profession you'll find has a sir intransigence intransigence so you know what that means what it means is whatever is there or whatever is established there always is a certain amount of resistance to somebody maybe somebody here maybe a few people there who comes to kick it in and say the world should be differently different it should be other than what it is and people who are in positions of authority advocates power architects directors of schools almost inevitably almost inevitably tell you this is the way it should be so what I'm asking you to do is listen to that you can listen with some deference in some respect depending on how you evaluate the people who are speaking but keep in mind that if the school goes the way the school should go in the end you'll offer something as an alternative you'll offer something we're asking that of you again I understand it won't come out of everyone it won't come out of everyone simultaneously it won't come out of everyone while you're in school it may come out five ten fifteen years but you might recall this in a different context and a different frame of reference so I think that point of view the point of view of evaluating but relying in the end on the critical intellectual capacity and the imaginative capacity that you bring to the discussion so we're interested in that we're interested in bringing it out ferreting it out and so on and on this I think this is the primary objective of the primary lesson and that's how sayare keeps moving that's why in in a conventional sense in a discussion sense when somebody says we're sie are going the answer again this is this is a bit hyperbole but also to some extent I think true and we feel it to be true the direction of sci-arc the pedagogy of sci-arc is not an established way of thinking and learning the future is always ahead of us and the future remains to be invented so if that sounds a little bit like cheerleading its cheerleading for you it is cheerleading that doesn't mean it isn't so that doesn't mean it isn't possible it happens and it continues to happen that's how I theas in the course of the discourse of architecture move and change and evolve so we're expecting to give you some illustrations manifestations examples of that and we're expecting that you'll give something of that kind back to us so that's the CyArk pro forma I picked as I said a couple of images I could have picked almost any none of them you will notice none of them you will notice have anything to do literally with building there are no building images I think one of the things that's worth understanding is that when you talk about people as individuals and we say architecture and the study of architecture one architect at a time there are things in you there are things you know there are things you've done there are places you've gone there are things you've read there are things you haven't read there are places you haven't gone there are things you haven't done and uniquely if you went around the room you would see some similarities you would see some significant differences again we're looking for what is unique in you and trying to feel to find a way to find a way to pull that out in the course in the course of this discussion for instance and and this is this is the kind of lexicon when you hear discussions of architecture and somebody says digital and somebody says clean and somebody says context and somebody says layering all of that so what you have to be careful of it's not plug your ears but what do you have to be careful of is that you don't learn to repeat a format that already exists with a vocabulary that that I think pretends to define what architecture is you have to figure out in your own way with your own tools your own trips readings adventures and so on how to describe what you're doing I think one of the difficult issues in the discussion of architecture so often is how little room there is to discuss because the vocabulary of the discussion precedes you it precedes you and what you figured out as you walk into the you walk into the review you walk into the jury you walk into the discussion the instructor says something and then you repeat the words and that's okay everybody repeats the words every everyone has a certain basis for understanding I think you have to be careful of that the originators of those words the people who raised those discussions initially had something different to offer those are really the people who are the interesting characters but very quickly an architecture has a habit of this of absorbing strategies organizational tactics vocabularies and so on that come to be shared very quickly and the originality of the invention then starts to dissipate and it starts to be not something that a group or a person or a few architects are working on but something that becomes a general property that everyone uses so the advice from this end is be careful of the jargon be careful of the jargon all around you and the best way to avoid that is to try to find your own means even if it's sloppy even if it's crude even if it's awkward even if it's clumsy but it belongs to you and as you start to discover and find ways of articulating what you discover this is a very critical faculty in the development of a kind of intelligence in the expression of what we expect from you here and I think ultimately what architecture expects I mentioned so this is a man a painting maybe some of you know it I think from the middle of the nineteenth century I think it's called luncheon on the grass and it it raises an interesting question of what's the norm and what's the exception and what I always appreciated about the painting it's not a standard seen in a standard park with a standard lunch with a couple of guys in a couple of girls whatever it is so but it's presented that way I think this this is what interests me so you see a couple of characters sitting around having a conventional discussion except at least a couple a few of the parties are undressed and I think the idea and this this was was considered if not offensive certainly a radical unusual not to say scandalous presentation in terms of a way of looking at contemporary art at that point in time and yet it's presented as if it were completely the norm and one of the interesting strategic opportunities facing us is not only what you do but how you describe what you're doing and if the description is you speak to a country it's twisted it's bent it's it's difficult to construct its on and so on then the perception is that that making that effort would be extraordinary and extraordinarily difficult if you present it as something which is normative doable intelligible comprehensible so this is just another day in the park or is it and I think the juxtaposition of what's unusual and how you present it versus what's normative and how you present it and maybe the trick is you can get away with a hell of a lot of stuff by acting like you're not getting away with much of anything so this is just another day in the park and just another painting or maybe not I don't know if you know the story do you know the story of narcissus it's a Greek story of an attractive guy who was enthralled with his attractiveness found his image in a pool stared at the image pursued the image fell into the water and drowned so this is this is the Greek story of narcissus this isn't this isn't quite narcissus as a cartoon character or some of some of you may know but the line we've found the enemy we found the enemy and the enemy is us is another way of me saying that the responsibility for your pursuit of the discourse of architecture here at Sark belongs to you I think to take that responsibility the enemy isn't the contractor or the banker or the client or for that matter the faculty member that the onus of this or the responsibility for this in the end belongs to you so if we say architecture one architect at a time or one student architect at a time that puts a substantial responsibility on you what's what's interesting about this image and I was just looking at it this morning he surprised at what he sees so this this may suggest something slightly different than narcissus who was enthralled by what he saw this is another this is another version this is a Salvador Dali version and I'm not quite sure I like the image I'm not quite sure how it fits in the discussion but it is the the reflected image but as the image reflects and this may have to do with with how things evolve that what it reflects is different than what is being reflected so when you look in the mirror what you want to see in a certain sense is something coming out of the mirror which is different than what you gave the mirror meaning the discussion I don't know any mirrors that do that but maybe you have one Salvador Dali had one but it's an interesting conception of looking at yourself and evaluating yourself and instead of yourself coming back to yourself something starts to change so whatever you offered the mirror the mirror offers something else back and this is really a metaphorical way of looking at an evolution of personality rather than a restatement of that personality this is a I had a student at Yale years ago who collected a series of music scores by the composer John Cage you know Cage you know the name so maybe it's a it's a name that you could that you could dig into one of the reasons I said there were no images here of buildings and there are no images of buildings because part of the repertoire of architecture and I think the larger your intellectual repertoire the broader your experiences the greater the range of discussion the more you can bring to Architecture from outside architecture which might make architecture very different than what it is now therefore drawing is of some interest music scores are of some interest music has a relationship much-discussed not to discuss it here but a conceptual relationship imagination of music imagination of architecture and so on and so on cage drew music scores drew scores which were unlike the conventional music score pro forma that you know conventionally their visual their art pieces and that what he did was make music not so much in an auditory way an auditory way meaning what do you hear but he made music in terms of what you might see so if you look at the scores so to some extent the music or the auditory side took the consequence of the visual side so why is this interesting it really has to do with juxtaposing a conventional idea about music and listening to music and scoring music and reversing the priorities and in developing music scores for visual reasons rather than simply auditory reason just a way of thinking and thinking in a novel way so that whatever the subject matter is we needn't necessarily regurgitate the standard pro-forma for looking at music or writing music or scoring music but there might be a different way to see it I think those differences are there to be discovered nobody should make the mistake of thinking that they've all been discovered this is a Russian artist from the 1930s and the drawing called maleva you know Malevich constructivist artist and and the the drawing and there were many of these drawings in the era where there was a lot of enthusiasm for communism and socialism and a new world and this is a new world and the name of this drawing is the new man the new man so this is now an antiquated idea the new man turned out to be the old man the new man was Fidel Castro the old man is Fidel Castro and so on and so on but what I what I wanted to say and I think it's worth thinking about is that may always be and we should keep this in mind there's always another new man woman that the idea the image may be antiquated the ideology the ideology that was wrapped up in making this drawing may be passe old news now but the aspiration or the ambition to say we can turn it over we can reinvent it we can make it new so there's someone new and in this case with a different worldview with a different sociology with a different economic point of view all of that these characters thought the world is changing the world is changing history is moving based on various ideological suppositions turned out didn't quite work that way maybe in some cases it turns out like that maybe not but the optimism I think this is a really a critical point that the optimism for somebody to say look there have been X amount of millennia of history the world stays as it is no there have been an X amount of millennia of history we still want to retain the prospect that it could be other than it is even if the particular image is dated this one always in interested me this is you know anybody know who this is so this is Henry Kissinger and so NY in 1972-73 when the Nixon administration went to China and opened up strangely enough and opened up a very different chapter in terms of the American relationship to China and Kissinger is this really has to do it again time like the Malevich wrong way there so Kissinger is supposed to have said to xoan line so the both can intellectual characters interested in history Kissinger was teaching at Harvard before he came to work in the Nixon administration and Kissinger is supposed to have said to so on why what do you think about the French Revolution what do you think about the French Revolution and tell him I was supposed to have said I don't know not enough time has passed I don't know not enough time as best and the way the conversation has talked about its it is often characterized as representing the American point of view which is you got to have an answer in 30 seconds or left and the East Asian point of view which is only over long periods of time our topics understood and I think this is this is just interesting in in terms of a human perspective what you're looking at what you're watching whether you're watching the news or architecture news and so on and how you evaluate it in other words is it an evaluation that everybody shares is in an evaluation that you might have reason to change at a different point in other words is the person that you're being told important unimportant and the person who you think might be important although you might be told is less important that might change that might move so keep in mind keep in mind for some strange reason history keeps being rewritten and redone including contemporary history so nobody says that the point of view that you're given about a subject is the enduring point of view some of that belongs to you and your responsibility and whether you take that responsibility on or not the issue of the movement of ideas and your ability to evaluate those and to see the world in a different way I think is is very critical to the mindset in architecture and this is this is the other point of view which which you people and I guess everybody else bumps into with regularity meaning that's so 1989 or that so 2008 or that's so 15 minutes ago and I think the the point probably is that that you'll be told and it will be often repeated and everything's moving everything's changing everything's different faster and faster and faster you better keep up or you're lost and whatever exactly the truth of what's changing or not changing is it's probably fair to say that some aspects of human existence some aspects of design and architecture are durable or more durable others more ephemeral so the issue of change like the issue of time is a topic to consider but I wouldn't salute every time somebody tells you it's out of date that's so 20 minutes ago it's not true this this goes back to the a little bit back to Kissinger and Enzo online I think I picked this up in a magazine recently and and it struck me because in terms of the East Asia discussion the China discussion and the assumption that manufacturing manufacturing belongs now to East Asia doesn't belong to America anymore cheap labor in East Asia Vietnam Taiwan China Singapore and so on and so on and that's the way the world is going get it and America and Europe don't do that anymore and shouldn't anticipate that they will wait a minute and now come so that's that said and known and understood and repeated and that's the way it is and then all of a sudden now comes something quite different that manufacturing of various kinds is coming back to Europe coming back to Western Europe anyway coming back to the United States in the form of tools like you find in the robot house so sophisticated technical pieces of equipment like like the space stuff that is crawling around on Mars and so on and so on and requires a sophisticated labor force work force is now in the ascendancy so the manufacturing that was not here and never coming back is now here and coming back so that's not to say that that that the that the bromide that all manufacturing belongs to East Asia is is entirely false it means that as soon as everyone started to say that's the way it is now come something quite different so this is also something to keep your eye on and and to watch that the rules and the theories and the conventions it's not even an argument everybody accepted that manufacturing dead in Europe dad in America not true chain this is a little bit melodramatic I don't mean it to be actually like the image and I like the story this is a Greek character what the two versions one is a contemporary relatively contemporary version in a book called the myth of Sisyphus which is written by an author called the Albert Camus maybe you know Kim writing in the middle of the last century and he used the story of Sisyphus the guy who pushes the rock you know the story I don't know yeah the guy who pushes the rock and he pushes the rock up to the top of the hill and just when he gets to the top of the hill guess what so it rolls down on the other side and guess what then he goes down and he gets it and he pushes into and danza that's it forever and the what that has to do with the education process in architecture as little is a little bit complicated I think in in the first place the the punishment the reason in the story in the myth the reason Sisyphus was assigned this as I guess he and Zeus Zeus was a head guy and that didn't agree on a few things and Sisyphus thought he was extremely intellectually clever and sophisticated and tried to demonstrate that in various ways so Zeus to reciprocate Zeus the chief God to reciprocate showed Sisyphus how clever Zeus was by inventing this kind of eternal punishment or image so he that you know this and Sisyphus wasn't in a position to argue so this was so this was his punishment the contemporary version with Camus looked at this as a metaphor for life in a in in a strange way and in a difficult way that the issue is always to push it not to concede to it not to give up and if it slips you go and get it and do it and his conclusion which which is interesting his conclusion maybe this should be our conclusion his conclusion is that Sisyphus was extremely happy doing this now what precisely is the analogy to the process of architecture I think belongs to each one of the 200 people in the room it is it is sometimes a push it is sometimes a chase it is sometimes a fight sometimes you gain it sometimes you lose it but I can tell you there's there's a fundamental wonder and happiness in that and my guess is that when you get to the end of the five or the three and a half or the two and a half you'll come back and tell me wonder and happiness was the product of the zyre adventure so I look forward to that conversation thank you very much you

Channel: SCI-Arc Media Archive

Views: 170

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: SCI-Arc, Southern California Institute of Architecture, Architectural education

Id: wnQHntneNT8

Length: 34min 47sec (2087 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 07 2017