4 Steps To Better Architectural Education
Architecture took the subjective opinions of a few and made them into facts. That makes Architecture a pseudoscience. Nikos Salingaros…
Architecture took the subjective opinions of a few and made them into facts. That makes Architecture a pseudoscience. Nikos Salingaros calls for a radical reset of architectural education focusing on beauty and the Human Scale.
Prof. Salingaros uses medical terms to explain how architecture has mutated from a human-centered design approach to an endogenous affair.
Let us take prof. Salingaros’ ideas and propose something by looking at how medical doctors are trained.
If we acknowledge that architecture and arch. education are broken, then a medical approach doesn’t seem as crazy.
1. The first thing a med student must know inside and out is Anatomy. Beautiful drawings from students before the 20th c. show how well they knew the human body.
Arch. Students ought to dissect buildings and cities in a similar manner. and know every constitutive element.
2. Then they must study Physiology. Delving on how systems, organs, tissue and cells interact and create a delicate balance.
Buildings, neighborhoods and cities, like it or not, behave in the same manner and should be studied similarly-and as deeply- by Architectural Students.
Pathology comes next.
3. A student must know how cells degenerate and how different types of degeneration cause different diseases.
Our cities and buildings are in a stage that needs intervention. But the first things architects must know are the type of disease and its origin.
After studying the Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology of Architecture- and before designing a building- a commitment to preserve life and living conditions is needed, similar to the Hippocratic Oath of medical doctors.
4. And then, some other day, we will talk about how a surgeon has skills, just like a master mason must learn trades, and how surgical teams that have many specialists are similar to groups of skilled tradesmen who can build like Clay Chapman.