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The Education of an Architect: 3 Points of View—Rowe, Hejduk and Ferrari FRANK WEINER SHELLEY MARTIN Virginia Tech

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The Education of an Architect: 3 Points of View—Rowe, Hejduk and Ferrari FRANK WEINER SHELLEY MARTIN Virginia Tech THE EDUCATION OF AN ARCHITECT 195 The Education of An Architect: 3 Points of View—Rowe, Hejduk and Ferrari FRANK WEINER SHELLEY MARTIN Virginia Tech INTRODUCTION: THE HISTORIAN, THE POET pable of artfully navigating between these two end AND THE MAGICIAN conditions of knowledge – the metaphysical desire to know and the poetic desire to make. One is an This paper will attempt to make a preliminary read- urge towards the conceptual the other an urge to- ing of the main achievements and impacts of three wards the beautiful. At the highest levels science remarkable architectural educators – Colin Rowe, and art fold into one unity. This is what Max Bill John Hejduk and Olivio Ferrari1. Each of these termed, after Van Doesburg, Concrete Art–– where teachers passed within six years of each other in the logical and the beautiful occupy the same place 2000, 1999 and 1994 respectively. By placing the and time. We may understand science and art not work of these three great teachers in parallel the so much as clearly demarcated disciplines but expectation is that a larger understanding about rather as two fundamental human desires or ca- architectural education may emerge that may as- pacities. At one moment the human mind aspires sist the present generation of teachers to address to the cool exactitude of a logical net catching all current problems and find future directions. One inconsistencies, and at another moment human can begin to study the didactic life of these teach- beings act from the wellspring of the interrelated ers as one would enjoy walking through the rooms life of the five senses. in good building. It is our contention that the study of teachers is as valuable as the study of build- The reason why the questions of science and art ings. Rowe spent the better part of a long teaching are so critical to the education of architects is that career at Cornell, Hejduk at Cooper Union and architectural education, like the Renaissance, is at Ferrari at Virginia Tech. Rowe gave us the vocabu- the intersection of science and art. For example, lary to teach, Hejduk the poetry to see and Ferrari what part of the development of perspective is sci- the questions to proceed. Generations of their stu- ence and what part is art? The thing that results in dents have gone on to make a considerable differ- what we now so naturally call perspective is in fact ence in both the practice and teaching of a combination of two kinds of knowledge. How- architecture attesting to the exponential impact of ever without the combined foundations of scien- three extraordinary teachers. tific thinking and artistic making perspective would not be possible. The same is true for architectural SCIENCE AND ART IN RELATION TO THE education. The possibility of architectural educa- EDUCATION OF AN ARCHITECT tion depends on the same shared foundation of The education of an architect resides between the knowledge. An architect is a individual that is con- registers of science and art between episteme and sciously and deliberately not a scientist or an art- teche.2 How we chose to define and interrelate ist yet must know much about both sensibilities. science and art in our time is one of the key issues The education of an architect is purposively poised for the present generation of architectural educa- between the scientific and the artistic - between tors. Whatever the definitions of science and art it the legitimate and constructive. These are the les- is imperative that a teacher of architecture be ca- sons of Vitruvius and Alberti. 196 THE ART OF ARCHITECTURE/THE SCIENCE OF ARCHITECTURE Science, Art and Architecture in the University: manence of form and the secret life of objects that resides within. Through his extensive knowledge Architectural education simply could not survive of philosophy he raised the intellectual level of his alone and perhaps this is why architectural educa- students and the work they produced. Rather than tion primarily exists today within the framework of use the philosophical term mind he preferred the a university setting despite the evolving difficul- word brain but he meant mind. He focused not so ties inherent in such a placement. When science is much on architecture but rather on the architect reduced to information and art to the communica- as student. For Ferrari the cultivation of the free tion of self-expression architectural education suf- sovereignty of individuals as they developed their fers. Unfortunately this is the state of science and capacities as makers was of the utmost impor- art at many universities today. tance.3 He was seeking an ethical equilibrium in himself and his students. This environment makes the necessity for study- ing great teachers more apparent. Within this re- COLIN ROWE: BUILDING WITH WORDS duction of science and art the potential of architectural education is significantly diminished. Colin Rowe was a gifted observer of architecture who through his written and verbal eloquence One has the sense that the three teachers selected maintained the continuity of the traditions of ar- for this preliminary study had an implicit and ex- chitectural culture across epochs and challenged plicit didactic position about architecture relative its future. He had a formidable ability in language to science and art that continues to be relevant and thought that overcame a lack of drawing skill.4 today. Therefore it is timely to put forth their di- In a very real sense he was able to draw observa- dactic content as both a remedy to the present tions and form conclusions with words. There have situation and an inspiration for the future. been few teachers in architecture like Rowe that have mastered both the realms of the lecture room Rowe the historian searched for the science in his- and the studio. Colin Rowe was able to navigate in tory that was germane to making architecture. He the space between history and design - between depended on the existence of a science of history what happened and what might happen. He had from which to generate his observations and for- insight into the connections between the actual and mulations. His search opened up new vocabularies the possible. Rowe in some ways literally invented of understanding at both the scale of the building a vocabulary with which to teach architecture. and the scale of the city. He combined a typically Teachers of architecture often do not acknowledge British eloquence of language along with the pen- the sources from which their teaching vocabulary etrating influence of Germanic thinkers such as Karl originates.5 How can one teach architecture with- Popper and Ernst Cassirer. With Rowe, history es- out the ideas of Plato and Aristotle and without caped the lecture room and found its way into the the words of Rowe and Frampton? For example studio. History went from a slide projected on a when teachers discuss the idea of transparency wall to the drawing on a desk. with students then they owe a debt to Rowe. In a Hejduk made a highly attuned physical and spiri- sense he offered an entire vocabulary with which tual environment at Cooper Union that protected to capture the nuances of architectural form and and fostered the narratives and myths of the maker. the stories of architecture. He was a poet intensely dedicated to looking at Rowe did not invent new words but he did invent the work of other poets or ‘makers’ such as new ways of understanding words in an architec- Mondrian, Gris, Gide and Proust. Hejduk employed tural sense. The string of articles and essays pub- with great affect the idea of architecture’as paint- lished by Rowe since 1947 have taken on legendary ing and architecture as literature. His method of status in schools of architecture well before their employing analogies gave a special breadth to the codification in the 3 volume collection entitled, As problems he posed to his students such as design- I Was Saying (1996). Some of the more well known ing a house in the manner of Juan Gris. are ‘The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa’, ‘La Ferrari, a child of Ulm and the tutelage of Max Bill, Tourette’, and ‘Transparency: Literal and Phenom- had an unrelenting belief in the philosophical im- enal’. Another essay by Rowe perhaps less famous THE EDUCATION OF AN ARCHITECT 197 but no less important was ‘Ideas, Talent, Poetics’. sary measure of historical erudition and imagina- Here Rowe was at his best using Platonic and Aris- tion that provided students and teachers with his- totelian thought to make a comparative analysis torical context. of architects and their buildings.6 Rowe tells us that Palladio had Ideas, Borromini had Talent. Although JOHN HEJDUK: THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE AND ART there is no way to prove Rowe’s proposition in an absolute sense this kind of broad formulation had Late in his life John Hejduk was invited to present a ring of truth to it which bore itself out upon closer a lecture on education where he briefly distilled inspection of the buildings and architects in ques- what the work of Cooper Union was about with his tion. The article reads as a summation of many of characteristic sense of understatement - ‘We make the major themes Rowe took up across his teach- things well and we like to fabricate parts and we ing and scholarly life. The generalizations or ten- like parts.’9 This simple statement contains a num- dencies that Rowe articulated allowed students and ber of important ideas. First the idea of making or faculty to better understand specific differences in poiesis is the primary preoccupation.
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