Fear

I’m a yogi (I know, horrific image: me in shorts standing on my head). Without yoga I’d be a physical wreck. But entering into the world of yoga, one enters into an interesting philosophical construct as well. In the west, especially in Judaism and Christianity, we have the proscriptions of the Ten Commandments; in other words “thou shalt not.” The Yoga Sutras have a similar ten commandments, but five are proscriptions, and the other five are observances. Thus there is a balance between avoiding and seeking. In yoga, there are five afflictions or diseases: ignorance, egoism, attachment, aversion, and fear. Fear refers primarily to the fear of death, but this can also be viewed as fear of failure.

I bring this up because my students appear to be afraid to draw. I have experienced this fear myself. Even though very little is at stake, a blank sheet of paper can still be quite intimidating. But it is critical to overcome a fear and make things. Recall that the paper is not blank; it is already loaded with the ideas of the project. The paper is loaded with your own personal history. The paper is merely a vehicle. Recall that a drawing is not an end, but a part of a continuum. Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you make an awful mess. Sometimes it is from the messes that we learn the most. There is a fear that the hand is inadequate, that ugly drawings are going to be made. The drawing is not so much about the hand as it is about the mind. The drawing is merely a means for expressing ideas. The lines drawn are a notation. Once the idea forms, the drawing can start to take over. Apply experience to deepen the drawing. A drawing can almost always be saved, but it takes effort of the mind. A bad drawing is usually about a lack of depth of thinking, rather than a poor hand.

As a parting image, I include this drawing by John Hejduk. Hejduk had an awful hand. I get the sense that he held his pen like a 4 year old in his fist, point down. He certainly doesn’t have the elegance of Lebbeus Woods, or, referencing the current exhibit at MoMA, Henri Labrouste. But Hejduk’s work is not about the finesse of the drawing, but about the ideas they contain. To that end, his drawings are phenomenally successful – he has created an entire world.

 

John Hejduk – Subject/Object

 

Environmental Education

I just encountered the writing of David Orr, who writes about changing the focus of education. He says that all education is environmental education. If an education never dwells on environmental issues at all, this is as powerful as one focused on the environment. He specifically references the fact that economists are educated without a fundamental knowledge of physics and ecology – an understanding of the natural world upon which our economy rests. Thus the environmental education in this case places no value on physics and ecology.

I have written about the same concern earlier in this blog relative to architectural education. As architectural educators, we are not placing appropriate emphasis and concern on our natural world. We have a preoccupation with form and aesthetics. These are great things – don’t get me wrong – but as we urbanize we lose contact with those critical processes that fundamentally sustain us.

Decoding the Review – mid Spring 2013

This review went pretty well for most. Of course I have the usual to say: some aren’t working as hard as they should be. But that is always the case (both that I will always want more, and that some will always not produce to their capability). Being able to focus like this is a luxury.

One big theme from the two days is that the “big view” was missing from most presentations. A single comprehensive view of the project in the site was needed. This can take many forms: physical model, digital model, hand-drawn perspectives or axonometrics. Anything that gives a sense of the totality of the project. The nature of the artifact is dependent upon the nature of each student’s investigation. It was difficult to read from the drawings presented, the overall form of the intervention into the site. There were some nice drawings, some were fantastic, but ultimately frustrating because it was difficult to assemble the project in our heads. This is why physical models still get so much attention in reviews – they are the easiest representation to understand the complexity of relationships.

The other theme has to be about the narrative of the project. Sometimes this is luck. The projects with the better confluence of ideas got the better reviews. They were easier to engage because there was a symmetry of the parts. When your project is sited on a former landfill turned into a vast public park, and you combine these elements into buildings built of trash and recycled materials, combined with a landscape that thinks of the changing seasons, this is a strong narrative. What makes it especially so is that it combines the narrative aspect, with the performance aspect. Thus the idea of the materials becomes a challenge for the building enclosure.