Two days ago I had the pleasure of sitting on crit panels for the University of Waterloo School of Architecture (here and forever after UWSA because the long version takes me about five minutes to type). The reviews were for a first-year group project - multi-unit housing in urban conditions. Some of the work was a little crazy, some was a little boring, and the product (drawings, models) was typically very good. The time between the invitation to the actual crit gave me an opportunity to think about the purpose of crits and how they might be best conducted. I reached a few different and possibly incompatible conclusions.
There are, I think, two ways to conduct yourself on a crit panel; you can either be the good cop or the bad cop. The good cop is encouraging and congratulatory. The bad cop is an asshole. Architecture students since the creation of formal architectural education must have asked themselves if any purpose is served by the bad cops on crit panels. When I was a student, I didn't think so. I believed the reason some respected professionals seemed to take pleasure in making 18 year old students cry was that they were sadists or they were terribly unhappy in their personal and professional lives and needed to make someone else even less happy than they were.
Now I think the actual purpose of mean critics is to help students distance themselves from their work. Because architecture is very important every aspect of a design must be available for criticism. The more rigorously a project is criticized the better the finished design. This process is hindered when students, or professionals, react to criticism as tho it was directed at them personally rather than at the work. So students have to learn to separate themselves from what they produce.
While I understand this, I'm not at all certain it is either a good idea or correct. First, it makes students risk averse. I have always wondered why students sometimes create banal projects when the brief they begin with allows them the latitude to design anything they can imagine. This is partly because students want to provide the "right answer" and they are betting that answer is not some crazy thing they hardly know what to think of themselves. But a little encouragement during the design process can go a long way to helping the students overcome this fear. It can do nothing, however, about the fear of being singled out in front of the entire class for ridicule and disparagement during final reviews.
More importantly, should we really teach students to distance themselves from their work? Criticism always makes things better is axiomatic in architecture. Still, someone has to care for a project and about it if it is going to have a chance. I also question the idea architecture is all that important. I am a proponent of the "nice" school, with which most of my colleagues strongly disagree. I think the most important criterion for any design is that it be nice - as in, O that's nice. A city composed entirely of buildings that met this criterion would become a world class tourist destination. It is only after niceness is assured that architects should start pursuing more effusive adjectives. A nice building with something cool about it is really something. Toronto is full of buildings that aren't nice (and, to be clear, I don't mean kind, gentle, user-friendly, I mean nice as in pleasant, well-composed) and it is suffering from them. There are plenty more buildings no one will ever describe as nice under construction. Some will be spectacular without being nice. And if you take a moment to think of some examples of things that fit the description "spectacular but not nice" you will see why this is to be avoided.
Back to the topic at hand, by inclination and ideology I am against assholes on crit panels. I think the good they do is questionable and the harm unquestionable. I try, therefore, to be encouraging while remaining critical.
One of the best critics I ever sat with had a habit of running through the obvious mistakes very quickly at the beginning of every session. A student would pin up their work and start their prepared explanation - he would wait patiently for them to finish and then say, "Your stairs don't work, they're too steep. The bedroom windows are too small. The front door opens the wrong direction..." and so on. He said all of this in a matter of fact voice, like he was reading it into the official record. He wanted the students to know these mistakes mattered but his manner made it clear how much he thought they mattered. Then he would ask a question some fundamental aspect of the project he found interesting. Finally, after much conversation, he would offer some advice about the design as a whole. I admired his method for a number of reasons. What I admired most, although I wouldn't have been able to articulate it at the time, was he was offering an ad hoc definition of architecture - not a very thorough one but a useful one.
Architecture was about the rise-run ratio of the stairs and the swings of doors and windows and so on. But those things matter much less than the ideas around which a project was developed. And those, ultimately, mattered less than the final design. Things like the angle of a stairway can be changed. The ideas that inspire a designer can be reinterpreted. But a final project must be considered as a whole and on its own merits. Buildings do not come with interpretive guides to explain to the occupants why the atrium is the size it is or why there are so many damn corners, or why all the walls meet at odd angles. The final design stands by itself or it doesn't stand at all.
The one thing I try to keep in mind when I sit on crit panels is what it felt like to stand in front of them. The students are tired. They are anxious. These events, the first half dozen or so anyway, are going to stick in their memories like first kisses. And they will only remember a few sentences from twenty minutes to a half hour of continuous talking. If you say something particularly memorable it is probably going to be mean. I told one group their project needed some architecture. It was true but I feel bad about it because it is impossible they didn't misinterpret me. What I meant was they had devoted themselves to solving problems in a reasonable way but hadn't tried to do anything graceful or poetic with space or matter. There was nothing sculptural in their project, nothing (either solid or void) that was really beautiful. It was competent but nothing more. I was trying to get them to seize the possibility the next project (and every subsequent project) will offer them to create something cool, to try something for no better reason than they think it might be fun. I was trying to tell them I think ambition is praiseworthy; working on something you think is cool and kind of crazy is easier than solving spatial problems. I was trying to tell them architecture school is very different from the professional world. But all they will remember is I said their project needed architecture.
It's been almost a decade but I still remember the mean things some assholes said in crits I was subjected to. They should never have been in a school, never have been asked to sit as critics. They were mean-spirited and seemed to take pleasure in humiliating students. I have, in the interim, disparaged their work at every opportunity. And I am much better at saying mean things than they are. Nothing I say will ever even the score. Those memories are in my head for good. I don't think about them often, only when I sit on crit panels. It helps me remember why I have to be kind and helpful.
There is one other kind of critic I haven't mentioned yet. They inhabit the world's most famous architecture schools and are only there to cherry pick the best and brightest students. They don't give a single fuck for the rest. If you aren't the best in your class, these people do not have even a minute to spare for you. These are people who should be kept out of architecture schools by any and all means possible. While it is true that architecture is competitive and, since you can't teach talent, at a certain moment some people will out-distance their classmates, the fact remains some people peak in third-year and never get any better. Some people don't get their feet under them until they are graduate students. You never can tell when someone is going to hit their stride. Or if. That makes architectural education an extremely inefficient business. So be it.
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