So, Hans, Um, why don't you tell
me if you would, about what brought you to
Virginia? It's one of those really architectural connections I
was working in. Rock Hill is a city architect
and model cities planner for physical planning, and our
local talent couldn't do a lot of the things we
wanted to do. And so I went to Charlotte
and Harry, Harry Woolf to come and to a
senior citizen center. Mhm. And as luck would
have it, there were at least five Virginia Tech
graduates working for Harry and Harry had been to take
. And he knew Olivia into New Gene. And
he knew Bob all those guys. And so we
got talking because I was was towards the end of
the program, I was burning out and I thought
about going back to school and the choices down there
where and I don't mean to mention names, but
the Virginia Tech really looked wonderful, and I wanted
to actually get into an urban design programs inside my
architecture degree from Rice. And so we went up
to attack to look at the urban design program,
and that suited me. And that's how I ended
up here. And that was what Year? 74
. Okay, well, yeah, 74. So
tell me about what was it about? About a
tech that really appealed to you? Well, that's
again a not straightforward answer, because the urban design
program had very little to do with the architecture program
. A certain animosity between Frank, Entire and Olivia
and Frank and I had a lot to offer in
urban design, but it was a very strange relationship
. Personal reasons, political reasons, you name it
, things that are graduate student, even though,
after entering politics a bit with model cities, isn't
quite aware of. And they are not really out
there. And they open what got me into architecture
. I mean, the program kept me there because
it was a good urban design program and they treated
me very well, advanced me really quickly, even
though it was admitted as a special student, because
that was out of school for too long. Mhm
, that what really got me interested then was my
contact with their architecture part. And then when I
realized that even though the program was presented to me
as a professional program, it didn't have a professional
degree And so my thesis year I spent already in
architecture. I talked to Birgit about it and he
said, Well, just moving to architecture. And
, uh, I did my thesis in the architecture
program to get the masses of architecture rather than urban
design. You know, I didn't catch it before
, but, actually, can we move that clock
or turn it off? Doesn't take you in the
background. Yeah, Perfect. Thank you. Not
a problem. That where nobody will see how long
the interview took. Mhm. You've got to just
watch that. Yeah, well, you don't have
another one. Really? Correct. Got the production
assistant standing by. Yeah, so was it.
A lot of people have talked about Mm. The
pedagogy of the school at that time posted in the
Burchard Ferrari years being really something special, Um,
and a sort of unique thing, and certainly unique
when you think about this school. Nowhere was that
was that at all part of your This is,
you know, to come to tech or was that
may be part of your decision to stay and teach
. No, not really. When you're a student
, you don't realize things like pedagogy and all of
that stuff. You basically look at what you are
allowed to do and how you supported in that,
and there's an interesting connection I had no idea of
. But when I was at race, Miss Evans
, who taught the foundation he is, there was
also an acquaintance and friend of the Ferraris from Auburn
. And the way Miss Evans approached. The first
year was very similar to what the school did here
and the foundation years when I came from urban design
into architecture. We're sort of the elite years.
That's how it looked to students. And so there
was a certain familiarity that made me comfortable with it
. And then there was something much more important and
that had to do with me. Having been in
the United States since 1966 at that time and close
to well, almost 10 years and the pragmatic reliance
on statistics that the at that time still vary subdued
dehumanization off architecture as a profession was not present,
that the level at which I learned to know cool
and that made me feel at home. The years
that I've spent in federal and local politics suddenly could
be set aside and it was that part, which
I think then one can translate into the pedagogy as
well as into the lack of a real didactic structure
that made couples are attractive. And when I say
real lack of that active structure, the structure was
not present. It was there, obviously, but
not obvious when you are a graduate student, but
obvious in later years when you emerging to it as
a faculty and it's that that made me I really
wanted to stay here. The social scene was another
part between the Greeks and tend to through the through
the body, who, together with her husband really
about it, ran pretty much. What was the
one place of society that Blacksburg had at that time
was also the place where the whole architecture department would
crash. And so we met on two levels,
and we met in a cultural situation that was familiar
that was open for giving. Mm. We could
fight. We could scream without being chastised without being
immediately viewed as a problem, because everybody understood,
including the American guys like Eggo and Bob and Bill
Brown and all those guys. This was the way
human beings interact and it was that possibility of again
actual non hypocritical, non guarded interaction that made such
an enormous difference. This is the celery thyme?
Uh, no, no, no. That's a
private house. Okay, that's a private house.
Doctor bodies house down on the prices Fork road.
It was sort of a social center for the college
. And I got into it because of my dog
. Not because of my being a graduate student in
urban design that vaso telephones head. She was a
colleague of mine in urban design, and she had
to shut German shepherds and I had one, and
we had to get them together and truly had two
German shepherds. This book, this is how we
met. And that's how, actually socially got into
the architecture. See? Mm. And those are
accidents. You cannot plan. You cannot repeat.
You can't do anything with, but those are realities
. Those are facts. And they are a major
part of the history of the school. Well,
I grew up in a small college town very similar
, and it seems to me like in an environment
like this, you're that much more likely to get
together with colleagues and to have you know raucous debate
. And is that part of the appeal? What
can you speak? Well, um, you see
, I have to disagree with you because socially,
the interaction in a university like Blacksburg is very limited
. It's highly exclusive, highly aligned according to political
linage. According to political preferences, there is no
discourse. There is only polite blathering. And the
reality of through this house was there was discourse.
And that is something that, being European, you'll
learn to miss after a while in the US and
it was there and it continued in cocoa while it
was possible. I don't know how much we want
to go down that road. Just I mean,
I'm very interested in this, but let's talk about
it a little bit and see where it goes.
I'm really curious about, you know, I keep
hearing all these stories and of course, everyone romanticizes
the past to a certain degree. But it does
seem to me like something has changed. Yeah,
even from when I was here in 95 Um,
without because I'd like to use this. So without
you get where my dilemma with us can you speak
to the program? How the program was when you
found it and what was attractive to you about that
. And maybe where that has changed for the better
. Not for them. That's not. That's not
easy to answer, not because the question is,
you know, right, because I'm worried about the
answer. Those things are very hard to design because
a lot depends on how better or not better is
defined by how does it actually serve architecture? The
education of architect when it came and this was one
of birch, it's great achievements. The school.
Elizabeth, Can you get the dog downstairs again?
Happy. Mhm, Mhm, Mhm. He's gnawing
on his bone and it's really audible right here,
right at the right place. He wants to be
part of the interview. He had heard me mention
Leo and therefore downstairs. Hey, dummy. Now
answer. Mm. I'm sorry. That's good.
Anyway, uh, does my knee show no,
period? Good. Okay, because I'm not presented
from here. Mhm, uh, sometimes does not
have cancer. Where was I? It's a hard
question to answer how it affects you see, purchase
. Great achievement in that sense was that he understood
that the schools need to create new generations of architects
and not literate employees for office to continue the status
quo. The schools were not servicing the profession,
the schools where building students towards the right of passage
of making the architects of today the architects of yesterday
. That's where the big change up and the big
change happened not because of kogel changing, because of
the American University changing, because the American University becoming
an administrative ridden and administrative controlled issue of big business
and the more money you need for God knows what
bigger administrations, I guess the more money you've got
to raise and how do you raise money, like
how towering to the wishes of the alumni and most
alumni, as we all know, are not The
star connects. There are people who want to have
a good, solid workers, and that's where the
change comes from. It's a national problem. It's
not a local problem. Kogel and Virginia Tech is
actually way behind the curve on it, and that's
part because of the resistance of the faculty and part
because if we have a resistant administration, you know
, we bitch about them. But they're slow in
accepting all the nonsense that comes from the outside.
And so you know, this is where the major
change occurred that then going along with that all of
the insanity ease of in favor of affirmative action and
the morphing into what's it called now about their sustainability
. But that's another question. That effect is professionally
, but the what's the word I'm looking for?
Political correct? Well, that's that's That's the overall
picture, but diversity and inclusion if you look at
all this nonsense, which is nothing else but good
old pluralism and multiculturalism more two times into a new
way where you can't really approach to what it means
. All of this stuff has altered the faculties,
inequalities, the selection. If you sit in a
university race, sex, cultural origin and religion above
the ability within the field, don't be surprised if
the field goes away and then you accelerate that with
interdisciplinary. In is, um, which is another
one of those wonderfully placed euphemisms that actually means non
disciplinarian is, um, where disciplines get replaced by
studies which in themselves already signaled very clearly that there
is no depth to them. Then you end up
with what is the demise of the American University within
a few years, we are going to be probably
completely adjusted to the the World Bank's notion of the
global faculty who are employees who do the bidding of
the employers. And with that, I think we're
looking at a rather bleak academic future. And I
don't want to speculate beyond that because one shooting.
But that is what you're really looking at when you
say What changed Inter. I'm sorry internally. What
changed is really not much. Or let's put it
that way. Nothing inordinately changed. We survived too
. Horrid deans. Mhm. I mean people who
had absolutely no connection to architecture and had actually an
intention of undermining architecture because it is not a socially
directed field, but an artistic directed field. We
survived that we made it. We're back now with
an architect as Dean, and we're back now with
a good architect as department head or director, as
we call them. So that shows you the strength
of what was built into that faculty. And it
shows the strength of the dedication to architecture. And
also, I think, Mm. And bear in
mind, I cut myself out of this. So
if you can pretty state, uh huh? I
think, too. There's a lot of alumni for
faculty in the program, and so there's an allegiance
to to their school to not be, you know
, responsible for its. That's slipping right. We've
been on the fire for hiring our own people for
a long time. I mean, sometimes, and
you can hold put it very beautifully, ones to
one of our former deans. And he said,
Look, this is a school of architecture and out
of animal husbandry, So could you please dispense with
the incestuous implications? I mean, it was the
most appropriate answer to that nonsense, because a school
is a place of continuum. It's a place in
which the history of the thought of the school and
the work of the school is a continue, which
reflects directly the inevitable change that comes through the change
in the student body and in the faculty. Of
course, for political reasons, that change isn't fast
enough, and it's not controllable. So every effort
was made to destroy that continue, didn't succeed.
So what can you say? Yeah, truth will
prevail. One last question on this sort of line
. So some speak people speculated that, and I
think your answer is perfect. Um, that that
when Ferrari died, he was sort of the last
of those strong personalities that were at the head,
not from what I've been able to discern. I
don't think that's really that accurate, but but some
people have speculated that without that sort of figurehead,
yeah, plays a role. What do you think
about? Well, people who say that forget that
Ferrari faced himself out rather early in the game.
Then I moved to Europe. I stopped giving lectures
. Um, I mean, I really liked that
. We have a socially very close. He actually
asked me to take him hunting and fishing and teach
amount of fly fish. A lot of people don't
know that, but that is out in the open
. He saw what was coming, and he was
old enough at the time to look for ways to
get out from under it, because what he was
doing could not survive, at least in his eyes
. What's wonderful about it is not that he's dead
. He probably knows, and here's what I'm saying
. It did survive. The point about the personality
is a typical American point, and I'm not.
Don't misunderstand me. I'm American, but I'm saying
it is a point where the constant looking for leadership
gets in the way of understanding that principles. Fundamental
philosophical foundations are what survive and finally brought those to
the school. And then he brought people that understood
those and they maintained those and we're all going to
die. But those foundations are the things that continue
. Those foundations are the things that make cultures.
Those foundations are the things that even in adverse conditions
, cannot be rooted out. They can only be
suppressed so well. Ferrari was a great personality.
The vacuum, his departure left left also a situation
of sibling rivalry almost with some of the fact,
because some of them didn't really rely on that wonderful
basis that they could stand on. But then,
that's youth. And that's how you grow more mature
and how you grow older. And that's how we
make. So yes, he was a wonderful personality
, and there's nobody much lift that I can yell
at and who yells back and who yells at me
and I can yell back. I mean, I
remember we would empty studios and Phil classrooms when we
got into arguments that I wouldn't have today because I
was ignorant and young and he was much wiser and
older. But he stood up and he yelled and
he corrected and I yelled back, and I learned
and that, yes, we're missing that. But
the large degree it's also because we have become perhaps
professionally, too polite. We are personally distant and
over polite in many cases and professionally, way too
polite. But the danger right now is the fragility
of trying to rebuild the place after this really horrid
interregnum. When architecture became well again, as somebody
put it, we had Dean's that didn't know the
difference between the plan and the section mhm. You
can't You can't maintain architecture at the proper series level
. So all I can say is, yes,
we we miss all of you. He built the
school, but what he left is often misunderstood as
a personal uh huh legacy rather than an eternal legacy
. And it gives him actually short shrift by not
acknowledging that. Great. Um, I'm curious about
I've heard a lot about how he taught or some
people talked about how he didn't, um and that's
how he taught. And, you know, It's
a little ignorance on my part, but it seems
to me from the descriptions that I've heard of how
things used to be and how he inspired people,
that you actually are one of the the people left
that's still do that. Is that accurate? Yes
, definitely. You see, teaching is often misunderstood
for making information absorbable in a pragmatic situation. That
is correct. But that's not teaching. Teaching is
bringing out in the student the interest that generates the
need for absorption of both information and knowledge. That's
what Ferrari was excellent at, and that's what some
of us are aspiring to. And that difference is
being undermined annually by the university through its distribution of
teaching awards through its definition of what good teaching is
, which is all techno dependent information dissemination. Now
Lord knows, if you're teaching some field that deals
with statistics, perhaps that's the proper approach. I
don't know. I'm ignorant of that for an art
. It just won't work. And that is one
of the things that when we try to talk to
the university, is being brushed aside because it it
matters the waters of clear, frictionless functioning, which
is the thing that in an administratively driven situation is
the goal, not how good our students become the
rogue college. Yes, or you become disgruntled.
That's the wonderful word, your disgruntled when you critique
what's going on in what's called teaching, which is
nothing else but training. I mean, with the
same methods you can train a dog, you can
train a monkey. The same methods have been used
in rather bad places where human beings were made to
perform according to certain standards. We know that that's
history. So, yes, there's a big difference
. And yes, when you talk about pedagogy,
when you talk about taking the risks of pedagogic,
if you want to be a teacher, you have
to take a risk in the wager. The wager
is that student will actually want to learn and want
to do the thing. The risk is they won't
turn out that if you're not willing to take those
two risks. If you cannot allow failure in education
, then get the hell out of education. And
this means the universities should get out of education the
way they are now looking at education because risk is
no longer allowed. It reminds me of something.
I interviewed T. Marshall Haunt, and he's the
one who brought Burchard. I talked to him about
that and he said, You know, he wanted
a top architecture program, period. And so he
found the guy you apparently had to bag in practically
. And he told him, I want to top
architecture, school, do what you need to do
and then gave him all the cover he needed.
And then again, what I've heard is that then
Burchard was able to give Ferrari and others full cover
to do what they needed to do. And it
, I mean, that's the ideal right? And
that's just not there. Well, that's again a
structural problem, because the dean's and virtually, I
think, was the last one. Charlie Steiger was
a very good team, and he was fully aware
of the transition. It happened in his time when
the Dean's, instead of being the last layer of
the faculty relative to the administration, became the lowest
layer of the administration dealing with faculty. And that
is what caused that big change. If I have
a problem now with things that go on at the
university, I have nobody to talk to. I
have to go to the state Legislature because everybody from
there on down to the dean works for the state
Legislature. Whether they want to admit it or not
, it's a different story, but I can prove
it. Let's talk about Washington House. Andrea,
I can talk to you about this all night.
I want to take up your whole night. Oh
, thank you. Mm mm. Washington, Alexandria
. Uh, tell you what? Before you.
Before we shift gears if you want. Um,
I read in the I asked for for the Ferrari
. Uh huh. Look. And yeah, So
I I read through that. I thought I really
liked what you had to write. Do you want
to relate that story at all? How I got
? Yeah, it wasn't a party. And through
the jobs, basically, I mean, I was
so dumb about architecture at that time. It was
It wasn't funny when I look back at it and
again, this was finales genius. We were talking
. They're slightly cracked and he asked me about architecture
, and I was giving him some idiotic definition of
architecture that I was living on ever since I had
left race. And he sort of dismissed. It
didn't even say anything. But I could say seeing
his face. And yeah, I was I was
a cocky guy. I thought, you know,
who is he to dismiss it like that? He
said, Would you like to, you know,
come to Kabul? You know, faculty has said
, Well, yeah, I don't know. I
would like the problem And I said, Why do
you want me on the faculty? And he said
, Well, every faculty, every architecture, faculty
should have an Austrian And at that time, it
really sounded like, Well, you just confirmed my
ideas about you, you know? But it was
one of those statements coming from a guy who you
didn't take lightly that you thought about. And I
started to think about what is the connection between architecture
and Austria. And it's at that time that I
started to realize the historic importance of Austrian architecture since
the Baroque. And much of my academic work is
based on that moment of realization, because once you
start digging like in anything else that you are really
interested in, you find things that can actually fulfill
your life. And so in that sense, he
used the same pedagogical method on the faculty. But
the future faculty that he used understood, and that's
a very important thing to remember. It was the
planting a seed. The other thing, too,
that you have to understand. And that is it
reads out idiots. If I would have been a
real idiot, I don't know how much of an
idiot I am, but I wasn't really did.
I would have simply dismissed it. But a thinking
person starts to dig on something that nobody else finds
very important, because it doesn't fit into their scheme
of procedure or process. And so you think about
it and it makes a thinking person activated. And
that is probably the most fundamental importance about the Pentagon
chief. Artistic education, right? You have to
have high esteem for that person, which obviously not
the highest team. I barely knew him at that
time. I had respect. No, but it
sounds like but no, it's not that I had
had respect because I saw what the product was in
the school and so respect, you know, today
we're we're supposed to have respect for everything. I
mean, the idiocy of this whole political correctness nonsense
. is just it's detrimental if you ask me to
have respect for people I cannot respect. People need
to be treated with contempt that are contemptuous. Yeah
. So respect to me means something else. And
when I have respect for a person, that person
will occupy major times of my life. And that
is what the situation was that Well, it warms
my heart to know that you consider yourself ignorant about
architecture until you can. Yeah, I could put
buildings together, but I had no idea of architecture
. Now, this is the beauty of kogel.
It educates the faculty when we are allowed to do
that. I mean, that was gonna be my
next question. So you clearly feel that your education
as an architect, straight from here straight from here
, Rice gave me a good basis to slip into
the American idiom gift. Understand? I've spent three
years there, and, you know, I feel
for my foreign students my English was no better than
theirs. I might have had an additional handicap,
which was a cultural chip on my shoulder. And
so those years were mostly years of adjustment. Until
my last year, when it did actually the first
Uh huh. Serious work as an architecture student.
That was with Paul Kennan, who was a wonderful
teacher and who allowed me to go into a scale
that was more natural to me, which was the
urban scale at that time. And this shows you
how one changes over the years, and I still
love the urban scale. But now I'm really,
at the scale of, you know, making furniture
almost and which I do. And I shall say
you sort of move out of the production mode into
the education mode. And then architecture becomes scale lists
in the sense of your interest, but very precise
in where your interests focus at any particular time.
And that, again is a wonderful thing that the
school gave me an opportunity to develop. That's why
it's a university in my mind. Still, regardless
of what the external world wants it to be,
well, mhm, I feel old enough to say
this, uh, I think the students have changed
. I mean, I don't think, you know
, I don't think cut from the same cloth as
those that went before me. And I see the
students now, and I'm stunned at how different they
are than even my generation students have to change.
I mean, we'd be a dead nation or Libya
. Mm. If students wouldn't change. And even
in Libya and then Egypt and the Nazi Germany students
change, that's why those places can survive. Humanity
changes humanity changes in its social expression. Humanity.
Humanity doesn't change as humanity. And that's something we
need to remember. The house is still a house
. We can still live in houses that were built
1000 years ago, and they become more popular as
we go along because we have suddenly started to translate
social changes into changes of humanity, which is a
horrifying, deadly mistake. We wring our hands about
the decay of our civilization. Well, we call
everything a culture that anybody does well. That comes
a moment when you say, Wake up, folks
and start to understand what the words mean. They
refer to something in particular, but in terms of
architecture, education, that the change that is taking
place and what you're describing to me that does seem
like a problem. No, it's not a problem
if you're aware of it. If you accept it
, and if you change your methods. According to
it. It's a question of methodology, of teaching
, not of pedagogy. We mistake that very often
, and we need to have more discourse on that
. You see, the word pedagogy means nothing.
Today, pedagogy is the art of teaching. Pedagogy
is not didactic. When you go into a discussion
with a lot of faculty about pedagogy, they talk
about that Act IX, which is very important because
the tactics changes much faster than pedagogy or method.
We need discourse on that, and we need support
on that. That allows us to get what we
have to say into the public realm, but first
of all, into the university realm. But it
doesn't go there because it doesn't conform to the nonsensical
notions of the university of what education is. We
talked, and every one of our faculty of any
age can confirm that you talk to people from biology
. You talk to people from chemistry. You talk
to people from everywhere the moment they move into an
administrative position, which is basically what they were seeking
, They say, Well, we used to do
exactly the same thing, and when you say I'm
sorry, I really don't think So the several You're
just disgruntled. Mm. This is where the discourse
stops. That's why we drop out of much of
what the university is doing because the definitional problems are
choking to death, that real core, the content
, the essence of our opposition, as long as
that's not accepted, will have to be working as
an underground operation, basically, And so I don't
want to put too fine a point on this or
something this up. But I think it would be
nice if this was true. If you could speak
to this a little bit. Uh, all right
is the goal of architecture, education, the way
you see it to produce it sounds to me like
what you're saying. What was the ideas of Ferrari
Bertrand and those people is It's not about producing practicing
architects. It's about producing architect. Yes, and
that's a big difference. One of the few things
that I was ever told when it started as a
faculty was first we make architects, then we make
architecture very, very important distinction. Strangely enough,
it's not original Emmanuel hands model for education is precisely
that supported national. You've got to make a different
human being if you want to make an ontological different
, adopt what I mean with that is a priest
is ontological different from a carpenter. A medical doctor
is an ideologically different from a welder. An architect
is on to logically different. An artist is ontological
, different from other professions and people in other pursuits
. That is what it means to make an architect
. You see the world architecturally, not sociologically,
not medically, not technologically but architecture. That education
, the education of the person. Education of the
soul is what is necessary to make good architect.
Now, having said that and something like a monk
trying to get a novice, that's not what it
means. If I look at the good architects of
the past of the present, they are as different
from one another one or the other as they can
be. There's no uniformity in that because they are
human beings. But the ontological different lies in the
fact that they want to make architecture and not solve
social problems, political problems, health problems or anything
else. They understand that architecture as an expression of
that celebration of the achievement, the cultural achievement of
any group or nation or individual is architectures business.
If you take the venue for that expression away,
you lose society. No matter how hard you try
on all the other levels. Because society will have
no residue, nothing is left if there's no architecture
, we know and we learn about long gone civilizations
because of what we find in their architectural residue.
We have completely lost that understanding of what architecture is
, and that is what architectural education is about.
And that is what the Libya understood brought with him
and instilled in us. And we're continuing. Okay
, just that Answer that. Yeah, I I'm
distracted thinking about how I can I think, a
film about you. All right? Well, do
you want to talk about the whack and in Europe
or the European program? Or it's up to you
because I've got plenty to think about it this way
. It's just like a half hour film. I'm
interviewing like 30 people. You have to cut things
up, so, you know, But so I've
got plenty of a view that I I know I'll
use, but if you want to talk about those
things that well, John Holt and I basically decided
to go up to Washington and start a program.
And I remember I walked around my studio and history
and said, If you want to graduate, you
have to go up to Washington with us. It
was sort of a humorous blackmail, and the students
that were interested immediately signed up to it. Then
what did we do? We found the place up
there after long searching the old high school building,
which we're now again that we could rent. We
could get rent free. It was empty. So
we said, Let's go And what we did is
we had we rented a rent the truck, one
of those big box trucks loaded it up with disks
and what we needed, drove it up, backed
it up to the school because we got there very
late so that nobody would steal the contents and moved
in. And then we started in the summer,
and it's amazing. We produced incredibly beautiful work through
students. Instantly the energy we brought and the energy
the students brought into a place that was a mess
that was ours, to change a real architectural situation
. It was one of the most important times in
my life. I mean, it was so important
. Ruined my marriage completely, got divorced after all
of those things, and I know that sounds very
callous. But yes, that was a big part
of it because the focus went into that work.
And then it turned out to be good at all
levels anyway. So you know, that's the beauty
of architecture. If it's good, it's good and
it spreads the good influence. But yes, that's
what it was about. We spent a lot of
time in the old school. Then I moved back
down here for internal reasons and you know, the
necessities of academic life and academic work and went back
up again and was engaged with it over time and
now you and developed it into completely self well.
It's not completely self sufficient, but intellectually and educationally
self sufficient unit, and is that it's It's a
good product. So what was the what was the
reasoning? What made you say we need to do
? We needed to get an urban component. That
was my reason, because I believe to a certain
degree that an urban environment will produce a different kind
of exposure. Then a rural environment will and for
some students. That's very important Now that doesn't mean
to say that if you have an urban design program
, it has to be in a city, because
then you have to say which city influences you properly
and Washington, DC actually is a bad city for
that, because it's an anomaly. So if you
want to have an urban design program based on what's
such a wonderful word, now there's an experience.
Don't go to Washington because the experience is rather very
, very lopsided. However, one of the reasons
why we have Europe programs is because the immersion,
the direct contact with architectural examples many times of the
past, often times of the present that are not
possible to experience here. And I really mean experience
in the sense of touching, walking through, feeling
the spatial influence, the mass influencing you. All
of that is only possibly feel there. And so
for some students, that's the better environment for other
students. The other is, the better there is
. No one saves all, and so it's wonderful
that we have those opportunities. That's where I got
interested in the Europe programs. Don't forget again.
It sounds funny because I don't make a big deal
of it, but I actually did the first full
term for grades. You're a program that was in
76 in Zurich with the fall quarter as an architectural
school quarter into had 14 or 15 students and a
wonderful guy Carl Flag was so important for the development
of the Europe programs. Wonderful friend sadly died.
But Carl helped me to establish the program in city
, and it was a success. It was a
good program, and with that program, Tom Reagan
was chair at the time, we could prove that
full term programs are possible. It paved the way
for the fall program. And then in the eighties
, I started the spring program for reasons of interest
, because to me, going to Europe with bad
light for photography while you're starting moving towards good light
towards the end of the semester, when you have
acclimatized and when you've learned more was an important alternative
to the fall program, which had pretty good weather
up to a certain point and then usually went into
the studio mode because you couldn't go outside or you
didn't have more than four or five hours for photography
. So the widening of the programs into year long
endeavor was very important to me. So the spring
program again being something that has started and maintained for
many years, we then took it into Riva.
After live, you found the place and that was
established. And we fleshed out River with the spring
program and continued that until it became again an administrative
obsession and replaced quality of program and quality of education
with administrative and social concerns. So that's but I'm
still active in the yeah, not so beset programs
like Travel Program now very important components to support what
our pedagogical from the mental beliefs are. So at
this point, do you see your role as sort
of carrying this on as by example? Or are
you evangelical to other faculty about Because there's not there's
not that much of this left right? I don't
believe in evangelical stuff. Yeah, I believe that
through example and through social interaction, friendship, I
hate the word social. Um, you know,
it's applications and beings. That's true through friendships through
acquaintances that I mean, not all friendships are our
blood bodies for the rest of your life. But
there are people that are friends because you have affinities
. Go, take, hold it Elective affinities.
I agree with that wonderful book. Everybody's agreed.
Architects play a big role in it. Um,
those affinities. It's a better word, actually,
than friendships. Those affinities are the things that continue
your convictions. By the same token, it's because
those affinities are elective. They are filter. Not
all of your convictions can stand up for eternity.
Many of those convictions are temporal, but they're based
on eternal convictions. And it's that part that gets
continued while it is being filtered to adjust the changes
of time. That's what made Western civilization. And
if we don't remember that, it's possible to lose
it. And we have a lot of examples in
history that proves my point. It sounds like you
really figure that it's about those, like you said
with architects, fundamental pieces. I don't believe you
can be innovative, and I don't believe you can
be autonomous without that foundation, and that doesn't make
me a foundational list. I do not demand proof
of the foundation. Proof of the foundation usually kills
the foundation. Yeah, because the foundation is traditional
and not scientific. Human foundations are all tradition.
What does tradition mientras video? We treat tradition as
a substantive It's a verb. It means to hand
on the tragedy to, um, the thing that
doesn't change is being handed on from generation to generation
, from father to son, from teacher to student
. And it's that that is maintained while what surrounds
it and how it's expressed changes. And once you
realize that some things become rather less stressful because you
learn to rely on the things that sustained you.
And once you can do that, your personal sustaining
and the real sense of that word well, Tyne
Leeds sense of the word sustaining becomes no longer a
chore. It's one of the pleasures of aging and
plenty of Roman and Greek authors who confirmed that.
And the beauty of it is, once you have
reached that you can really experience because you know where
experimentation is not potentially detrimental. You learn to discern
between a stupid act and an experiment, and that's
what's necessary. If you want to be an artist
because I didn't learn to paint the way he ended
, nobody did. But all those people that we
look at with great admiration, who to us are
the cannon who are the things that are the carriers
of the trade item. They all went through that
. Of course, that needs time. And the
one thing you're not giving our students anymore, it's
time we take time away from them. They have
to cram things into the short lives in school that
satisfy completely external, totally immaterial concerns and that we
have to regain if we want to make it.
Are you hopeful that things being cyclical and are you
hopeful that there will be a mass awakening? Well
, first of all, let me correct you.
They're not cyclical. The world is not secret.
We can really event as being cyclical because stupidity repeats
itself. Okay, But the real human progress is
not secret. Human progress actually is progress. Depending
on what time you live in, it might express
itself socially. I mean, look at the advance
of colored people. Look at the advance of people
that were in the colonies, Fragments of progress.
The majority still lives in medieval conditions, but that's
progress. Sometimes the progress happens technologically until technology starts
eating into the substance. That's where we are right
now. I think technology is eating into our human
substance. We've got to overcome that. I believe
we will. Because we are over saturating right now
. And the positive about it? Yes, definitely
. Very positive are not optimistic. Optimism is,
um is a state of modeled mindedness like pessimism is
I believe I'm a realist. Realism depends on evidence
. And I see evidence that makes me want to
stay in school. I could have retired three years
ago. I have no intention of doing it because
I'm excited by what I can do. I'm excited
in rebuilding and continuing to build with the reason necessary
towards that goal. We're going to say nothing more
as far as I'm concerned. Unless there's anything else
you want to say. Anything stories. You wanna
tell her things You want to fuck on? Nah
, it's not the right moment. Thank you.
You're welcome. Mhm.