go ahead and get started. So we're recording now
I'm gonna ask you questions and I cut myself out
. So if you can sort of restating something as
I say, when did you come here? You
say I came here, that kind of thing and
just talk to me, not the camera and we're
good. Actually, there's an out. Can I
shift you sure this way? Do you want me
to move to the chair? So you never see
those things to the last one? Okay. Mhm
. This chair. Yeah. Yeah. Actually let
me slide you back. We'll just kind of split
the difference between those two positions. Maybe I can
block out the outlet. Exactly. That's what I'm
thinking. Okay. Okay. Can I get you
a little bit more that way? Okay. Excellent
. Okay, great. So have you already done
Jean Egger? Yes, I did, Jean and
I talked for two. I'm sure that was amusing
. It was great. Well, I actually was
here as a freshman in 95. Okay. And
then I left and went to communion and okay.
Went into film and left architecture. So I remember
jean from way back. So we, yeah,
that's good that you want to close this door before
you start because it could be saved. Somebody coming
through there just making noise. Mm. I have
interviewed the marshall. Oh, have you? Okay
. Good. Yeah. Great. That he is
, He's amazing fellow. Great stories. Yeah,
bringing virtual here. Right. Well, he did
. He basically, I asked, I heard that
. Yeah. He said to virtue word, I
want to top architecture school, do whatever you need
to do. And then they had the money.
All right, we'll start off just with you as
a student. So what brought you to target check
your school here? Well, I came, um
, two tech in 19 in the fall of 1965
and I had since very early on in life decided
that I wanted to be an architect not knowing fully
what that meant. But it turned out that what
architecture was was something I thoroughly enjoyed. And so
that's how it all got started. And White White
Tech. Well, we had the best school in
the state at the time. So this was 65
. That was prior to Ferrari. I think Ferrari
perhaps came maybe the year. Well, no,
I think he was here when I was a freshman
. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. As a matter
of fact, I remember in the, some of
the design labs, you put your projects out there
and uh, we have, you know, the
faculty would walk around and then, you know,
we didn't have facilities like we have today. I
think we were in the basement of what was in
the old military building and you had to carry your
drawing board and everything with you to class every time
you didn't have a permanent desk, even so,
particularly in the winter when you were walking across the
drill field, you felt like a sailboat because the
wind was so much, it would take your drawing
board and sort of blow it out perpendicular to where
you were walking. Quite a different scene than what
we experienced today. So Koga was built while you
were here. Yeah. We moved into Kogel probably
in my fourth year of architecture or something like that
. And I remember there was not enough money to
finish the building. So the ground floor where the
shops and things were, I was left as dirt
because there was not enough money to even put the
bottom floor in. So wow. But it was
still a big improvement compared to what we had before
. So what a nice opportunity to get to see
that. Oh, sure, Absolutely. So from
everyone I've spoken to and that really seems like the
heyday of the school where there were just seemed like
they were incredible things happening with Burchard and Ferrari and
when curry. Well, I certainly think the school
has subsequently gone on to do some extraordinary things.
But I think I was lucky to come at a
period where there was a sort of renaissance going on
and we had extraordinary faculty from all over the world
. And when you're just beginning, we didn't,
I didn't really realize the a level of talent that
I was exposed to as a student, but we
had David Greene and Michael Webb from the Arche Graham
group had Herbert crumble from the th we had Ferrari
from the Home School of Design, Miguel Gaston,
people like that who were also young but extraordinarily dynamic
teachers. And for me, it was just a
wonderful experiences. It's difficult to describe how exciting it
was. And the fact that, you know,
on saturday nights we were in the design. Hello
, So exit. It also seems like that was
a change in sort of education. One of how
it kid an architect, Well ours was not the
conventional one. Mm you know, we didn't do
a lot of copying of greek columns and poaching walls
and whatever else. It was really not only a
change in terms of what you did, but it
was a change in the paradigm of architectural education.
And I think that was the part that was the
most stimulating in the part that sustains our graduates over
time as they move forward in their careers and that
that still exists today. Oh, yes, I
think, you know, we had the ideas which
perhaps we're not as well developed at the time,
but we didn't have the facilities to go along with
them. And if you take, for example,
you know, what are we, what are we
trying to do? What we're trying to educate all
dimensions of the intellect of our students. And so
in addition to reading and writing and whatever, the
experiential process, the tactile nature of materials and all
that were key to developing architects whose talent would sustain
them over time. But of course when I started
, I think our entire shop facilities consisted of a
table saw and a screwdriver. And we have nothing
that compares to other students have today. So now
with the computer uh controlled machine tools and all that
, what we're able to do in architecture and industrial
design or whatever is quantum leap over what students could
do before Now. Since you mentioned industrial design,
uh, I've heard from several people that Ferrari in
particular would be very would have been very excited to
see that come to fruition. Right. Maybe some
of those other programs and how well I think we
always viewed design education in a holistic manner, whether
it was from the scale of the individual object all
the way up to urban design. But still,
when you look at what we've been able to achieve
an industrial design today, there is a certain in
significant technical component to it that we didn't have before
. So when I was dean, we started the
industrial design program. These things take a while to
get them through the bureaucracy and whatever else. But
we always had the roots of that scale of design
activity and the appreciation of materials and the elegance of
operation and all that that was embedded really and the
aesthetic of the curriculum as it moved forward. I'm
curious about just sort of what with the educational model
was like me. I keep hearing about these these
personalities that were seemingly larger than life. Can you
can you talk to me about you know, what's
your memory of your studio classes and having these people
as professors? Well, they all had and they
were different in personality, but all had very strong
personalities and had this enormous ability to uh find what
motivated the individual student in terms of asking the right
question. They would never as we don't today,
they would never come in and say, well that's
wrong, do it this way. Their approach was
really to help you to learn how to think and
how to explore on your own with some guidance when
it's appropriate to come up with the solution. And
so you had people who had these qualities but they
manifest themselves in different ways. For example Herbert Cromwell
who was my principal professor when I was in the
second year was very much focused on design methods and
logical ways of problem solving. Whereas Olivio Ferraro is
much more intuitive in nature. They both resulted in
their students doing wonderful work but they went about it
in different ways and that's really that diversity made it
interesting and then you had you know Dave Green and
others who were sort of iconoclastic folks who challenge the
existing establishment, the idea of plug in city that
cedric price and all these people. So you had
those guys having input to you as well. And
the challenge was of course As you know 18 or
19 years old is trying to figure all this out
. What did you really mean? And how did
you incorporate those kinds of perspectives into your own design
philosophy? Yeah. And if you're drawn to to
1/1 method over another, Working all right. Um
Well let me let me see that I'm very curious
about, since you did end up coming back 16
, I've I've heard the this has almost become like
a saying, a lot of people have said it
the same way that you couldn't have had Ferrari without
birch tree. And after talking to the martial heart
, all it seems like you couldn't have maybe had
burchard without a strong president. Um So from your
perspective as a former dean and current president, would
you did you see that? Is that accurate?
I didn't, you know, as a beginning student
, I had no idea, but later on I
do think it's an accurate statement because when I looked
at, you know, I got to know all
of these people very well became my Ferrari and Burchard
and how all of my friends and I got to
know them very well. The thing was, I
think Olivia was one of the most extraordinary basic design
teachers I have ever encountered anywhere in the world.
And I've been, I've been most every place to
schools of architecture and he did not fit the normal
mold. So he needed someone to create an environment
where he could function. And I think two things
were present there. one uh, he had to
have the intellectual vitality and the capacity to make it
work and to motivate the students in which he was
extraordinarily gifted. But also Burchard was able to understand
the pedagogical model and certainly contribute to it. But
you know, Burchard had taught with Gropius at Harvard
and Han brought him in to, he was the
first dean of Architecture to really shake things up.
And he was extraordinarily skilled uh, in the,
you know, the diplomacy of being a deem and
interacting with the central administration and being able to project
an image of the institution across the country. I
mean, we were, you know, famous after
he was only there a couple of years when in
fact, you know what he was talking about having
, he didn't exist yet. He was building it
, but it built enough enthusiasm and excitement that enabled
him then to continue to attract other gifted faculty and
the reality took care of itself. And then of
course Marshall Han who was also a very gifted President
. You know, he was president of tech in
his early 30's while the youngest presidents of any major
university in America. And he was extremely good at
working with state government with hiring the right people and
helping them to realize their vision and without the resources
and the tolerance really that he provided the college couldn't
have flourished. Burchard always went over his budgets by
january here. So you know, and han always
helped them now today, that simply is not possible
. You know, the resources are not there for
that to happen. So that style of operation.
But Burchard was able to articulate the vision of the
school in a way that very few people could.
And so uh, he understood what Ferrari was doing
. He really served as a translator to the outside
world and managed the whole thing. And Ferrari of
course, uh, was the guy on the line
, the classroom we had, as I say,
Cromelin other gets a lot of very gifted faculty,
but Olivia was the leader later tom Reagan, Jean
, Egger, Bill Brown and all those people,
I'll contributed to that. So yeah. Well,
I think there's their seemingly right people said that there's
really a tradition of strong beans and that's been critical
and noise talks about here. Well, it was
interesting. I'll tell you a little story about this
when Charles burchard decided that he was going to retire
and I think 12 or 13 years as dean,
uh, and john Wilson, who was the provost
when I was appointed Dean, told me this years
later, but he said he's walking across the drill
field with Burchard. And he said, well,
he said, Charles, do you, you know
, is there anybody in the college you think maybe
it could be your successor? And so Bircher told
them that I possibly could do that. And Wilson
told me, he said, I thought the man
had lost his mind because I was only 29 years
old or something like this. I had just come
back to the tech after being in practice for a
while, but Wilson said, I thought he lost
his mind. But later, of course, a
couple of years later I was appointed and oh and
well, yeah, I got the GT award.
Okay. He said that you know, that they
were all quite sure that you well, I was
very fortunate to have the opportunity. I think I
was the youngest dean of Architecture in America at the
time, but it couldn't have succeeded without the support
of everybody there. You know, it's it's uh
it's a team effort and I was lucky to have
these wonderful faculty and alumni like GT board who really
helped me in every endeavor. And the college went
on to do extremely and is doing extremely well.
So I'm very proud of what everybody has done.
Was that strange to come back and I'll be Dean
over your. It was, it was, but
I came back to get my PhD here and I
taught and then I was department had for a little
while and then dean. So, you know,
I've been around a couple of years before all that
happened. But yeah, it was a little bit
of a change of pace, but it was fun
. I have no regrets. There seems to be
a strong interest in education from the people that were
students during that time. And I think, I
mean it seems clear that these people were so innovative
and exciting that you couldn't help but maybe get interested
. Is that what got you interested in coming back
in teaching or was it just sort of a store
your pathway well? And it was only after I
came back and was teaching that others? I mean
I taught as an adjunct for a little bit before
that, but it was, my class was like
friday nights after I finish up on a project or
something, but I'd always had the intellectually the interest
in the whole teaching learning process and you know,
what goes on in the university, but the thing
that differentiated our college from others and is present today
, you're looking at a holistic model of education which
we try to promote in the university as a whole
. You know, you not only want to graduate
students with high competence in their profession, but they
have to you want people who have a broader view
of the world, who are able to integrate knowledge
and who developed a set of values and concepts and
the capacity to think critically, that will enable them
to be productive citizens of democratic society. So,
you know, one of the things that characterizes what
we do is that within the disciplines or in a
profession there is the generation of new knowledge and that's
very important in biology or whatever else. And in
a professional school, the there is the obligation uh
to be prescriptive in that there is a problem and
as a professional architect or whatever you have to decide
, prescribe what to do about it, you know
? And but then we had something beyond that,
which is a synthetic component of how to integrate knowledge
from these various disciplines. And so you have this
synthetic and prescriptive role of the person that we're graduating
, which is not always present in every other place
around the country. And so you see that happening
from the very first days in the basic design lab
, you know, you're looking at it holistically but
the circle is small and it's really not a circle
, it's sort of a growing helix says each time
you cycle through the design process of analyzing and coming
up posing some solution, the complexity grows over time
. So you get this sort of helix that grows
and the students learn how to integrate and they learn
how to use different dimensions of their intellect. Because
in working through designs, you know, you can't
sort of draw every possibility you would be here till
the end of the universe literally if you did that
. So you have to develop other types of intellectual
abilities and that is to recognize patterns and in complex
settings where there's high uncertainty. These are the types
of skills that make it give a designer of the
capacity to synthesize and integrate and then therefore, and
be able to prescribe, you know what's going on
. You can't know everything but you got to know
what those critical structuring variables are and they change depending
on the problem. So yeah hans talk about these
core principles. Key. Yeah. Well I can
save me now that I have Children. Yeah,
I can't think of anything better than no matter what
they want to do right, make them good architecture
, right? You know? Well people have asked
me, he said well how did you know being
an architect prepare you to be president of the university
and I said I use it every day because your
face, you know you're not necessarily dealing with particular
buildings or spaces or whatever but you're dealing with creative
problem solving where there is high uncertainty, you don't
know all the variables and yet you have to make
decisions and so you have to learn develop to develop
not only the your deductive skills and whatever, but
your intuition and intuition is not just sort of what
you dreamed of last night. It comes from experience
over time and the insight that you gain from that
experience and you have to bring them all to bear
. Because some days you can't you can't wait three
weeks, you have to decide today. And so
you need every uh capacity for insight that you have
to arrive at those decisions in a creative way because
often you have constraints that you sometimes can't live with
and yet you know, go on and survive for
another day. Yeah. I mean I think I've
gotten very interested in classical education because it just doesn't
exist anymore. And again with Children, these things
start to, but if you do it right,
if you sparked that curiosity and you helped the student
understand that it's not the sort of one way transfer
of information that that is your eye obligation. If
you don't know something to find it out, then
the dimensions of understanding architecture, history and theory and
whatever else, you know, you have to put
out a lot of efforts yourself. I spent years
reading books and architectural history and theory because it was
something I didn't know enough about. Uh, and
it, but it helped me to understand other things
. I also went through the philosophy program at the
same time and that was a great tool for me
and learning how to think. That's why I had
a similar went from architecture to film and philosophy,
philosophy and then who's making films for years. And
I mean this is the strongest endorsement to the squad
and you have And I was here for a year
when I was 18 Have to go to cooper and
then took a strange different path. And when I
decided I wanted to go back, I missed,
I really felt like that was an open loop in
my life. This is the only place I wanted
to come. You miss it. And you know
, when that spark is struck, you love it
. You know, there's nothing more that you'd rather
do than to do what you're doing. You know
, and that's a great situation to be in.
There's something very special about Virginia tech. You know
, I know that there are other programs that maybe
you have similar models, but I think maybe part
of it is geography. There's not a lot around
here. I think that's true that you focus in
orderly and I think it has to do with the
culture of the school and the culture of the institution
. Yeah. There's a lot of shared values and
a lot of commitments and students amongst their colleagues,
They always set the bar higher than anybody else.
They keep raising what they and we have very good
students and they can do well, it's not,
you know, they raise the standard, but they
can meet it. And some remarkable what they've been
able to accomplish. Talking to GT Award was really
very interesting because he was here when I forget the
number. He said how many students were here,
but it was nothing. That's right. He was
here in the 50s and then hearing him talk about
how it grew and grew and grew. And I
just think that's something again, maybe not unique,
but something special about tech. Well, if it
weren't for GT Ward and Tia carter and Henry's driver
and lots of folks like that, we wouldn't have
the european studies centre in Riva san vitale. They
are the folks, I mean, we remember putting
together this advisory committee which every college has one now
, but we were really one of the first to
do that. And we had our first meeting at
bus feel that europe outside of Zurich where they would
take the students in the summer. And we talked
about acquiring a place and in all that, which
then we had no money. We had a vision
. But if it weren't for those guys it wouldn't
have happened. They were a great force. Can
you imagine, you know, telling the president of
the Governor that we want to buy a villa in
Switzerland when they were cutting the budgets, literally.
I remember we were in the midst of trying to
get a facility over there and the governor was the
budgets are being cut next president at the time.
And I understood his political dilemma. It wasn't that
he didn't want to do it, but he said
, you know, I know you've worked hard on
this, but we just can't go forward. Can
you imagine the problems we have spending money in Switzerland
and whatever else? So I understood that. So
I said, what if I can keep this thing
alive? Not using any resources from the state of
course, or the Foundation. So I call the
same people. I just mentioned. Bill Jamerson was
another one and said, look, you know,
I need I forget what it was 35 or$40,000
to by a purchase option on this property. And
and not a single person turned me down. I
put up money to do it. And we kept
the thing alive until the politics improved and then we
could renew our efforts and otherwise we would have lost
. And those are little things, you know,
that most people never hear about because you don't want
anybody to know that. I'm really kind of going
around what what was the prescribed thing? But that's
the way some of these things happen. You say
you had a vision. I mean, I think
that's that's amazing piece that, you know, you
really you all understood, you had an idea of
what needed to happen to make better architects. Well
, it's so important for students to experience. Yeah
. The changes, you know, the nature of
the space and the texture of the materials and the
landscape and be able to understand operate and read a
different culture. If they can't do that, they're
not going to be very good architects. And so
it's really essential to their education to make these opportunities
possible for them and today's global society, it's even
more important than it was then great. Um and
you wanted the only stories about any of these folks
that you want to share, any, I don't
know. It's if I tell about one, I
have to tell about all of them probably in the
process. one of the things that we did accomplish
that has set the foundation for the solar decathlon accomplishments
and all that is that when we started, when
I started, we research and architecture pretty much didn't
exist. And yet we knew that in order to
advance the state of the art, there had to
be a lot of you had to move the compass
, move the needle so that new types of knowledge
could come in to help us understand new materials.
For example, even in accounting principles, you know
how you depreciate the difference between equipment and the building
, changed what got built. And I didn't think
it was very good to have accountants making design decisions
, but the fact that they were so we were
able and we did a lot of work and into
our air quality and with the masonry materials are,
you know, research demo facility months that was donated
by the masonry industry and the space, the frame
space frameless, there was donated to us and everything
. So we move from really not being a player
to probably, I think second or so in terms
of research of all architecture schools in America and it
it did create sort of a cultural change. And
I think a lot of the things that we enjoy
today with a tremendous success of the solar decathlon,
I mean really, you know, that was a
little bit of the foundation they built upon and they've
taken a much farther and they've done a wonderful job
. But it was those sorts of things that often
don't get too much visibility, you know, I'll
tell you one other little thing that we tried to
do, we wanted the environment in the college to
feel like a special place where excuse me, unusual
things happens. And one of the things that we
did on a fairly regular basis, we had a
chamber music group, the Autobahn Quartet at the time
and I would arrange sometimes a year in advance for
them to come over and give a concert. But
there was never announced, you know, because we
had to work it in their schedule. But when
we did the day we did it, they just
came in, set the risers up and You know
, they showed up about 3:00 and played a concert
and they would not be dressed in tuxedos but in
their blue jeans and they would talk about the music
and whatever in the lobby of Koga was always packed
. There was one in the music is beautiful and
it was always wonderful. So you enjoyed it at
that level. But my, the underlying reason for
doing it is I wanted to create this environment that
the college was a very special place. That unusual
things would happen and therefore we expect you to do
unusual things, you know, just to kind of
build that sense of that. That's okay. Mhm
. That you can do something that's never been done
before. Remember when john Cage died? some students
came, they were sitting outside my office seven something
in the morning when I came in and they said
, K just died. And they said, we
want to Bringing a piano and put some of his
scores. Of course he would go for 20 minutes
without playing a note, you know, up to
recognize his contribution. And so I said, okay
, we'll do that. So we paid to have
a grand piano brought over and whatever. Now that
in itself is fine. But what was important to
me was that the students felt they could come in
and make such a request and it wouldn't be considered
or you guys are crazy. You know, why
should you do that? You know, I said
, okay, we'll do it. And we did
. And so, you know, hundreds of things
like that happen, not just with me, with
the faculty, with everybody else, but we wanted
to sort of liberation of the intellect of motivated students
, Uh, to create this next generation of folks
who between now 2050, The world is going to
have nine billion people, you know, and where
they're going to live and what, what will the
cities look like? Energy consumption patterns can't be the
same. All this is going to change. And
we've got to have people who have the intellectual ability
, that professional preparation and the capacity for thinking innovatively
in a critical way, uh, to help solve
this problem or otherwise, the world is in for
a disaster. Not that you did you realize all
of these things about architecture when you're underground? I
know the education, I think that's what's tremendous about
our is that it's a lifelong education. You never
stop. You do, but not at the same
depth of understanding. I mean, after you've had
a decade or so to think about it changes a
little bit. Sure, but I have to say
from my own point of view, you never lose
your enthusiasm. You know, that's kind of the
joy of it, you know, that's what keeps
you going okay. I, you know, unless
there's anything else you Yes, thank you. Right
. Yeah. The only other thing I'm just kind
of curious about, it's just and you touched on
a little bit, but just so you were here
for your undergrad and you went into practice and then
you came back if you can just sort of talk
about, you know, maybe a little bit about
practice and then, well, I was here,
I got my bachelors and Architecture and a Masters in
Urban design. Then I went to work for a
private firm and I was again extremely lucky to get
a lot of responsibility very soon, and I got
to design some pretty large projects. Um and it
gave me tremendous experience. In fact, we were
this was in the 60s when the environmental movement was
really, you know, the National Environmental Protection Act
was passed in 65. And we were doing all
these projects and I came to the conclusion that nobody
knew much about ecological systems and all this sort of
stuff. And I decided to go back to get
my PhD in environmental science, which I did not
to be a scientist and not to be a professor
, but to be a better architect and planner.
And that's why I did it and learn a bit
about mhm Organic chemistry and microbiology and all those things
so that I could better understand how we integrated the
man built environment with the natural environment without destroying things
. So that was kind of the root of it
, the process. But I was very fortunate to
work with some great people who were extremely kind to
me, even when I came back to school.
they, at the time, this is a very
high tech piece of equipment. I remember they provided
me with an IBM Selectric typewriter, you know,
with a little ball that moved around. That was
state of the art stuff, you know, so
they were very understanding and very supportive and I to
this day appreciate what they did. Some thank you
. Just want to follow up with one of the
question because I think this is interesting. There's a
lot of hiring back of former graduates. It seemed
times I thought had a nice take on this.
I'm curious how you would describe just that, you
know, the educational model here is so special and
that you want to, you want to carry it
on continuing well, I would agree with hans on
that because I know we're often in accreditation visits and
things they raise this as an issue. But if
you have not experienced the educational model, it is
very difficult to understand. You can talk about it
, but it's not the same thing as having gone
through it. And I think having are people who
come back and have had experience elsewhere when it's possible
, really does strengthen that and kind of and they
redefine it in their own way, but it's still
the central tenets of the pedagogy are preserved in the
process. And I'm not sure that that's true in
lots of other places. The only other thing I'd
mention is that we did that I thought was it
continues to be successful, is starting the center in
alexandria. You know, that was fun. I
remember going up there with john Holt and I went
up and remember we at least a townhouse for the
faculty to stay in and we getting facilities. And
then we came back and talked to the provost and
he said, well, you know, what are
you gonna need to get these facilities on us?
We said, well, we already leased them.
Uh huh. Yeah. And I did it ourselves
. And but it's turned out to be a great
asset because it gives our students a chance to live
and work in an urban area as well as the
environment here. And so both of those things have
come together to add considerable strength to the educational experience
for our graduates were very, I'm very proud of
. So last question, I'll ask you, where
do you see the school going in the future that
architecture school that is a continuation of the same pedagogical
model that was more focused on on technological or?
Well, I think two things 1 is the need
for critical thinking and creative thinking is not going to
go away in. The basic structure of the human
brain hasn't changed that much in the last couple of
1000 years, You know, so that's that's set
those skills is going to be necessary. The questions
of society that motivate the inquiry in the desire for
action and some solutions are going to change over time
and increasingly, because of the energy problems and other
environmental problems and things, the solutions are going to
be very different than what we envisioned, particularly with
regard to technology and materials, to looking at life
cycle costing of buildings, the total energetic models that
look at the not only what the building consumes but
the material, the energy it took to create the
building itself and then dealing with the changing patterns of
development and urbanization. So they're going to require us
to rethink how we practice architecture and planet. In
fact the whole practice model is going to change,
but it's not going to replace the ability to think
creatively to be able to synthesize the critical information you
need at the time and the desire to make a
contribution to society. So you really you have to
be both steadfast and your desire and flexible in your
capacity to implement it. Perfect. Okay. Uh
huh. Super excited and happy.