Saturday, August 22, 2009

architecture as a thoughtful but feelingless process (welcome to the CDPs)

Final year CDP at Mora is coming to an end. In my very very short teaching carrier I have already been (un)lucky to witness 2 CDPs, one at year 3 level and one at year 5 level. 
While it is too early to come to any conclusions or pretend as if I know a thing or two about students or  for that matter about teaching, would not only be naive but also callus. Having said that I can't get rid of this feeling that the way we teach architecture and rather more importantly the way we learn architecture in Sri Lanka is a very thoughtful but equally feelingless process. I just don't get it. I have already seen so many 'good' students starting their designs with lot of feelings in it and then trying hard for the rest of the year looking for ways of mucking it up in the name of justifying it. 
Pathetic but necessary exercise, as I always say (and openly encourage students) the one and only aim of the CDP is to...
PASS.
*CDP = Comprehensive Design Project

3 comments:

  1. The concept of CDP itself is pathetic. It does nothing to present or enhance the design ability of the student, instead it now has become a graphic designing competition, which exhibits works from the likes of hadid etc.
    from day one at the faculty we were encouraged in the "go to the reading room and look at magazines" concept, so the students really are not to blame for mimicing the "so called" giants of the feild.
    I always say that architecture at mora is 90% presentation and 5% design....ah and yeah 5% ass kissing. :)

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  2. At least 5% of important work!
    (I meant the last 5%)

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  3. It s not only the cdp years that the students get really inspiring starts and end up with insipid solutions with a lot of makeup(graphics).
    what to do???

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