[Chorus] Motivation/N****z fakin' only gonna inspire (Motivation)/All yo hatin' is fuel to my fire (It's motivation)/N****z plottin' on the crown soft droppin' (It's motivation)/Hey but I ain't slowin' down and I ain't stoppin' (Motivation)/Now n**** don't stop my show (Motivation)/You ain't know I don't stop, I go (It's motivation)/Sucka n****z can't make me suffer/Just make me stronger and make me tougher (It's motivation) . . . [Hook] Better get on yo job, tell'em, haters get on yo job, n**** (Motivation)/N****, get on yo job, tell'em, haters get on yo job, n**** (Motivation)/Haters better get on yo job, tell'em, haters get on yo job, n**** (It's motivation)/Sucka n****, get on yo job, if ya, hatin' get on yo job, n****
--T.I.

Raids on the Unspeakable

"The rain I am in is not like the rain of cities.
It fills the woods with an immense and
confused sound. It covers the flat roof of the
cabin and its porch with insistent and
controlled rhythms. And I listen, because it
reminds me again and again that the world
runs by rhythms I have not yet learnt to
recognise, rhythms that are not those of the
engineer."

Rain and the Rhinoceros
from Raids on the Unspeakable
Thomas Merton (1964)

In my Hotel Architecture in North Wales,
the rain is special. It was once so special
and so heavy and insistent in its rhythms that
it ran through the whole 300 year old cottage.
It wiped away the ground floor. Life began again.
That's why there is a room upstairs called
The Thomas Merton Room. It is a small
cell; you can visit anytime and begin to
read all the books by this Trappist monk
if you so wish.

For the first time

I have been coming to SOA for five years, willingly and
pleasurably. Besides being a 'flaneur' around the world,
teaching is my other life-blood - to pass on knowledge, to
move it into another realm, to learn to 'lose one's
head' (in the Zen sense - see 'On Having no Head' by
D.W.Harding) and to leave the question in any student's
head - what is worth knowing? - is to me one of the
most important acts we can achieve.

Of course knowledge and learning is always in the stage of
'becoming'; it must be to be valid. But remember Derrida's words
when asked if Seinfeld was 'Deconstruction': "Deconstruction
is not a sitcom; please go away, read more, do you homework.'
He said it with generosity not arrogance.

All of us must do this. The sight yesterday of the beginnings
of a lively (literal) bulletin board was delightful and reminded me
I was possibly in a vibrant school of architecture; it felt like
'coming home'. Please continue intelligently.

Getting important, relevant issues (those outlined below)
to the strategic levels is important, as the note from Rhizome
indicates. Generosity toward the 'other' is as important as
stubbornness. To see how ideas shift and indeed should
shift when their time comes, consult Thomas Kuhn's 'The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions'.

Keep re-framing issues, keep looking for how to pass on
what you have learnt to those yet to learn. Learn how to
'lose one's head', and above all, respect others. Keep reading,
keep doing the homework: stay intelligigent, things will come to you.

theoffice_300
Originally uploaded by tresaresa.

DEAN’S FORUM 11.02.05

ISSUES PRESENTED BY STUDENTS:
Diversity in faculty and in ways of thought (and student voice in affecting this)
Graduate school course options; incentives for undergrads to stay for grad school
Enrollment size
Concern over having UTA grads as faculty candidates
What is the future of the history curriculum?
We requested a student seat on the selection committee for all new hires (Professor Wright is who to see about it)
Formalize the process of master's thesis for those interested
Lack of integration of structures into design studio
New structural technology curriculum (ARCH 4321, let's further this)
Jury conduct and equal jury time for every student
OIT Technology Task Force (student participation requested, Professor McDermott heading it)
Basic security issues (recent thefts)

THINGS WE DIDN'T GET TO:
Concern over software being presented merely as a representational tool (vs. as a cognitive tool)
Desire for open book decision making (engage the website and newsletter)
Accessability and visibility of the dean around school (this is an open invitation into our studios)

THIS IS NOT AN ATTACK.
THIS EXISTS.
READ ME.

well now that we have all that squared away

Pulp Architecture goes to Yale

For those interested I have posted on the
pulparchitecture blog, the complete text of the
'pulp lecture' given at Yale in 2003. It will of interest
to the ideas of self-education, schooling and de-
schooling and the ways we can all move forward
within and beyond institutions.
We will also return to the self-educational way
you can take a program like
5 Big Idea and a Spanner, and interact with it
yourself with your own ideas and thinking on
history, theory and interactivity

note: 5 big ideas + a spanner (seminar 9.2.05)
1 modernism (politics, society & architecture in 20th C.)
2 the constructivism (the constructed vision)
3 conceptualism (off the canvas into space)
4 pluralism (semiology, structuralism, post-modernism)
5 digitalism (advanced generators, gaming and 21st C.)
and the spanner : undoing.
(more details will follow, as will a reading list
when required)

Stamp Out Education!

*******ATTN Dean's Forum Friday 11.02.05 1-2pm*******


We will be having class at our regular time Friday, 11am in 405 to get ready for the dean's forum. Roger is still doing tutorials for us from 9-11am in the office 426.

This blog has been created as a place to post about the education we are receiving, and the ways that we can fill in the cracks or shift the current system. As you are thinking about how you would teach a course on architecture history, think also about other parts of your architectural education. What would your school day here consist of if you were in control? Why aren't you doing just that?

See you all tomorrow :0)

"Self-Education is the practice of freedom." --William Upski Wimsatt, No More Prisons