dimanche 30 novembre 2008

# SCHOOLS /// Conclusion

Jason De Marco / Leisurescape / tutored by Guy Zucker in UPenn

This is the end of the architecture schools' thematic and thus time for conclusion.

First, I have to say that I appology for choosing so many English and American schools when obviously some schools from South America, Asia and Africa would have present a lot of interesting various topics... Unfortunetely, these schools seem to be not so interested into external communication and I could not really get the chance to find anything on their websites. I do understand that, by doing that, I am cheering the western world's system, that is why as a conclusion, I would like to gently tackle some issues.

This month would have shown how inventive and bright are all these students who work to create what they develop in their minds. However, some schools seem to take advantage of this imagination to promote their system of education avoiding to put the emphasis on the student. As a good example, Zaha Hadid's studio in Angewandte is presenting some students' projects without showing their names, even whithout introducing the students working in this studio...
Zaha Hadid is also the head of another topic, as Hernan Diaz Alonzo or some other professors which seem to have decided that their studios would be a branch of their own offices and take advantage of their "aura" to influe so much students that they seem not to be even aware of being some starchitect's production machines.
Finaly, thanks to globalisation and the transporation of informations and professors, schools are loosing more and more their identities towards something I personnaly consider as very interesting but which could really gain from a variety of educationnal system.

As a conclusion as I would thus write that although, I am definetely amazed by all these schools' work and consider it as a very very important contribution to the architectural world, in order to avoid a fatal effect of uniformization, each school should praise it own identity and promote emulation more than envy, which tend to copism and than competition, which tend to an absolute priority for communication...