What Excellence?
Yen Ha
What’s the Matter with Canon?_September 2023
A Conversation with Yen Ha
September 2023
What lies behind the vast landscape of awards, publications, and mass media that confer "excellence” in architecture? It is in the midst of this landscape that our architectural tastes and opinions evolve. Architect, artist, and writer Yen Ha speaks to this question and more. Over a series of email exchanges with editor Mai Okimoto, Ha shares how her perception of "greatness" or "excellence" in architecture has transformed over the course of her career, from her days as a student to now as educator and architect.
Mai Okimoto (MO): You've worked as both an educator and practitioner of architecture for over two decades now. How has your understanding and engagement with the idea of the architectural canon changed since the time you were a student?
Yen Ha (YH): As students, we rely heavily on our professors to introduce us to works of canon, and I don’t know if it has changed一but certainly when I was a student in the 90s, I don't remember ever questioning their knowledge or inherent biases一which means I understood canon to be the works of men, predominantly white men. It has taken me three decades of practicing and teaching architecture to unravel the assumptions that I learned as a student. The exposure that we now have to different points of view, thanks to the wonderful wide, wide world of the internet, as well as an increasing sense of civic, social, and environmental responsibility means we are well-positioned to wonder and question what great architecture is, and who decides what’s included. It’s hard to break habits, and to constantly reexamine what the majority views as accepted standards of excellence, but I think it’s right that we continue to press the question. It’s possible we will confirm that, yes, Ronchamp is a brilliant piece of architecture; but it’s also possible we will wonder why we don’t celebrate the work of Charlotte Perriand, who worked with Le Corbusier, and who has rarely been included in the discourse around architectural canon of that time.
MO: Have there been specific occasions when you experienced the unraveling of what you learned in school一coming to an understanding of inherent bias, or a shift in the way you engage with architectural work? Besides providing a narrow understanding of what is considered "great architecture," I'm curious if the structure of your education influenced how you approached architectural practice early in your career.
YH: In my early twenties, during the pre-Google Maps era, I was walking with a friend through the narrow streets of Bilbao looking for Calatrava’s Zubizuri bridge. Maybe we were tired and hungry by the time we stumbled across it, but my first glimpse astounded me. I couldn’t believe how he had designed a structure to cross a river that felt like it was made of light and air. It felt to me like the culmination of what we had been taught in school一form following function in the most elegant of solutions.
Like many young architects, I went into practice focused on the relationship of form to function, and on how to make beautiful things that served their purpose. But practicing architecture made me keenly aware of the people who would be interacting with my work. I started to ask questions about who the architecture served, who determined that, and even who was assigning that value. These questions presented themselves in the books I was reading, in the art I was seeing一with everything I encountered, everywhere I went.
The idea of judging art or architecture solely on its form seemed limited. I wanted to know how people experienced the work and what they felt as they entered the spaces. I wondered if the client needs were satisfied and if the project’s materiality considered local context or global impact. I wanted all of these considerations to be true and relevant criteria by which to judge “great architecture.”
Illustration by Irina Rouby Apelbaum for Architecture Writing Workshop.
MO: What comes to your mind when you hear canon, then and now?
YH: When I was younger, canon used to suggest some sort of irrevocable truth一but I see it now as an evolving body of work that we should all contribute to defining. I have more recently come to understand canon, then, as something determined by someone else, someone who is not me: a minority, or immigrant, or woman. I am waiting for the time when architecture becomes made up of even more diverse voices and identities so that we can redefine canon in a way that encompasses everyone.
MO: How do you see this process of expansion and diversification unfolding in classrooms? Has the role of the educator shifted, in this respect? And what agency are students exercising to challenge and change the culture?
YH: It seems to me that what’s happening within cultural discourse broadly一in literature, movies, or art一is that we are beginning to address context in the framework of canon. In order to define, or redefine, “great architecture,” we have to determine what “great” means, and for who and by whom. I agree that teaching and learning feel like they should be a collaboration and conversation that involve both the educator and student. What I hope to contribute is the experience of a practicing architect, and a much broader base of knowledge. While I would never want to present myself as an ultimate authority on what is “great,” I can explain, instead, what might make a particular building great and for whom, and I can share a wide range of factors for consideration. In the end, though, it is the role of the learner to understand that greatness is not defined by one voice or experience, but reflects a cumulative understanding.
MO: Are there aspects of architectural work that the Western canon has overlooked in the past, but that you think are important to consider when evaluating the work’s significance in the discourse?
YH: I feel that the modern Western canon has lost sight of some of the harmonious components of building that are important to other cultures. We don’t seem to value the role of the environment or natural conditions in our cities, relying too much on man-made systems. I wonder, too, about the Western canon’s emphasis on overall form, that form follows function, and less on the individual experience. I’m supremely interested in how a space is actually experienced, and whether or not it feels accessible to the broadest range of peoples.
MO: Do you think it is important that we continue to have the idea of canon一not necessarily the Western canon, but a body of work that is collectively understood as “great architecture”一as an education tool?
YH: I do think it’s important to have canon! For one, it makes our jobs as professors a little easier to be able to call upon a body of work and knowledge that we know succeeds in meeting criteria for “greatness”; but more than that canon allows all of us, teachers and students, to have a common understanding of the elements of architecture that work, that withstand time, that touch the most people.
While we think of canon as the standard by which we judge greatness, we also have to remember that canon is not immutable. I think we’re in a moment where it needs to be vigorously reexamined and redefined by the broadest range of people, and for the widest spectrum of humans, so that we can have a body of work that more accurately reflects our collective experience.
Yen Ha is an architect, artist and writer. Born in Saigon, she lives in New York City, where she co-founded the architecture firm, Front Studio. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon and L’École d’Architecture in Paris, she has taught at Washington University in St. Louis and Rice University.
What’s in a Name?
Ajay Manthripragada, Alex Oetzel, Letícia Wouk Almino
What’s the Matter with Canon?_September 2023
A Conversation with Ajay Manthripragada,
Alex Oetzel, and Letícia Wouk Almino
September 2023
For Architecture Writing Workshop’s third issue, What’s the Matter With Canon?, the editors convened a roundtable to explore how the changing perceptions of the architectural canon shape the modes of comprehending, organizing, and representing architectural knowledge.
How does a cultural product from the past, as is the canon, remain relevant to the myriad cultures and values around the globe—and the buildings they produce? Architecture’s inherited canon is variably understood as a defined set of architectural works and as knowledge that is (re)assessed and selected to be passed on to future generations. Depending on who you ask, the canon is either dismissed altogether—its legacy ignored—or, increasingly, reexamined through the lens of how we produce and organize contemporary architectural knowledge.
Editors Pouya Khadem and Mai Okimoto moderated the following discussion on architecture’s canon with Ajay Manthripragada, Alex Oetzel, and Letícia Wouk Almino. Discussants draw on experiences from their studies, teaching, and practice. (This roundtable has been edited for length and content.)
Mai Okimoto (MO): What is canon? Does it refer to buildings—or can it be used to describe ideas? Are works described as canonical synonymous with great work? Is this term still relevant to our field today?
Ajay Manthripragada (AM): It's a big question. I'm interested in the way you're phrasing the term "canon" without the article "the." You're saying "canon," as opposed to "the canon" or "the canonical." I'm wondering if that indicates something about an interest in its redefinition or rethinking.
By definition, the canon is a Western construct. The origin of the idea—that there's a body of works to which everyone refers and agrees upon their excellence—is derived from the concept of the canonization of saints in the Catholic tradition. In an academic context, whether it's literature, art, or architecture, the canon became construed as a body of creative works. For me, that's important to acknowledge because it has a different relationship to authority.
Letícia Wouk Almino (LWA): It’s a complicated term—and increasingly less relevant. I find it difficult to use the term at all. It’s a word that is not easily dissociated from its classic definition as a particular set of Western works. With a greater diversity of people teaching at institutions and bringing in voices from all over the globe, we're transitioning away from the singular way of thinking about architecture. One way in which this is happening is through the language we use to discuss architecture—through a new set of terms to address the complexity of perspectives and modes of practice.
Alex Oetzel (AO): I don’t think the shift in attitude toward the canon, on its own, is novel. The discipline has always been dealing with cultural transformations and changes in values. What matters is how the changes are happening, who has influence, and what are the tangible outcomes...
AM: Figures in other disciplines (literature for instance) have been unabashed about defining the canon by definitively selecting a group of works. It tends to be more nebulous in architecture—the canon is implied and rehearsed over many iterations and repetitions of certain examples in academia, and, for my set of interests, in the discipline of formal analysis. There's a kind of reciprocity between the definition of the canon and formal analysis. They support each other.
I agree with Letícia—we don't have to use the word, but I appreciate aspects of what it represents because it allows us to collectively have a conversation about what we value.
LWA: I am also a disciple of formal analysis. It was preached to me, and that's how I and a lot of people learned architecture, following a lineage of academics who have also been taught this way. Naturally, you would be narrowly limited to a specific subset of buildings that can be formally analyzed; there are only certain schools of thought that allow you to talk about architecture in this way. The more I think about your question, the more I realize that the problem of the canon is a question about architecture education. If we change the conversation, we'll be open to discussing different types of buildings that don't fit within the rules of formal analysis.
AM: I agree; these are important points. As we expand the references, we also need to completely reconsider the tools by which we look at them. There is a body of representational strategies that we can leverage, adapt, and change as we look at other aspects of architecture. However, I've come to see a flaw in the argument: Why do we need to draw them at all? Why draw a plan of a building conceived outside the logic of a plan?
AO: I think our attitudes towards the relationship between canon and education are most visible in classrooms. I recently taught a studio at Ohio State University (OSU) about high-rise hotels. Before moving to the design phase, I prepared a list of over one hundred precedents of skyscrapers across history for the students to study the formal typology and its history. We started in Chicago where the first skyscrapers were built, but I encouraged them to branch out. The quantity of towers meant each building analysis had to be very quick, and encouraged a non-hierarchical study of the typology’s historic range and collective characteristics, rather than in-depth formal analyses of specific buildings.
MO: To Alex’s point, there’s value in rethinking how we approach precedents. We have access to more information compared to fifty years ago when architectural knowledge came from fewer sources such as print publications. It’s also interesting to think about formal analysis and how it lends itself to books and exhibitions. I'm curious to hear what your thoughts are on the changing nature of media and how that's shaping the way we're recognizing certain works.
LWA: This ties back to what Ajay mentioned about formal analysis as a tool of representation. It has its limits: it only works for buildings that have been drawn or documented. For me, this is quite exclusionary. The types of buildings that have been published are the ones that architecture institutions have historically favored through funding and resources—and are often buildings by architects who are savvy about self-promotion. In order to move away from the narrow scope of the canon, we need to diversify the ways in which information is passed down. In other words, we need educators who can develop new methodologies to confront the ever-expanding landscape of information and introduce students to varied perspectives. The unfortunate default is to reference parts of history that are the subject of easily-accessible, published materials.
AM: It is not a new idea that the expanded set of references cannot be understood autonomously as material realities in the world without understanding their deeper cultural and ritualistic significance. Therein lies a very fundamental problem in our premise: Looking at the architectural complexities of these buildings and gaining a deep knowledge of their cultural significance (particularly in the context of a design studio with its limited timeframes) substantially increases the risk of having misrepresentations, misunderstandings, and misinformation. They cannot be reduced to an elevation from which we then borrow. I don’t have an answer to the problem, but perhaps we have to open up to other forms of representation that are completely outside of the conventional drawings and models.
AO: I recently encountered Audrey Bennett’s essay, describing the history of the golden ratio from its origins in Africa to its use by the Bauhaus. The golden ratio (that celebrated, geometrically-derived divine proportion) was presented in my early architectural education as a Western (specifically ancient Greek) invention. According to Bennett, its origins are much older and applied throughout different cultures and regions from informal Sub-Saharan communities to Napoleonic Italy. Her analysis of the golden ratio is an example that shows how each generation’s understanding of the canon is heavily influenced by how their predecessors conceived and shared knowledge; possibly reduced or misremembered. Perhaps through rethinking the tools and framework of our studies, we might begin to notice forms that are shared across cultures and see ideas that are lost or misremembered by previous generations.
I’ve found myself feeling the time and curriculum constraints of what you can cover in a semester-long studio. Besides the logistic constraints, there are also limits to my own knowledge and subjectivity as an instructor. There are acts of exclusion and emphasis that happen as a result of limits of my body, mind, and time.
Pouya Khadem (PK): Even if studio resources and timeframes were to expand, is there ever a point at which everything can be comprehensively and, let’s say “democratically” studied? Is there any realistic circumstance under which no building is excluded from study?
AM: Is selecting which buildings to teach an exclusionary act? Yes, but I don't think that's necessarily a problem in itself. The methods by which we adjudicate need to change, evolve, and expand, but judgment is a part of discourse and pedagogy. The way that I've been addressing this in my seminars is to encourage students to bring projects to the table and argue for their excellence. These works can be from any source as long as the students can make the case for their close study. This opens up possibilities for authorship and criteria. The idea that there can be a body of counter-canonical works that also can be theorized (in this case according to the students' arguments) is very interesting to me.
PK: There are many useful things that we’ve inherited from this methodological framework we call the canon, and of course, we’re not talking about entirely throwing that knowledge away. Like any heritage, however, the canon and the way it is broadly understood carry the cultural values and assumptions of a certain time and place.
AM: The canon is a cultural inscription, but it claims to be otherwise. It claims that a work's greatness is inherent, independent of personal opinion. But, of course, that is impossible. The matter of assessment is always someone's opinion, and this is a paradoxical condition of the canonical. It claims to be dispassionate but by definition, it isn't. In this same paradoxical tension, I find some educational value. If we accept that the canon is a false construct, then we can keep defining it, redefining it, and using it to our advantage as an educational and cultural tool.
LWA: I continue to find a problem with referencing the term or even referencing architecture knowledge as a set of works that we need to talk about. It would be more productive to reframe the canon just as one element of architectural history. We keep returning to certain buildings and architects because they were influential to a certain subset of architects. When I teach, we discuss who these people were because architecture history is not just about the buildings. It's necessary to teach the good, bad, and ugly about the influential people of the past. Instead of canon, which implies a set of works divorced from history, it's more helpful to think about the conditions, cultures, and the influence of the people behind those works as irreducible from a specific moment in history. We're shifting away from seeing the architecture scene as an aggregation of singular works by singular geniuses. We don't all have to have the same set of references or foundational principles. Why do we need to discuss the canon as something more than a moment in history?
AO: It's worthwhile to think about a work of architecture as a point of reference—one of many—that brings us to the approximation of all the narratives built around it, its circumstances, and the people who were involved in the process of realizing it.
MO: We have been exploring the shifts in how the canon is taught and discussed. Does this shift ultimately manifest in the built environment—for example, via students that go on to work at architecture firms? Or are these kinds of changes merely happening within academia?
AM: I would answer this in relation to Letícia's points about letting the term go—implying the canon itself is going to be relegated to history. In that imagination, it would still continue to influence what we see in the world, even as a historical fact against which we work. There will always be a specter of it because it was so instrumental in the development of what we understand as a discipline. I'm on the same page as Letícia and Alex, that we should no longer think of it as a body of works to which everyone has to refer. Hopefully, the result will be a more diverse and richer reality in terms of what constitutes great architecture and who produces it.
AO: In my own work, I listen to clients and users describe their preferred way of living and then study ways to translate or materialize their needs using architectural modes of representation. For me, it's important to include them in the design process. This experience is particularly rewarding because it places me face to face with stakeholders who are not coming from years of architecture education that calibrate their references, and can freely engage in conversations about architecture from different perspectives. They don’t have nor need to have extensive knowledge of architecture.
LWA: There needs to be a fundamental shift in the way that we evaluate what is a good work of architecture. Within the tradition of formal analysis, there's almost no need for the building to be built in the first place to be considered good. How do we continue to talk about what is a good work of architecture beyond the narrow conversation around what is a formally good building? What is it like to live in a building? Who are the users? I hope we can develop a framework that allows us to talk with rigor about these topics in academia. It will change how non-architects perceive the built environment, and the conversations happening in architecture schools will become more accessible and relevant to them.
Ajay Manthripragada is the 2023-24 Lily Auchincloss Rome Prize Fellow in Architecture at the American Academy in Rome. Prior, he was Design Critic in Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Alex Oetzel is an architect and educator, typically located in Ohio. She works (more or less) at Moody Nolan and Ohio State University while serving on the AIA Ohio Board of Directors. She enjoys writing for the New York Review of Architecture, attending summer school with the Architecture Lobby, and celebratory donuts.
Letícia Wouk Almino is an architect, artist and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. She has taught architectural studio and drawing courses at Barnard College and Pratt Institute. Her artwork has been exhibited at 411 Gallery, Pratt SoA Gallery, and at the Center for Architecture.
Pouya Khadem edits for the Architecture Writing Workshop. He works as an architectural designer in Houston.
Mai Okimoto edits for the Architecture Writing Workshop. She works as an architectural designer in Houston.
Class Talk
Zaid Kashef Alghata
A Look at the Classroom_March 2023
A Conversation with Zaid Kashef Alghata
March 2023
About two years ago, Zaid Kashef Alghata, a Bahraini-Iraqi designer and educator working in the United States, told me that, in his opinion, 2020 marked a turning point in architectural education. The events that unfolded in 2020—the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police—heightened and illuminated stark social and economic divisions in the U.S. and beyond, creating ripples across educational institutions. This interview serves as a way to check in and have a conversation about the state of architectural education. I spoke with Kashef Alghata about the politics of research funding, the value of extra-institutional teaching and mentoring, and more.
Sebastián López Cardozo (SLC): Broadly speaking, what has been your recent experience of architecture’s educational landscape?
Zaid Kashef Alghata (ZKA): I am happy to see that institutions are increasingly asking questions like: What minority voices have been ignored? What kind of knowledge is missing? Unfortunately, there is a disconnect between institutional efforts to elevate the voices and discourse of underrepresented communities and the economic reality that underpins these efforts: All across the United States, the humanities are seeing a decline in enrollment while STEM degrees are on the rise. Architecture uncomfortably straddles these two realms, and its internal funding qualms might be representative of that discomfort.
What I’m seeing on the ground is that there are plenty of funding opportunities for minority-focused projects in architecture, but most of them amount to very small grants—between $500 and $3,000 on average. Underenrollment complicates that further. Students at architecture schools are sidelining courses that don’t provide job-ready skills—and this often includes courses with a minority focus. This is difficult to come to terms with as an educator, but it isn't our students’ fault; it’s the context they're living in—a bleak economic outlook coupled with the ever-increasing cost of living and debt.
SLC: Right—and that has a deep effect on how you direct your research…
ZKA: When you want to teach issues that haven't been widely discussed, you're required to first do the difficult research—pinning down primary sources, recording, measuring, archiving, all things which require time and funds not readily available. It's not the same as teaching a class on Palladio—there are many publications and countless courses have been taught on the topic.
SLC: Despite those difficulties, you’ve been teaching courses on understudied topics. I would be interested in hearing how you’ve approached that and what insights have emerged from the experience.
ZKA: Last semester, I taught a class on Braddock, a town nine miles out of Pittsburgh, where one of the earliest Bessemer steel plants opened in the U.S. in 1873. Braddock used to be prosperous, but the pollution from the plant led to white flight, while segregation and redlining restricted the Black community’s mobility. At the plant, there was what I think was called the "dead man's job," which encompassed jobs that directly and negatively affected the worker's health. These jobs were disproportionately given to Black workers, aggravating an already inequitable situation. Today, Braddock’s social infrastructure is practically nonexistent; it faces food insecurity and high poverty rates, among other issues.
Our seminar asked students to put together short films that engaged underrepresented histories of Braddock. (Visualizing things that they found problematic about these histories was a way to induce conversations.) One of my students confronted an institution they are a part of, which has historically left out Black voices. The soundtrack they created used a mix of popular Black musicians and a documentary on rappers in Braddock, titled “Braddocc Mon Valley.” The school’s retention and archiving regulations meant that they were able to embed the perspective of local artists within the institutional archive.
How do you utilize existing structures to infiltrate institutions and foster necessary conversations? It's not easy to navigate these complex and layered landscapes. I think there is always a balancing act between the logistical part of the job, and the content explored. The question is how far can you really go?
SLC: Before coming back to teach in the U.S., you did some workshops and courses in Bahrain?
ZKA: Yes, at the University of Bahrain and King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals in Saudi Arabia. Several others took place in classroom spaces I rented out. In that sense, the workshops weren’t really part of any curriculum and were completely independent.
Kashef Alghata during desk crits with his workshop students at a café in Bahrain, July 2018.
SLC: How did this experience affect how you view teaching now?
ZKA: The workshops were exciting to run—they gave me absolute freedom to tailor the workshops to students’ needs. To accommodate students balancing various obligations, I created a flexible course schedule. It was interesting to see that operating outside an institution created a safer space for students of all backgrounds. They were all accepting and supportive of each other. It provided me with evidence that working outside of established structures could be a productive way to create new forms of community.
SLC: After some years of working as an instructor and a designer, you went back to school for a postgraduate degree. Did this have a significant impact on your pedagogical approach?
ZKA: One of the most important lessons that I took from my postgraduate degree is that I came to understand experience as a form of knowledge. I can probably trace this shift in my thinking to a conversation I had with Sylvia Lavin, Professor of History and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University. We were discussing my thesis—I wanted to focus on Bahrain—and I said: Going to Bahrain for thesis is classified as experience, whereas if I go to Rome, it's knowledge. So how do I bring Bahrain into the discourse? I can't remember the response verbatim, so I'll paraphrase it:
Some experiences may provide knowledge, but we may not recognize them as such. To understand the knowledge we possess, we should examine our life history and determine if it forms a unique data set that is not just personal experience but also influenced by geopolitical factors. Our intellectual, conceptual, and geographical journeys may accumulate to create specific knowledge we can identify. When we consider our homeland in relation to knowledge, we may feel uncertain about what we know because it does not fit our expectations of what is currently valued in our field. The definition of knowledge is complex, and there are distinctions between information, wisdom, and knowledge. Knowledge can be seen as inchoate, which means it exists outside the conventions of our field. However, this unconventional knowledge has the potential to produce new ideas and offer an exciting approach to a more inclusive discourse.
So, it's important for me to express this idea in my teaching and mentoring. I tell my students that while there is a great deal of theory and technique to master in architecture school, at the heart of it, they already possess an untaught set of knowledge and skills that will allow them to contribute to the discourse in meaningful ways which shouldn’t be ignored. One of my duties as an educator is to equip students with technical skills so they can go on to incorporate their individual knowledge into the discipline.
I am constantly amazed by the way students can harness their individual power to bring needed change to our field. The truth is that educators or staff in precarious situations are less likely to speak up and demand change, although that is slowly beginning to shift. We must all ask of ourselves: How do we best contribute to building a healthy, rigorous, and inclusive educational system in architecture?
Zaid Kashef Alghata is the Joseph F. Thomas Visiting Professor at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture and founder of House of ZKA.
Teaching, etc.
Ekin Erar, Leyuan Li
A Look at the Classroom_March 2023
An Annotated Conversation Between Emerging Educators
Ekin Erar and Leyuan Li
Annotations by Mai Okimoto and Pouya Khadem
March 2023
What does it mean for writing to be a collaborative and discursive process?
The following text gathers a series of email exchanges between two friends, Ekin Erar and Leyuan Li—both emerging educators at U.S. architecture schools. During the Fall 2022 semester, they shared updates of their professional lives along with candid reflections of their respective teaching roles, providing a glimpse into the daily scenes in architecture academia.
As an annotated written conversation, the piece explored the slower temporality of the written medium. Through shared observations with Ekin and Li, editors Mai Okimoto and Pouya Khadem became indirect participants to their dialogue—perhaps traceable in its shifting tones. The editors’ notes developed independently to connect the text to recent events, disciplinary discussions, and policy landscapes. They read the conversation through themes of the position of adjunct faculty, architectural pedagogy, the predicaments of architectural academics, and the business of the architecture academy.
This conversation has been edited for length and content. The annotations reflect only the views and opinions of the editors, not of the participating authors.
Date: Oct. 18, 2022
From: Ekin Erar
Hi Li,
How’s your semester going? It's your last semester in Houston—must be bittersweet but also, exciting?
I just finished drafting the syllabus for my upcoming elective. How’s yours going? It’s a bit intimidating, writing a syllabus is like devising a pedagogical prompt: There’s pressure to decide what’s worth teaching for an entire semester, and to figure out how to integrate your proposal with the school’s overall discourse.
I visited the university’s Human Ecology department today because I wanted to familiarize myself with their resources (my seminar has a sewing component to it). They have great facilities and a strong textile department—it would be amazing to share technology and machinery between departments. The professor who gave me the tour said she couldn’t recall any collaborations between our two departments. Could be a good opportunity.
Tell me about yourself.
Ekin
Date: Oct 22, 2022
From: Leyuan Li
Hi Ekin,
Great to hear from you! I hope your semester has been going well.
The past few days have been hectic. I stayed up until 7:00 this morning to finish applying for a research grant in Hong Kong. Now that I have some time, I’m going over what I want to teach next semester. I love my cohort and my students, but I’m excited about what’s ahead. [1]
I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted. I’m swamped with work, teaching two studios in order to satisfy the conditions for maintaining my visa status: A first-year studio from 9:00 to noon, and a second-year studio from 1:00 to 5:00 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Reviewing 32 projects in one day is intense. [2]
Most days I only manage to speak with half of the students, so I spend my Tuesdays and Thursdays responding to email questions from the other half—in addition to preparing for the next day’s classes. Virtual communication holdovers from the pandemic can be convenient, but they add pressure to make myself available outside of class to the students who didn't get an in-person critique. I enjoy working with the students, but I end up having less time for my own design and research even though I am aware how important that is for my career. And so I just stay up…Maybe this profession is not for me? I don't know. [3]
Tell me more about your seminar.
Love you,
Li
Date: Oct 24, 2022
From: Ekin
Hello!!
My seminar prompt is based on the project I worked on with a friend—we had submitted it to a biennale and it was selected as a finalist. While I was happy that the work was recognized, it wasn’t going to get built.
Receiving awards and recognitions can feel like pure luck sometimes, like winning the lottery. I often think about the self-exploitation that we put ourselves through in the hopes for winning commissions. Competition entries require so much free work that I’ve become fundamentally against the ones you have to pay to enter. I’m glad that I get to build a version of this competition entry at the university now as an exhibition, otherwise it was going to be another shelved project. xx
Teaching two studios is absolutely bananas. I can’t believe you are going through with it! I have no idea how anyone can critique 32 projects in a day. Do you do group desk crits? I’ve found it helpful to ask the students to critique each other’s works with me so that they practice thinking critically about their own projects.
How are things going with your work visa? I am a little worried about my status for next year, with no clear plans yet. Hopefully, renewing my visa will not be too complicated. [4]
<3
EE
Date: Nov 01, 2022
From: Li
Hi Ekin,
Yes—just as it's the case for competition entries, submitting essays/abstracts and applying for grants often needs to happen in the spare time. It often seems to be the only way to get ahead. [5] This year I’ve already applied and submitted to multiple conferences, biennales, and grants. I was lucky enough to have a few of my applications accepted, one of which is an installation at a biennale in Shenzhen that I’ve been working on for the past few weeks. The exhibition opens in less than a month, and I’ve been super busy. I’m still finalizing the design and trying to get in touch with contractors.
Speaking of my work visa, I’m glad that some universities are willing to sponsor visas for their employees with short-term teaching posts. However, the application process has been quite rocky. A few days ago, I received a notification from the government immigration department to submit additional evidence of my current legal status—letters from current supervisors, old paychecks, etc. I feel like I have to constantly prove to the immigration officer that I am a good, well-behaved foreigner. [6]
Best,
Li
Date: Nov 04, 2022
From: Li
Ekin,
I meant to ask you, how’s your exhibition prep going? How are you feeling?
A few days ago, I had some interesting conversations with my colleagues about the importance of students' involvement in academic mechanics, such as the faculty hiring process or studio review jury. When I was interviewing for fellowships earlier this year, a few schools included students in the interview process, giving them opportunities to voice their opinions and concerns. I think it’s great that this change is taking place; the student body generally seems to have stronger voices and involvement in the administration’s decision-making processes than we had when we were students. xx Is the mechanism of academia slowly changing, or are students better represented by student government or organizations? I am so happy to see that students are keen on proactively working with university administrators in shaping a more inclusive, diverse, and equal learning environment. Despite many student initiatives, I personally haven’t come across as many faculty collectives, at least not for the adjuncts. [7]
Anyway, just some random thoughts.
Li
Date: Nov 15, 2022
From: Ekin
Hello friend!
Sorry I’m late to respond. The exhibition is supposed to go up by next week so I have been running around trying to finish the construction. I’ve retrofitted the entry to the hallway—smaller budget, smaller project.
Preparation of Paperspace exhibition installation, Fall 2022, Cornell AAP.
I am sorry to hear about the visa struggle, I totally relate. Despite obtaining legal status to live and work in the U.S., I couldn’t leave the country for the past few years because of immigration restrictions—it can get exhausting to navigate the layers of conditions that one needs to maintain in order to live, work, and travel freely, especially without easy access to administrative, financial, and legal resources.
I’m also thinking about job applications, considering that I don’t have a position secured for next year yet. I worry that every time I get a new position, it will feel like I am starting over in an unfamiliar place, having to deal with the same stress of visas, finances, etc. In the past year, I’ve spent a good chunk from my savings just to stay afloat—moving expenses pile up. I don’t want to have to go through it every year. [8]
My school started a mentor program for fellows. In a recent session, we talked about the review format for studio work—and I realized that reviews can be what makes architecture school challenging for some students. While the review system provides students with the opportunity to practice discussing their work and receive valuable feedback, it also perpetuates a competitive environment. They feel the pressure to perform in front of each other and a group of "jurors"—the word on its own establishes an insurmountable hierarchy. [9] And the jurors also feel the need to give a strong performance. There is so much pressure to say the right thing at the right time.
Miss you tons,
Ekin
Date: Nov. 27, 2022
From: Li
Hi Ekin,
Final reviews are coming up in a few days, and my anxiety has been building over the past week. As someone who has always enjoyed giving feedback to friends and students on their work, I don’t know where my anxiety comes from. Is it fear of speaking in front of a large audience? Or is it my concern over how I’m perceived and evaluated by the others?
A few weeks ago, I attended a midterm review of a second-year studio covering housing and basic principles of design. It’s their first time designing a house, (which is likely what drew many of them to architecture in the first place). Loaded phrases like environmental activism, architectural autonomy, and hierarchy came up in the critique, and I couldn’t help but notice some students looked confused and discouraged. While I think discussing the external forces in tandem with architecture is valuable for students in upper-level studios, this instance made me question whether foundational studios need to concentrate on elementals before anything else.
I agree about the pressure for faculty to perform. It’s not uncommon in an architecture school review to see a juror steer the conversation away from the students’ work—and interesting discussions can surface (even if the students may not think so)—but sometimes it becomes a reviewer’s monologue. I’ve started trying out walk-through reviews, where reviewers move around and talk to students individually. The conversation format seems more relaxing, while remaining productive for both the students and the faculty. xx
You know architecture is charged with struggles, contradictions, and tensions—it’s unpolished, chaotic, and ever-changing. This is all amplified in the studio, where the lifespan of an architectural project lasts for a semester of sixteen weeks. Within this limited time, students are expected to come up with the polished imagery of a resolved project.
On the one hand, I want to make visible the unfinished and the unresolved, foregrounding them as a critical part of learning. On the other hand, I understand the intentions behind the pursuit of beautiful images that will come out of the final reviews—they will not only be promoted as the student’s work, but also evaluated as our own. I feel like a salesman.
What instructor wouldn't want to post these polished, curated images on Instagram? In many cases, the desire to publicly express pride for the students and their work (often stemming from a shared sense of co-authorship) becomes inextricable from external pressures to constantly self-advertise. Like the insurance companies that bombard potential customers with calls and emails, we make post after post on social media of beautiful model photos and renders, or the papers we’ve written, presenting ourselves as the future visionary builder. I feel the pressure to post my own design work as if the failure to keep up with others is a form of creative impotence. Where is all of this stress coming from? [10]
And so here I am, guiding my students over the finish line for final reviews. I find myself wanting to prove my competence by being one of the most beautifully curated studios, while still giving students the freedom to explore. I’m still learning how to let go of the pressure.
Good luck with your final review, Ekin!
Warmly,
Li
Date: Dec. 24, 2022
From: Ekin
Hi! Sorry I didn’t get to respond to you sooner. I was juggling exhibition disassembly and studio finals. My first finals are over, finally. It was a stressful experience to say the least, but very rewarding to see the students’ work come together.
When I was a student, I saw everything from my own perspective and wasn’t really aware that my work could become a piece in my instructor’s teaching portfolio. I think now that I am teaching my own classes, I try to see how students’ work can collectively fit in a broader research agenda of my own. xx
Happy holidays!
EE
Date: Dec. 29, 2022
From: Li
Hi, Ekin!
I agree about the change in perspective. I’ve noticed that a dedicated instructor has the potential to make the whole studio thrive, not just a few students. When an instructor invests time and energy—and fosters a supportive environment—students’ strengths and weaknesses become less of a factor in the studio’s outcome.
Students’ interactions with their peers also have a huge influence on their studio experience. I’ve been trying to foster peer collaboration, or at least, to have conversations about collaboration with my students—that they should always learn from each other and seek help from one another. The students—first-year and second-year undergraduates—seemed to embrace the spirit, but there would be a doubt, or lack of confidence towards their classmates’ feedback, and they end up returning to their instructors—whom they perceive to be the authority figure. xx As instructors, how can we help students develop critical thinking through collaboration?
Speaking of collaboration, I recently tried to collaborate with a few tenure-track faculty. We’ve talked about this before, but the tenure-track faculty seems to deal with a different set of pressures on their career journey from what we face. My understanding is that tenure track faculty have requirements to meet that at times make them prioritize individual work over collaboration. [11] This isn’t to say there’s no collaboration; I have seen many successful collaborations emerging in institutions, including a cross-disciplinary studio collective composed of faculty and students. The goal is always to cooperate.
Happy New Year! I’m sad that I won't be able to celebrate with you this year. I hope to scoop you next year in your new home.
Yours,
Li
Date: Jan. 24, 2023
From: Ekin
Hi Li!
Happy new year! I’m back for a new school year and it’s already very busy, although a few exciting things are happening. Firstly, congrats! Your lecture series line-up looks great. So happy to see so many of our talented peers lecturing—I’m sure the students will enjoy it. I’m also looking forward to your upcoming lecture.
I’m going through editing the final documentation of the exhibition—it was months of preparation and construction for a two week long exhibition, but now that it’s finished, I think it was totally worth the effort.
I hope you are settling in at your new position. It is quite a challenge to adjust to a new place while teaching. School requires so much brain power that you have no time left to yourself to reflect and relax, which I’ve learned is a big part of settling into a new home and city.
All the best,
EE
Date: Jan. 03, 2023
From: Li
Hi Ekin,
Glad to hear from you!
We just kicked off the lecture series, the first one was a great turnout. I am so glad that the college has been supportive of a lecture series that foregrounds young practitioners from minority communities.
Looking forward to the final documentation of your installation! I wanted to show you some images of the biennale installation—it has been quite an experience, but I’m happy that the installation has been actively engaging the domestic farming communities in China.
Setting up Balchen installation, Shenzhen Biennale 2022.
The show is going on, and will continue. I am so excited about your current projects and seminar, and looking forward to the challenges and adventures ahead of us.
Good luck with the semester. See you on Zoom soon!
Warmly,
Li
1. Advancing in the architecture academic career requires gaining recognition for works that are independent from teaching (as reflected in qualifications and application materials on teaching job listings). While it encourages academics to engage with their interests beyond the classroom, the need to gain recognition—and in extension the production of work to-be-evaluated, whether in the form of buildings, publications, or exhibitions—puts educators on a path of continuous grind, juggling teaching and additional school responsibilities with individual work. This echoes Byung-Chul Han’s concept of the achievement society (2015), in which “the achievement-subject gives itself over to… the free constraint of maximizing achievement. Excess work and performance escalate into auto-exploitation” (Han 2015, 11), and 24 hours is simply not enough to achieve it all.
2. In the U.S., having a full-time working status is a must for international educators who do not have permanent residence and are on employer-sponsored visas (see H1-B (worker visa) or J-1 (scholar visa) criteria on USCIS website). In a field where developing personal projects is a crucial part of career evaluation, international educators face legal constraints to working less than full-time.
3. Citing Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello’s work, Jonathan Crary in 24/7 Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep (2013) observes the ways in which technologies in contemporary capitalism have contributed to the merger of private and professional time—the merger of work and consumption—rewarding those who are constantly engaged, communicating, or processing within some telematic milieu (Crary 2013, 15). Not only have the digital technologies reshaped our attention, they have also curated an environment that encourages the achievement subject (borrowing Han’s term) to continue their self-exploitation.
4. Adjunct faculty without long-term job security—a condition that Alexandra Bradner has coined as “gig academy”—is a persistent problem in the broad academic field. Marianela D’Aprile summarizes this concept in Common Edge: “Non-tenured faculty in every discipline, and especially in the humanities, have increasingly numerous responsibilities and decreasing salaries, and it’s ever-more common for them to be offered short-term contracts with no job security beyond one or two semesters.” For visa holders, the fixed-term employment of adjunct faculty positions means they may need to update their visa status each time, involving legal fees, months of processing time, and the possibility of rejection by the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.) The selection process for the American H1-B work visa operates on a lottery system—a worker who meets all legal criteria may face rejection—while other work visas like the O-1 visa are awarded based on qualitative criteria.
5. In the piece "The Architect as Entrepreneurial Self" (2015), Andreas Rumpfhuber discusses how Hans Hollein's Mobile Office (1969) anticipates contemporary aspects of the architects’ “daily grind,” capturing the architects’ immaterial labor of producing “the informational and cultural content of the commodity” (Rumpfhuber 2015, 41). He argues that the entrepreneurial self emerges from the acceptance of “the prerequisite to expose oneself to the gaze of the other,“ and a reality in which living and working become one and the same.
6. A Google search of “adjunct faculty h1-b” will return mixed results, with some links to university pages showing they do not sponsor visas for those working in temporary or part-time positions. Despite the advocacy and commitment by many academic institutions towards greater diversity and transparency among the faculty population (in addition to the student population), they often don’t have the institutional framework in place to support foreign individuals entering the academic field. In contrast to the statistics of student demographics that are promoted on university websites, data on staff and faculty population tend to not be readily available.
7. Are there cross-institution organizations or initiatives for architecture faculty like there are for professionals in practice? If they exist, how active are they at individual institutions?
Preparation of Paperspace exhibition installation, Fall 2022, Cornell AAP.
8. For many, pursuing an academic career means pursuing one’s passion, but financial security is not always guaranteed. While complete information on the specifics of an institutions’ compensation system is often hard to come by, it is not uncommon to read about episodes of adjunct faculty in various academic fields juggling multiple jobs to pay their bills. A 2022 report published by American Association of University Professors (AAUP) reveals that part-time faculty members (of universities, liberal arts colleges, and community colleges) earned an average of $3,850 per course, and 65% of schools provided no health-care benefits to those adjunct professors.
9. In her Log 48 article, ”Not-Habits” (2020), Ana Miljački reflects on the norms (or the habits) that are ingrained in architecture education, asking what it would take to challenge the institutional norms that have “been deeply codified in our timetables, grading sheets, review protocols, hierarchies, and values” (Miljački 2020, 107). As part of an experimental design studio entitled Collective Architecture Studio, she and her students challenged the conventional “juridical call of the presentation format” of final reviews, identifying and removing the “hierarchies commonly inherent in final juries: specific authorship, privileged expertise, and the finality of our proposals” (Miljački 2020, 116). Miljački notes the reviewers’ receptivity towards adjusting their remarks and roles in response to the different format, as well as the valuable conversation that it sparked around the students’ work—suggesting that disciplinary change could begin to take place from inside the classroom.
10. While image has always been an invaluable component of architecture, academic individuals and institutions are under increasing pressure to produce and publicize “beautiful” images in high frequency, in order to establish their presence to their audience—prospective students, future hires, peer institutions and colleagues, etc. When these images come from students' work, do semester-long projects become something more than a part of an individual student’s educational journey?
11. As the myth of the "lone architectural genius" is increasingly put into question and institutions embrace the ethos of collaboration, what does the corresponding shift look like for the broader academic field and among faculty members? Classroom experiments such as Collective Architecture Studio's (discussed earlier in annotation 10) are important catalysts for broader disciplinary change—they can affect how students engage with others in the classroom, how they understand their work is evaluated, and even the work they produce. What groundbreaking experiments and ideas might we see emerge from classrooms (and beyond) when collaboration is fully sanctioned and encouraged by institutions?
Preparation of Balchen installation, Shenzhen Biennale 2022.
Crary, Jonathan. 24/7 : Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep / Jonathan Crary. London ;: Verso, 2013.
Han, Byung-Chul, and Erik Butler. The Burnout Society. Translated by Erik Butler. Stanford, California: Stanford Briefs, an imprint of Stanford University Press, 2015.
Miljački, Ana. “Not-Habits.” Log 48 (2020): 107-116.
Rumpfhuber, Andreas. “The architect as entrepreneurial self: Hans Hollein’s TV performance “Mobile Office” (1969).” in The Architect as Worker: Immaterial Labor, the Creative Class, and the Politics of Design. Edited by Peggy Deamer. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015.