Architecture Here and There

This post should be of interest in the Creative Capital. The Rhode Island School of Design is one of the top design schools in the world. But design education is almost wholly modernist and excludes education in other stylistic forms. A more diverse reality exists in the actual market for design, and by ignoring it design schools do their students, and the rest of us, a disservice.

In a keynote speech at the conference of CUMULUS (International Association of Universities and Colleges of Art, Design, and Media) in Bratislava, Slovakia, on October 12, called "Am I Just Seeing Things or Is the Modernist Apartheid Regime Still in Place?" and linked to here, Jan Michl (left), a professor at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, delves deeply into the problems this has caused for design education and design itself. The situation in design education closely parallels that of architectural education. This essay is long, but definitely worth reading. (See excerpt below.)

A new gallery, RISD Expose, which I popped in to visit on Friday evening, is run by RISD students at 232 Westminster Street. The students themselves embrace diversity of design - at least when they market their own work. On display was plenty of figurative art, if not plenty of traditional figurative art. I only looked at one price tag - for a nifty little wood stool. It was on sale for over $1,000. They jump into the market with both feet. Good luck!

The illustration on top comes from an expanded version of the "Apartheid" lecture, with copious notes. It can be linked to here. Jan recently sent me a pleasant e-mail about my columns. He has some other essays in a range of languages - English, Norwegian, Czech, Slovak and Spanish - on his web site, which is here.

"We should then see, and teach also our students to see, the modernist aesthetic for what it all the time has been: namely a strikingly novel, creative contribution to the stylistic pluralism of this age. It is the fact of this pluralism - not just its latest manifestation - that design schools should embrace. Embracing pluralism would abolish the only thing wrong with the modernist aesthetic - namely its apartheid ambition. This would finally open for modern - as against modernist - design schools."

 Tags  apartheid architecture design Jan Michl modernism Oslo School of Architecture and Design RISD

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