by 2013 Topaz Medal Recipient, Robert Greenstreet

The AIA/ACSA Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education is awarded jointly by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) to an individual, who must be living at the time of nomination, who has spent at least a decade primarily involved in architectural education, and whose primary contribution to architectural education has been on the North American continent.

First, a big apology for not being able to attend the ACSA Annual Meeting and attend the Topaz Medallion presentation. I have long been committed to a senior alumni tour on behalf of my University, and will be probing the streets and alleyways of London and Paris in late March when ACSA musters in San Francisco.

Secondly, I am of course, delighted and honored to be selected to receive the 2013 Topaz Medallion and want to thank all my colleagues at ACSA and AIA for their friendship, support and collegiality over the years. This means a great deal to me.

Thirdly, while I have deprived myself of the opportunity to wax lyrically and at length to a captive audience in San Francisco, I have taken the opportunity to pen a few thoughts on the meaning of the Topaz Medallion, its significance to collaboration between academia and practice and how, closer to home, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee seeks to fuse and blend the interface of the two together.

 The story starts in 1355 in Oxford. Please do not be alarmed — we will spend very little time in antiquity and anyway the story starts, as so many good stories do, with a fight in a bar. This one was between students and town folk which got rather out of hand and led to the Saint Scholastica’s Day riots, a lively altercation where 68 people, mostly students, ultimately died.

Frankly, relationships between town and gown in Oxford were never really the same after that and the interaction over the subsequent centuries has not improved much. Certainly, the ivory tower attitude persisted throughout the nine years I spent in the city, where its urban context and challenges were largely ignored as a testing ground for new ideas, and the Universities remained largely distinct from, and therefore irrelevant to, their surroundings.

The relationship of academic centers to their physical context and, by extension, to their professional fields, has remained a source of discussion and sometimes acrimony, even in recent years. With regard to the latter, there is perhaps a natural friction between the objectives of the academic preparation and either real world issues or professional training, which makes collaborative ventures like the Topaz Medallion so important, as it recognizes the mutual interests of both groups and represents a working partnership — a partnership that could be a model for further fruitful engagement at a more granular level.

There are over 150 accredited programs of architecture represented by ACSA, and every one of us tries to differentiate ourselves from the competition and define ourselves in a meaningful way. At the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, I like to think, we define ourselves by our relevance — relevance to our context and relevance to our profession. 

In the first case, as the only accredited program in Wisconsin, we are mission-bound to serve our city and state. We do this at a local level through Community Design Solutions, one of the oldest community design centers in the country, but also through a unique relationship with the Major’s Office and the Department of City Development.

Through an ongoing partnership with the city that has encompassed the Chair of the City Planning Commission, City Planner and Chair of City Development spanning over 25 years, I have been able to create a structural link to the decision-making entities in city development and government. My school colleagues focus many of their studios and courses on city-generated interests and our School has, through the efforts of faculty, students and alumni,  effectively shaped the skyline of Milwaukee and the towns and cities beyond. Even now, we are completing a three-year initiative focusing 30 studios and classes on the Inner Harbor of Milwaukee. All work is published in archival form each year and made available to all city departments and elected leaders. In the past, my colleagues’ work has acted as an urban catalyst and has been the impetus for such developments as the Milwaukee Market, downtown housing and the removal of a freeway through the center of the city.

More pertinent to the Topaz Medallion however, is UWM’s relevance to our profession. The relationship between our School and the state’s profession has not always been perfect I admit, but we work hard at building bridges and creating programs where we can mutually benefit from their outcomes.

Perhaps the best of these are the Partnership Studios, a defining characteristic of our program, where local and regional practices and corporations both sponsor and actively participate in the studio experience.

The objective in each case is to create a win-win situation; An enriched studio experience for the students (where additional funding and sponsor involvement provides guest lectures, field trips, an enhanced teaching perspective, equipment and publication/exhibition possibilities) and value to our partners — the opportunity to hire the best students engage in the teaching process, for example, or the ability to enhance their research and development activities — even the winning of national awards to differentiate their reputation from their peers. 

The outcomes of the Partnership Studios are significant; students have won a number of national awards for their work such as those of the ACSA/AISC and the Precast Concrete Institute, and 3 NCARB Prizes within a 4 year span. Work from the studios has won design awards, been published in various books and has been exhibited internationally, including in Tokyo, Germany and twice at consecutive Venice Biennales. 

While each Partnership Studio is crafted to meet both academic need and professional interest, the Eppstein Uhen Studio is perhaps the most advanced case of collaboration. Here, Professors Snyder and Dicker worked in the practice over a summer to learn the technical characteristics of the practice and their use of REVIT and then have worked collaboratively with EUA principals (often alumni) to teach the BIM Studio. Projects from the studio have won many of the design prizes listed above, many of the students filter effortlessly into prized positions in the practice upon graduation, and the studio has even experimented with the students being located in the actual practice, the ultimate fusion of town and gown.

Does this kind of partnership matter? It is not of course the only method of academic delivery, nor should it be the model for all programs. For us, it works well and the engagement with the regional profession has one important indicator of usefulness; last year our placement rate of profession degree candidates within 4 months of graduation was 80 – 90% within architectural practices — by no means the only judge of success, but a good indicator of a relatively seamless working relationship between academia and the profession.

There are many facets to a good architectural program, and our ACSA Schools define their excellence in ways pertinent to their own specific context. For us, professional engagement through relevance has helped to position the program as far from the ivory tower as possible without sacrificing any of the intellectual qualities necessary to further the aspirations of our field. 

Relevance can only be achieved by collaboration and partnership, and I am honored to be part of a school that is recognized by the collaborative reflections of ACSA and AIA through the Topaz Medallion.