This following is the presentation given by Leslie Van Duzer, University of British Columbia at the 2011 ACSA Administrators Conference in Los Angeles. The session, Integrated Practice Symposium: Accreditation, Research, and Alternative Professional Tracts, sponsored by Autodesk, considered the impact of the broad conceptual underpinnings of “integrative practice” on curriculum, accreditation, research, and alternative professional tracts for architects. How can faculties respond today and in the future?

 

Moderator:  Michael Jemtrud, McGill University
Participants:  Leslie Van Duzer, University of British Columbia
Ramtin Attar, Autodesk Research

 

 

Leslie Van Duzer, University of British Columbia

 

Today I will speak briefly about the importance of cultivating ambiguity as part of an integrated design practice. I will intentionally veer away from the AIA definition of integrated design and rather define it as an exchange with any other in the design process. Whether we are spotlighting the integration of the academy and professional practice, or the integration of the design studio and new technologies, or the integration of multiple disciplines or professions . . . ambiguity and its attendant destabilizing uncertainty (not-knowing) play a critical role in any productive exchange.

I would like to suggest that integrating anything effectively requires a high degree of comfort with what Lohti Zadeh called “fuzzy sets.”  A fuzzy set (like art, for example) is defined as one without fixed boundaries. It is distinguished from a classic or crisp set whose membership is precisely defined. “Lovable people in this room” is a fuzzy set; “those over 50” is not.

We learn from cognitive psychology that we organize the world in three levels of categories/sets. At the highest and most general level, there are superordinate categories (for example, furniture or transportation) and at the lowest level, there are subordinate categories that are highly specific (grandma’s oak rocking chair). But far more interesting and productive for us are the basic-level categories (such as chair), categories characterized by their fuzziness.

This basic-level category is the highest level at which a single mental image can represent the entire category, the highest level at which category members have a similar Gestalt, and the highest level in which a person uses similar motor actions for interacting with category members. It is the first to be named and understood by children and most importantly, it is the level at which most knowledge is organized.

So I assume we can all agree it would be productive to have greater exchange between the university and the profession, between disciplines within the university, between studio and those pesky “other courses,” and between those other courses themselves. To this end, it would be helpful to conceive of each of these as fuzzy rather than crisp and siloed. And as participants in these exchanges, it would be helpful to focus not on our expertise, but rather on our ignorance.

In his beautiful little book Sea Shells, Paul Valéry wrote: “Ignorance is a treasure of infinite price that most men squander, when they should cherish its least fragments; some ruin it by educating themselves, others, unable so much as to conceive of making use of it, let it waste away. Quite on the contrary, we should search for it assiduously in what we think we know best.”

If indeed a stronger embrace of ignorance and ambiguity fosters integration, one must ask: why stubbornly maintain old categories of knowledge and skills in our curricula? We have long been fond of telling our students “seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees,” of asking them to think in fuzzy sets in order to create the space of uncertainty that allows for invention, but we as faculty stubbornly, or perhaps lazily, cling to classic, crispy sets that inhibit the free flow of collaboration and integration.

As we redesign our curricula, what if we took all the course names off the table, and all the associated individuals out of the mix, and had a discussion that was fuzzy enough to not be threatening? What if instead of course names, we described only desired learning outcomes, not as NAAB defines them but as we define them; outcomes such as increased emotional intelligence and visual literacy, passion for both technology and the craft of writing, a heightened empathy for both the animate and inanimate, masterful systemic and synthetic thinking, an ability to jump with ease across scales and categories . . . If we had a discussion about desirable outcomes, there would surely be precious little disagreement between us. So why not structure an architecture curriculum in this way, around ways of thinking instead of subject areas? Would that not better prepare all our students to play significant roles, whether as architects or game designers or politicians? Wouldn’t that better prepare our students for a world that is a moving target we as faculty cannot really keep up with?

 

Frankly, the real impediment to achieving more fluid and responsive curricula is not NAAB requirements or shrinking university budgets or clearly any shortage of good leadership, but rather resistance to change from within. This, I believe, is the elephant in the room.