To learn.
-As important as thinking and making, of understanding and knowing, is the ability to learn. As architect’s tasks are a constant search, they need constant learning.
-We start learning architecture inside our mother’s womb. How to learn to make architecture is an unresolved question yet. How architect’s job is taught and learnt in architecture schools is, at best, just a small part of the picture, and in most cases a waste of the best creative and energetic years of all learners. There is a false dichotomy between defenders of learning-by-thinking and learning-by-doing, between discipline and self-discovery, between mind and soul. We could start from a synchrony of these talents in order to help younger people to achieve all their astounding potentialities. Architecture schools need to revolve or they will definitely become dead and useless institutions.
To unlearn.
-The false expectations of what an architect does are not just a responsibility of university, but also of high schools, elementary schools, and architects themselves. Most of the young architecture students start university with their minds already confused and stressed. As John Dewey said: ‘Indeed, he is lucky who does not find that in order to make progress, in order to go ahead intellectually, he does not have to unlearn much of what he learned in school’. So unfortunately university at best becomes a place for unlearning.
-In just a few years, we’ll be facing a challenging dilema as a species: when we have universal access to our genomic information, will we decide that only those born with a builder’s genetic design will be allowed to continue their training as such?
To feel.
-The fact that we are technicians doesn’t mean that we are machines. As humans, we feel all the time. As architects, we must train and nourish our capacity of feeling a place. Why do we feel good or bad in a specific place and/or moment?