This is actually three books in one. As a collection of 40 essays by 35 different authors, it is, first, an advertisement for the University of Greenwich's Department of Architecture and Landscape in its new location at the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site outside of London and its assumed new relevance. It is, alternatively, a platform for schools of architecture that indulge “radicality,” “innovation,” and visions of the “future.” And, finally, it is a history of various schools offering alternative (read: anti-institutional) modes of education.
The first of these is rather charming as you see Neil Spiller and Nic Clear, who edited the book and teach at Greenwich, pour their enthusiasm for a type of education—a mix of the approaches of the Architectural Association (AA), SCI-Arc, and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna—into the pedagogy of their new department. Their anticipation of bypassing leaden, myopic, and risk-averse academia is clear, even if you, as a reader, feel a bit queasy about their self-promotion. The third “book” is also enlightening. The histories of the AA, and architecture programs at UCLA, the Berlage, and Cornell, for example, though not unknown, are told here by current teachers at these schools who offer insights into the struggle to simultaneously build on and transcend institutional legacies. It is the second “book” that is troubling, since it assumes that teaching formal radicality is “how tomorrow's practitioners will learn today.” In other words, prejudice masquerades as a list of relevant schools.
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