For the past 30 years, critical architectural practice and architectural education at academic institutions in the United States have explored the generative capacity of an ever-expanding set of (digital) design techniques. This work, initially motivated by the introduction of computers into design studios and sponsored by theoretical frameworks from fields outside of architecture, aimed to produce novel formal, spatial, and material qualities and effects. Occasionally, sustained development of design techniques escaped academia and influenced professional practice. For example, the interest in single surface geometries and continuous surfaces explored by architects such as Neil Denari, UNStudio, and Diller + Scofidio in the 1990s materialized in projects completed by their offices in the 2000s.
In recent years, however, architects seem less concerned with extending academic pursuits into practice and have increasingly (and almost exclusively) embraced their roles as stewards of the built environment, expanding their purview to include political and social dimensions. Engagement with these issues is no longer optional—it is essential. Yet, the depth and sincerity of this engagement vary widely. Some architectural practices demonstrate genuine transformation, while others adopt the language of change without meaningfully altering their core operations.
This raises a critical question: What role can architectural education play in shaping an evolving professional landscape? Additionally, how impactful are the increasingly insular efforts of academic architects in the United States? Can students truly carry forward the ideals of positive change promoted in school into practicing within the built environment? And what becomes of the past three decades of experimentation in form, space, and material—much of it catalyzed using digital tools in design, fabrication, and representation in both education and practice?
To answer some of the questions posed above and trace a lineage of ideas in architectural design and education, it’s worthwhile to link academic architects and critical practices to one another and speculate on the potential for new, networked academic design communities to advance shared affinities for novel architectural propositions. One objective of the diagram that accompanies this text is to make these existing and potential networks clear, and the overall underlying ambition of tracing lineage is to reassert academia as an incubator of the future of the discipline and practice, a persistent objective of architectural education since architectural degrees were first offered in the U.S. over 150 years ago.
The Emergence of Projects
It’s important to begin by acknowledging that higher education is under scrutiny. How can higher education reclaim its relevance as a site of critical, meaningful intellectual inquiry? The same question applies to architectural education, which has grown increasingly diffuse in its emphasis, values, and objectives, often at the expense of deep engagement with core competencies—the essential skills that enable architects to create and manipulate form, space, and material with control and intention. Without a deep commitment to these skills, students may struggle to attain positions of influence or demonstrate the expertise required to collaborate with colleagues, clients, consultants, and contractors and, ultimately, lead building projects. Without expertise, not only will emerging professionals lose their ability to be instrumental in professional practice, but their lack of sustained intellectual inquiry and participation in architecture culture—tied to form, space, and material—will negate the possibility of their contributing to, or conceiving of, Projects in the discipline of architecture, grounded by informed practice.
The notion of a Project was established by Peter Eisenman, who encouraged intellectual, theoretical, and philosophical engagement with the discipline of architecture. A Project unfolds over time and is incrementally constructed and revealed across multiple acts of architecture. Without disciplinary knowledge and design techniques (and perhaps an ideological framework for their application), architectural education and practice, and therefore architecture students and architects, will become susceptible to reacting passively to the multiple and often contradictory demands of context, clients, regulating agencies, media, economics, culture, society, and politics.
It’s relatively easy to identify where Projects have emerged previously. While the idea of an architecture school overtly declaring an ideological position and a self-defined Project feels almost foreign today, history offers powerful examples: the Bauhaus in Weimar (1919–25); Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Fellowship (1932–2003); Harvard under Walter Gropius (1937–52); IIT under Mies van der Rohe (1938–58); the Texas Rangers at the University of Texas at Austin (1951–58); the Philadelphia School at the University of Pennsylvania (1951–65); John Hejduk at Cooper Union (1975–2000); Werner Seligmann at Syracuse (1976–90); Bernard Tschumi at Columbia (1988–2003); Sylvia Lavin at UCLA (1996–2006); and Robert Somol at the University of Illinois Chicago (2007–22). Each of these moments represented more than a collection of educators with aligned interests; they embodied intellectual Projects that demanded sustained focus and collective commitment. These schools produced generations of architects who shared values, beliefs, techniques, and ambitions and who, in turn, reshaped critical and professional practice.
Does anything like this exist today? As a result of schools’ embracing the marketplace and privileging broad appeal and inclusivity over focused identity and exclusivity, I definitively state that it does not. Could a school once again host a singular vision with rigorous investigation and transformative design? Because commitment to a Project would deny students access to diversity of thought, I suggest that it would not be prudent to do so.
More Projects?
If architecture schools today are not the right place for the cultivation of Projects, where will novel and inspiring intellectual inquiry in architectural design come from? The Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS), founded in 1967 as a nonprofit focused on architectural and urban design research and education, is an example of collaboration between like-minded individuals that advanced theoretical discourse and shaped architecture culture. The most productive period at the IAUS occurred between 1967 and 1980. Since then, there have been several examples of cross- or extra-institutional collaborations. In addition to historical exhibitions such as Deconstructivist Architecture at MoMA in 1988, Architecture Non Standard at the Centre Pompidou in 2003, and more recent groups such as the Black Reconstruction Collective and WIP Collaborative, I’d like to highlight Matters of Sensation, a 2008 group show at Artists Space in New York City curated by Marcelo Spina and Georgina Huljich, showcasing architectural forms that induce fantasy, intimacy, and pleasure; and, if I may, Possible Mediums, a series of events that took place around the United States from 2012 to 2018, organized by Kristy Balliet, Kelly Bair, Adam Fure, and myself, which explored new conceptual supports—speculative mediums such as narrative, profiles, and puzzles—for architectural production.
Beginning in the 1990s, ease of global communication and access to, and production of, information via the internet offered a new form of collectivity for academic architects. For the generations mentioned above, what often started as individual design investigations quickly became networked pursuits and enabled the possibility of Projects existing beyond the boundaries of individual schools—rather than being forged from immediate physical proximity. Projects became conceptual and representational frameworks built atop foundations of carefully selected and developed design techniques, references, and aesthetic sensibilities. What the existence of Matters of Sensation and Possible Mediums suggests is that there no longer exists a need for a school to commit to a Project. So, does anything akin to these group efforts exist today? It doesn’t seem so. The predicament raises important questions: Where does design discourse exist? Who are the emerging thought leaders among academic architects?
Two generations ago (as seen in Matters of Sensation), several individuals, many of whom were in school when computers were first introduced into design studios, carried forward with them the responsibility to insert digital design techniques into critical practice. Their collective Projects can be typified by three primary areas of interest: (1) Architecture as animated form, (2) architecture via topological models, and (3) architecture for affect and sensation (often tied to digital fabrication). A generation ago, as seen in Possible Mediums, four collective Projects could be identified: (1) Architecture from architecture, (2) architecture as a conceptual art practice, (3) architecture without legible order, and (4) architecture as associative forms.
A glimpse at the newest generation of academic architects elicits hope for the cultivation of new collective Projects. After a multiyear hiatus in the early 2020s, novel conceptual and representational frameworks of architecture are being developed with a renewed commitment to technique. I’d like to offer a provisional grouping of these individuals organized around shared values and overlaps in the visual and material qualities of their work. Selected for attention they’ve garnered, acclaim they’ve earned, and the potential of their work, each of these individuals and offices has, through their actions and words, made a commitment to academic discourse and critical practice. Their collective efforts produce collaborative proto-Projects, respectively convened around the following: (1) Architecture as geometric precision, (2) architecture as living entity, (3) architecture as an extension of identity, and (4) architecture as almost nothing.
Time will tell if these nascent collaborations coalesce into intentionally collective pursuits, as has been the case in recent generational Projects, but there is potential in their renewed commitment to design. The hope now is that some of these individuals will take responsibility for initiating and cultivating a generational conversation that can mature and advance architectural education and the discipline of architecture, putting pressure on professional practice to do the same.
Nota Bene
These groupings capture moments when design educators across the country made their presence known and declared affiliations to unique formal, spatial, and material pursuits during formative years of teaching and critical practice. The diagram tracks incremental and ever-changing trends and sensibilities in academic discourse and, in the best-case scenario, their maturation through practice. I hope this contribution serves as a conversation starter for the forces that will animate architectural education and critical practice in the years to come.
Kyle Miller is associate dean and an associate professor at Syracuse University School of Architecture.
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