The special project "Education" is supervised by the Moscow Architectural School MARSH, represented by its directors Nikita Tokarev and Evgeny Assa, and Professor of the Moscow Architectural Institute Oscar Mamleev (you can read his interview about the special project here).
Archi.ru:
I propose to develop the theme raised both in the manifesto of "Architecture" -2015, and in the manifesto of the special project "Education": what architects should be trained in architectural universities? And there, and there we are talking about independence, "pro-activity", but these qualities also need to be taught. How can this be done?
Nikita Tokarev:
- The first thing to do is to give the opportunity to choose (teachers, programs, assignments, method and schedule of work), but the responsibility for the choice lies with the student. Only by making an independent and informed choice, an architect learns responsibility. First of all, we offer different programs of design studios, each teacher forms the program himself. The second is time for independent work. In MARSH - four "contact" days a week, and one day for independent work. We do not control how this time is used, perhaps someone is resting. We ask about the result, and the “not enough time” argument is not accepted. And third, a reasoned position is developed in discussions, in dialogue with teachers, with other students, with experts and only on the basis of broad erudition, horizons, humanitarian knowledge. This means that we need philosophy, history of architecture and art, communication skills, reading, writing, speaking.
What kind of architect is trained in progressive universities, including the MARCH School? MARSH instructor Narine Tyutcheva in the recent interview with Archi.ru talked about the development of the future architect's ability to convincingly influence the market. What is your opinion?
- We do not know what challenges our student will face in five or ten years, including what the market will be like. It is important to be able to learn very quickly in order to adapt to new conditions, to be able to think systematically, analyze and investigate the problem, then there will be less temptation to solve a new problem using old methods. And to have that very independence of thought and action, which was discussed above. This applies to any education, not just architecture. We - as in the proverb - give a fishing rod and teach how to fish, but do not offer ready-made fish.
“Zodchestvo” -2015 is held under the motto “New Industries”, dedicated to the challenge of the times. Why does the educational standard, which prevails in most Russian architecture universities, do not meet the requirements of today, what exactly needs to be changed in it, what to add? What challenges should students be prepared for, for which they are not usually ready now after receiving a diploma?
“I don’t know of any architectural curricula based on functional typology in the world. This is the legacy of the industrial era and "departmental" architecture. Talking about what is worth changing would take up too much space. From the performance of tasks (formulated by the department, the customer, the authorities, etc.), the architect must move on to solving the problems that reality poses to him, which he poses for himself. We must form the agenda, know more, see further than our customer and consumer. And one more thing: architecture is one of the few synthetic professions that have survived, and it is difficult to split into separate specializations. Many individual courses in a traditional school of architecture, which seem to give a university breadth of education, are in fact unrelated to each other and often remain a scattered set of information. We need integral courses that combine different disciplines with an architectural approach, and a set of narrowly focused special courses at the student's choice. Then architecture will stay afloat both as a profession and as a field of activity. We strive to prepare an architect, master (master) for such a role.
