02-10-2008

Interboro was recently asked to say a few words about its pedagogy. Here's what it da to say:

INTRODUCTION: CULTIVATING CURIOSITY ABOUT THE URBAN
In all of our classes, be they lecture classes about the American city, theory seminars about the varieties of urban experience, or design studios searching for solutions to some urban problem, our aim remains the same. It is 1) to incite in our students the same curiosity about urbanity, urban life, and the urbanized world that inspires our own academic, professional, and personal pursuits, and 2) to give our students the tools they’ll need to insure that this curiosity evolves into an awareness and understanding of the influence the urban has on our everyday lives. It is our conviction that this illusive subject (the urban), the importance of which was recognized relatively recently, but which is becoming more and more crucial as we tip the rural / urban scale towards the urban for the first time in the history of our planet, is as inexhaustible as it is rich, and affords the student who mines its manifold meanings a privileged perspective from which to observe and make sense of the world.

URBANISM
In this little essay, we’d like to communicate why we think cultivating a curiosity about—and eventually, an awareness and understanding of— urbanity, urban life, and the urbanized world represents a forward-thinking approach to teaching architectural history. We will do this by talking about the differences between two approaches to the study of the built environment: traditional architectural history, characterized (somewhat cartoonishly) as that province of armchair academics and their monographs of old buildings and the old architects who designed them, and what we call “Urbanism,” an expansive, interdisciplinary, and forward-thinking approach aimed at cultivating a curiosity about, and an awareness and understanding of the urban. Not surprisingly, it is the latter approach, in opposition to the former, that we advocate, and that therefore embodies our philosophy.

We will do our best to outline Urbanism’s major characteristics in six short sections.

I. URBANISM LOOKS BEYOND ARCHITECTURE AND THE ARCHITECT
Let’s begin this summary of the differences between two approaches to the study of the built environment by considering their respective approach to history. Most fundamentally, when Urbanists think about the history of architecture, they look beyond both the building and the architect to consider the ourriad of social, cultural, and political forces that account for architectural products. How do we account for a given architectural product? After the death of the author, this isn’t such an easy question to answer. Since all architectural products—buildings, cities, and everything between—are the products of the partial legacies of countless plans, policies, technological innovations, ideologies and idealizations, it’s hard to know where to begin. But the Urbanist doesn’t panic. The Urbanist likes to get her hands dirty: for her, this is actually one of the most exciting things about being an Urbanist. Taking a cue from actor-network theorists like Bruno Latour, Urbanists “follow the actors” without knowing where these actors will lead them. An investigation into the history of a building, for example, might lead to a client’s office on Charles Street, the Map Room at the Enoch Pratt, or Baltimore’s online zoning code (Urbanism requires mobility). It might lead her to lunches with the Chairs of the Environmental Design Department, the Languages, Literature and Culture Department, and the Art History Department, in the hopes that they can shed light on the architectural, literary, or artistic climate of the era in which the building in question was built. If our Urbanist is trying to account for something broad like, say, the history of American cities, of course she’ll be inclined to look at Federal policies like as the 1956 Interstate Highway Act, or Title 1 of the 1949 Housing Act, but she might also be led to look at the suburban bias of the Federal tax code, the institutional racism embedded in our lending practices, or irrational development decisions engendered by term limits. Beyond this, she’d also do well to consider “cultural” things, such as why filmmakers so often cast Los Angeles as a stand-in for the post-apocalypse, or why blowing up New York always translates into big box office sales. If the anti-urban sentiments expressed in such movies partially authored this history of American cities, so too did Thomas Jefferson, whose anti-urban sentiments have infused the way Americans have thought about cities since the publication of “A Summary View of the Rights of British America” in 1774.

This is an eclectic list on purpose. It exists to make the point that for Urbanists, each and every urban product—from I-83, to Charles Center, to the Mondawmin Mall—offers an entry into the larger world of cultural production that the Urbanist is very happy to explore.

II . URBANISM BLURS THE BOUNDARIES
One consequence of this is that Urbanism isn’t so sure where it belongs – which wouldn’t bother it so much, if everyone wasn’t always so concerned with finding a place for everything. All of these departments, each with its own floor! Where will we put the Urbanism office? Next to Languages, Literature, and Culture? Art History? Environmental Design? Ideally, the Urbanism office would be equidistant from all three. Urbanism is somewhat ashamed at using such a trite word, but Urbanism is interdisciplinary. Urbanists stop by all of their colleagues’ office hours, as suggested by the previous paragraph.

But Urbanism is more than just interdisciplinary. If Urbanism exists between departments within the Liberal Arts, it also exists between the Liberal Arts taken as a whole and the Arts (this is why Urbanists sometimes have an M.F.A or an M.U.P. instead of a PH.d.). Unlike students of traditional architectural history, Urbanism students are encouraged to blur the boundaries between history, analysis, and design. They are encouraged to understand the city by engaging the city. Like students of traditional architectural history, Urbanism students write good papers, but unlike them, they also make persuasive maps, movies, and sometimes even plans. Some Urbanists even insist that the urban world should be thought of as raw material for production.

III. URBANISM IS INTERESTED IN POP EPHEMERADAE
Urbanists are much less likely than architectural historians to ignore the everyday environment at the expense of “important” buildings by known architects. Following thinkers like John Brinkerhoff Jackson, Reyner Banham, and Robert Venturi, Urbanists are much more likely to acknowledge the importance of “hamburger bars and other pop ephermeridae,” to cite one of Banham’s favorite examples. Beyond acknowledging the importance of the everyday, Urbanists celebrate it, or at least refrain from making rash judgments about it. Urbanists are patient; they know that for better or for worse, the everyday environment of hamburger bars and other pop ephermeridae is America’s urban vanguard, and that we should acknowledge it for what it is, namely, the place where most Americans spend most of their lives. Urbanists take thinks on their own terms: they “listen” to cities. As such, they are often of the opinion that places that appear chaotic and ugly to an outsider (Los Angeles comes to mind), probably work perfectly well for their inhabitants (again, Los Angeles comes to mind).

IV. URBANISM IS INTERESTED IN THE WAYS IN WHICH ARCHITECTURE IS ENACTED
Urbanists, following their friend and mentor Henri Lefebvre, know that the history of a given architectural product doesn’t end when it is built. For Urbanists, the history of architecture is unimaginable without the history of how architecture is practiced. Following Michel de Certeau, Urbanists are interested in how cultural products—in this case, cities, spaces, and buildings—are consumed. Urbanists are especially interested in the way “users—commonly assumed to be passive and guided by established rules—operate,” in the way they transform cities, spaces, and buildings in ways their designers never imagined. So Urbanists pay special attention to the ways in which, say, skateboarders appropriate handrails, or parkour enthusiasts transform urban ruins into obstacle courses, or how Latino immigrants to Los Angeles’s East Side have re-appropriated the front lawn as a social space of heightened interaction. The built environment, in the eyes of an Urbanist, is enacted, and this enactment should be written into the evolving history of a city, space, or building.

V. URBANISM LINKS KNOWLEDGE WITH EXPERIENCE
An Urbanist is more inclined than a traditional architectural historian to acknowledge that our knowledge of the urbanized world is invariably wrapped up in our experience of the urbanized world, that “The city of the bus rider or pedestrian does not resemble that of the automobile owner,” or that “A shopping cart means very different things to a busy mother in a supermarket and a homeless person on the sidewalk,” to quote the Urbanist Margaret Crawford. Urbanists know that knowledge is situated – bound up in a way of being in (and acting on) the world. On the one hand, this means that our knowledge of the world is tied to who we are: our social status, gender, or occupation. On the other hand, it means that this knowledge is tied to where we are and what we are doing. The street-level intimations of the flaneur, for example, are typically quite different from the “erotics of knowledge” engendered by the panoramic view from above.

Experience, generally speaking, is not something about which traditional architectural history has had much to say. It may or may not stem from LeCorbusier’s preposterous conviction that architecture “must detach himself from the actual life of the empirical city” in order to “realize the harmony and beauty of the ideal type.” Regardless, Urbanists are more than happy to pick up the slack. Urbanists aren’t only interested in analyzing other people’s varied urban experiences; they are interested in experimenting with their own. Following in the footsteps of the great Flaneurs, Somnambulists, Rhythmanalysts, and Psychogeographers of the world, Urbanists employ various experimental exploratory tactics to challenge their own experience of the cities they encounter.

VI. URBANISTS DON’T SIT IN ARMCHAIRS
Architectural historians are fond of their armchairs, but Urbanists know no such pleasure. Of course, Urbanists read a lot of books about buildings and cities, but Urbanists also agree with Hernando DeSoto that there is often a mismatch between the way we talk about cities and “what is going on in our streets and fields,” and that the only way to stay current is to get out there and walk the beat, like a cop or a journalist would.

A related point: Urbanists, unlike traditional architectural historians, aren’t interested in ideas for the sake of ideas, or history for the sake of history. Urbanists know that part of blurring the boundaries between history, analysis, and design is letting ideas and history loose on the world. Urbanists understand their own work as part of “the ourriad of social, cultural, and political forces that account for architectural products.” Through their work and the work of their students they are interested in influencing outcomes, in shaping cities. Urbanists are activists.