I was reading the latest issue of Metropolis, the Architectural and Design magazine. On cover is a picture of a 152-story (floors) building in Dubai, 152 floors and they hadn't finished building it yet! This building is called the Burj and it will be the world's tallest building when it is completed!
Two articles caught my eye in this month's issue, Notes - Educating the Next Wave, by Susan S. Szenany and Beyond the Spectacle by Stephen Zucks.
Ms. Szenany's article was about her attendance at an annual round-table meeting of Deans in New York City, these were people who were in charge of educating America's next generation of Designers and Architects. She wondered to herself if she would hear anything innovative from them.
Mr. Zuck's article was about the "insane" way Dubai was developing and how ambitious and economically viable that city was becoming. Oil wasn't their main source of wealth, they have renewable energy, lots of new and advanced technology, and more than anything else, they have construction, real estate, retail, and financial services, and these play a major role in their development.
One of their biggest factors is also tourism. There are five million tourists who pass through Dubai yearly. Apparently they are not are can't seem to build fast enough.
Dubai is very economically viable and fast becoming one of the most cultural cities of the world. But we have New York you might think, well think again! At the rate that they are developing and building their infrastructure in the United Emirates, our well-known cities will be the cultural icon of the past! The Designers and builders in Dubai are also given carte blanche, little restrictions and less red tape to do what they do.
At the Dean's round-table, Ms. Szenany wondered what the Dean's were doing to reach out to their students of Architects and Designers, to motivate them while helping them to feel connected to their individual "global" interests. ( read "social and environmental".
Apparently the education being taught to these students were not sufficient to prepare them for what they need to learn to help them to be better designers and builders. The education they offered at most of these schools was unnecessarily expensive and was "basically a profession for middle classed kids and only efficient enough to teach them to design the equivalent of a Hummer"!
Our infrastructures are crumbling around us and in need of maintenance, such as the bridge that fell in Minneapolis and the steam pipe explosion in Manhattan! How can our students be prepared to do this when the education they receive is not sufficient enough? How in the world will they be prepared to master the equivalent of what is going on in cities such as Dubai?
What were the concerns of the Deans at this important roundtable session you might wonder? How a buzz phrase is worded "Design for the other 90 percent", that's apparently an incorrect number, I guess because Architects have so little influence in America that number should be less than 90 percent? They were also concerned about accreditation, which should be important I would think but they spent a lot of time discussing that topic and agreed that the process of accreditation was "stuck in a box". I think I understand how they feel. Perhaps they don't have the freedom as their counterparts in Dubai. But is that any reason for them not preparing their students for their tasks in life?
I also learned that although the roundtable discussion was a web cast, there were little or no interaction from student designers and Architects, perhaps because they were not encouraged to participate. The author felt that the Deans should have used that opportunity as a moment of learning and encouragement and engagement with the students who were more globally conscious and eager than those educational leaders were. She wonders who will inspire these students to be prepared to rebuild our infrastructures and maintain them.
I'm wondering the same thing too! Are they too immersed in the idea of being design schools/colleges, too caught up in keeping up appearances than doing what they were there to do in the first place, teach, encourage their students, help them to be creative with innovative designs not just to build new buildings, because as we know, there is a lot of building going on all over America. But rather, how prepared are they going to be to handle what is going on in our environment and to continue to maintain those structures that have been built so many years before? Structures that were OK back then but needs to be upgraded and updated now? There are too many crumbling infrastructures around us! We need our new generation of Designers and Builders to be properly prepared and highly motivated!
Over the next decade, construction in Dubai will produce self-powered buildings, solar water desalinization plant and other environmental projects. Although they will continue to build their sky scrapers and retail stores and other real estates, what they do for their country will most likely have them way ahead of us.