This article was originally published in Domus 964 / December 2012
With the emergence of each new report on the state of
Italian architecture, the country's universities are charged
with contributing to Italy's failure to sustain and foster
architectural culture. The problems are listed with implacable
insistence: too many enrolments, which lower the credibility
of qualifications; too many scattered campuses; provincialism
and a lack of internationalisation; low student mobility;
low research productivity; obsolete teaching bodies and the
difficulties of renewing them; and paralysing comparisons
with formerly virtuous national situations that were
dominated by charismatic figures.
Now once again these shortcomings are being gauged, while
the whole university system is subjected to legislative measures
and government actions. Ongoing reforms compel universities
to offer an overabundance of courses and to adopt new forms
of organisation to improve integration between teaching and
research. Meanwhile, a long-awaited government authority —
the National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and
Research Institutes (ANVUR) — is coming into action. This
bridges a gap between Italy and other European nations, in
an attempt to introduce a culture of quality based on clearly
defined educational and research objectives, to be ascertained
and monitored by self-evaluation. The agency's first actions
aim to assess the state of research, while other measures will
evaluate standards of university teaching. Their main effect so
far has been to create an atmosphere of distress, concern and
gloom, despite being an invitation to adopt a policy of fresh
thinking and brighter plans. Moreover, these transformations
are induced at the height of an epochal economic and moral
crisis that also involves the meaning of the architect's
profession and the effectiveness of design disciplines.
Looking at the past experiences of more than two decades, we
find that attempts to reform Italy's university system have
been concentrated on curbing its gigantism in the '70s and
'80s. Standardised architecture faculties had fostered a generic
attitude to anti-institutional criticism. As ephemeral containers,
they had a very low didactic and disciplinary definition. But
they exercised a strong appeal to the creative side of student
populations, where the survival and construction of a formative
path came about primarily by means of individual initiative.
From the early '90s, a number of reforms gave faculties a more
disciplined and disciplinary image. The introduction of design
workshops re-established a deep respect for practice. Workshop
teaching reduced the student population, but not all that
much, seeing as in the meantime study courses and campuses
proliferated, a phenomenon related to the simultaneous
reinforcement of the feudal system of sectored academic
disciplines, each favouring its own corporatism to the detriment
of the identity of architecture schools.
Although the faculties may not have been all that good
at training architects, they were, in a sense, nonetheless
effective in giving a general education to flexible graduates
who could find jobs in the marketplace. This should be taken
into account when redesigning the educational system, maybe
also by offering students other, diversified learning processes.
Some of these might be fairly loosely defined, others more
authentically oriented towards the various fields of design and
multimedia arts, without being conditioned by corporative
academic thinking.
A comparison between the Italian situation and international
scenarios reveals the following: abroad, some architecture
schools are not part of the university system; sometimes a
distinction is made between training architects who design
and architects who are technicians; an architect's education
can be understood in varying terms of professionalism;
sometimes a relationship with the polytechnic tradition is
favoured, and other times with the tradition of art colleges. We
also learn that in some countries there is a sharp distinction
between professors who teach architectural design and
practising architects. Elsewhere, we see an absolute overlapping
of professional architects from cultural elites and teaching
professors, as, for example, in Spain (this is still an aspect of
the Italian tradition, too, though to a less significant and more
controlled extent).
It should be remembered that architecture, as a discipline with
an uncertain scientific statute, must be reinvented continuously
and its borders are ever in need of being redesigned. It is a
discipline partly made up of rituals, beliefs, indeterminacies
and epiphanies, one that can only be taught through indirect
operations and in situations where knowledge is mostly gained
outside or around the actual teaching. The construction of
a study course must be directed towards a holistic scale of
learning, together with the orchestration of its various phases
and learning formats (lectures, individual study, seminars, long
or intensive workshops, experimental workshops, exhibitions,
discussions and conferences). More suited to the many demands
of versatility, this form of teaching destructures traditional
models of the atelier and lecturing; it is diversified and
embraces methods with different durations and rhythms; and
it also includes points of high emotional intensity. Furthermore,
it implies dealing directly with the necessity for visionary
qualities, all the while placing the accent on moments of
concentration and isolation from the Internet.
A comprehensive teaching and research curriculum ought to
include a variety of backgrounds of both teachers and students.
It should be recognised, for example, that some teachers are
better at theoretical teaching and design theory, others at pure
research, and others still at passing down practical professional
experience. Consequently, the management of academic quality
should include the temporary recruitment of professionals and
teachers from international situations, within the strategy of
creating an open and dialogic cultural project.
Other considerations have a closer bearing on the Italian
situation, such as the urgent need to rediscuss certain cultural
paradigms related to the traditional Italian alliance between
critical reflection and historiographic exercise. This would
allow us to verify other self-analytical hypotheses that are
more related to the procedures of design and more open to
the imperfections of the real world. It would also be useful
to ponder the advantages of studying in Italy, and turn
architecture's relationship to the country, its cities and its
problematic beauties into the kind of potential that determines
a school's international positioning. What Italian themes and
problems might therefore be of interest within a framework of
international exchange?
This brings us back to the still moot point of what it means to
conduct academic research in the field of architecture. The core
issue remains the scientific indeterminateness of architecture
and the anomalous character of its presence in the university
system. Governing this condition essentially means defending
a certain fragility that is quite potent in generating queries
regarding the communicability of architectural wisdom.
Mario Lupano is Professor of
Contemporary
Architecture
History at IUAV
University
in Venice.
A scholar
of Italian
modernism,
he examines
the relations
between
the diverse
expressions of
architectural
culture. He
curated "Lo-Fi
Architecture:
architecture
as curatorial
practice",
a project
developed as
an exhibition,
a book (2010)
and a series of
ongoing events.
Architects made in Italy
The long-awaited government authority National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes bridges a gap between Italy and other European nations, in an attempt to introduce a culture of quality based on clearly defined educational and research objectives, to be ascertained and monitored by self-evaluation.
View Article details
- Mario Lupano
- 13 December 2012
- Venice