Inchoate: An Experiment in Architectural Education

by Mark Lee, Robert Somol

Teaching is about initiating excitement. It entails the deployment of pleasure, the build-up of passion, and the instigation of obsession vis-à-vis a particular field of interest, the grounds on which the discipline operates, and its intellectual and material practices. Responsible teaching also inevitably involves a contradictory bias both in favor of as well as against the discipline at hand, promoting an understanding of its principles while simultaneously questioning the bases on which it stands. An affirmative activity, teaching also introduces a distancing from the very subject matter it promotes. An Experiment in Architectural Education follows a trend among universities and technical colleges to publish educational findings from within their institution. Inchoate considers the educational process, looking primarily at the first year design course, at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, or ETH, in Zurich. Guest lectures transcribed in the book come from Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind, Gregg Lynn, MVRDV, and others. Edited by Marc Angélil and Liat Uziyel. Essays by Robert Somol, Mark Lee, Cary Siress, and Andrew Whiteside. Hardcover, 6.5 x 9.5 in. / 550 pgs / Illustrated throughout.

565 pages, Hardcover

First published November 2, 2004