End of Year Exhibitions 2012-13
End of Year Exhibition, 2012-13
Over the last twelve years the school, while remaining firm in its commitment to its long tradition of design, has transformed that tradition in ways that allow it to confront the challenges of 21st century architecture and urbanism. The need to think both globally and locally, the knowledge required of architects to practice in diverse contexts and cultures, the skills to master new technologies of representation and construction, the changing nature of professional practice, and above all, the critical re-thinking of the discipline, all these considerations and more have been folded into the curriculum. And this curriculum has been far from static, developing under the guidance of faculty and students into a comprehensive and rigorous course of professional study.
Within these broad guidelines, however, what characterizes the school more than anything else is the extreme dedication and inventive curiosity of the students under the mentorship of an equally dedicated faculty. The work exhibited each year at the End of Year Show, and again this year, has demonstrated this evolution, and this tenacity to hold onto the best aspects of our design tradition – analysis and theory, drawing, and formal investigation – at the same time as embracing new subjects for design research from broad ecological concerns to the smallest scale of living. It is to be hoped that a selection of this twelve years of work will, in the near future, form a basis of a publication that traces this evolution.
–Anthony Vidler, Dean (2001-2013)