College of Built Environments at the University of Washington.
Message from the Dean
Spring 2012
In The Marketplace of Ideas, Louis Menand assesses the potential for reform in twenty-first century higher education. Menand describes three dominant modes of knowledge production in today's university: research that takes interest in the way things are, research that takes interest in what things mean, and research that takes interest in how people behave—respectively empiricism (evidence-based science), hermeneutics (the science of interpretation), and their various intertwinements. The combined vocabularies of our college constitute a fourth mode of knowledge production based on the convergence of poetic reasoning, empirical research, and creative practice. This fourth branch of research takes an interest in the ratio of the way things are to the way they could be. The distinguishing ingredient of this mode of producing and advancing knowledge is design. Among the most useful and ecumenical definitions of design comes from the renowned political economist Herbert Simon: "everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones."
Within CBE, among the most recognizable outcomes of design inquiry is principled composition, the plenitude of constructed forms and spaces—across scales, from riser to region—that flow from architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning. The kinds of knowledge these compositions embody are as essential to environmental integrity as the kinds of knowledge that flow from science and the humanities, which our designing disciplines both complement and complete. Design uniquely strengthens the problem-solving repertoires of science and engineering, especially in its capacity to thicken experience, enrich time, and envision alternative futures. Other branches of the academic enterprise and other professions envy the studio ethos and integrative pedagogies of environmental design, and rightly so. "The key to reform of almost any kind in higher education," Menand argues, "lies not in the way that knowledge is produced. It lies in the way that producers of knowledge are produced."
This edition of our newsletter features two distinguished producers of knowledge: Steven Holl (BArch,'71) and Jeffrey Ochsner, professor of architecture. In December, the American Institute of Architects honored Steven Holl's career achievements with its prestigious Gold Medal, the highest honor the AIA can bestow on an individual. You will now find Steven's name engraved in large block letters on an elegant black granite wall in the main lobby of AIA headquarters in Washington, D.C., two blocks from the White House, where it joins the names of the country's and world's most accomplished and celebrated architects. Nearby in the same lobby, you will find its companion wall, which bears the names of firms that have earned the highest honor the Institute can bestow on collaboration. These include the Miller|Hull Partnership, founded by UW Department of Architecture chair David Miller; and Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen—respectively Jim, Rick, Tom, and Scott—all distinguished Huskies.
Next month the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture will recognize Jeffrey Ochsner as a 2012 ACSA Distinguished Professor, its highest independently awarded honor. Professor Ochsner joins two other ACSA Distinguished Professors on the UW architecture faculty—Steve Badanes and Sharon Sutton.
Please join me in congratulating Steven Holl and Jeffrey Ochsner, two among dozens of accomplished and emerging UW faculty members and alumni who regularly demonstrate UW's preeminence.
Daniel S. Friedman, PhD, FAIA
Dean
dsfx@uw.edu