Man begins talking about Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Man begins talking about Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Man begins talking about Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), Chicago, Illinois
Man begins talking about Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Speaker1: Alright we ll start off with a real simple one. What was Mies philosophy? Professor: Mies philosophy, Mies van der Rohe, I suppose. Speaker 1: What were his three famous words? Professor: Well which one less is more that s one. We ve read a lot of plays on that. Speaker 1: Can I have you say that one more time? Professor: Less is more. That s right less is more that was his famous dictum. Or at least it is attributed to him. I m not really sure that he, well let s say it s at least apocryphal. But what he was looking at was the idea that if you could reduce a building, or any design really, to its essence to find the bare bones, the structure, the sense of what the thing was - then you could put it together in such a way that it would express itself. Speaker 1: That sounds like an accurate description of the whole school. Professor: Well it is, in a way. The building or buildings that Mies did are considered classics. Speaker1: Well it almost sounds like a philosophy for the whole education here. Professor: Well at the Institute of Design, we don t quite follow that dictum but in the sense that Mies came from the bauhaus and our founder Philip Danforth Armour also came from the bauhaus, there s definitely grounding in that. Certainly those two people, even though they came in different periods of time had a lot of the same philosophy because of the bauhaus period. They contributed to the bauhaus but they were also shaped by the bauhaus. And when they came to Chicago, some of that came along with them. So I would say while the institute of Design and the Architecture department are two separate entities within IIT and have such a curious background for how they came here and to have it share the same quarters for some time. They re both different and they are the same. And they are the same in those and philosophy.
Man begins talking about Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Speaker1: Now this is a technological school, and I want to know why did they teach Shakespeare here? Professor: Because in today s world you can t be so singularly focused that you don t know about things around you. Particularly in design, it s more crucial than ever in our estimation that our graduates are able to deal with professionals and people of kinds, all stripes, all walks of life. Speaker 1: What does that well rounded education, what does it lead to? Professor: It leads to a better understanding of how we make the things that we make. I mean that if you re going to be a technologist or designer you re building things for people. If you don t understand culture or don t understand history how you can build things that make sense.
Man begins talking about Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Speaker1: Now I heard it said that IIT had enlightens students here, how? Professor: In the sense that any general education program enlightens students. I think in today s world you really must to go beyond high school degree. You simply have to go to at least a first four year degree and many people are finding that inadequate now too. Speaker 1: Ok, I ve heard it said that you more than teach them, you enlighten them. Professor: Well I would pass on that question. Speaker 1: Ok Professor: I have no idea what someone is saying when they say they re enlightening them.
Man begins talking about Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Speaker 1: Now, can creativity be taught? Professor: Yes, creativity can be taught. We believe that most people are creative. And the reason they don t demonstrate it as much as you d like to see is because we ve got to pound it out of them. Educational programs traditionally are not designed to encourage and stimulate creativity. But it can be done. So what we re talking about really is a matter of releasing something that s latent and kind of responding to the atrophy if you will. Speaker 1: But I ve heard it s like you re born with creativity. Professor: Alright, that s fair. I ll accept that. Now the question is why aren t people more creative as they continue? And the answer is they get a learned response not to create. You have to practice that just like you practice anything else. So part of education is learning how to be creative and take advantage of your full talent. Speaker1: Who s to blame for that cycle? Professor: Education is to blame for that primarily, but I think it s on a wider cultural problem. But part of the fact that students are taught from the time they are very young to the time that they are introduced into the workforce. I think its part of an educational problem.
Man begins talking about Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Speaker1: Einstein said the whole of science ; I suppose this could refer to the whole of design, architecture and engineering, that the whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking. Is that true? Professor: Yes it is. I think people Speaker 1: Yes its right? Professor: It is true. I think it is a refinement of everyday thinking. I think in the sense that science really codifies our best understanding of what things are at the time. And science is not perfect and is not true - contrary to a lot of belief. It is to our best understanding that we have at any given time. And just as there are scientist out there now who are continuing to define and develop what we ve learned from the last revolution there are other revolutionaries out there too who are about to destroy everything that we know and reintroduce another new paradigm. Speaker1: If these great ideas are coming from just everyday thinking. Professor: Well, I can understand that. It s the perception of what we see around us that gives us the seed to find a new way of seeing again. That comes from everyday thinking and everyday seeing and there s nothing wrong with that. That seems like a pretty good idea to me.
Man begins talking about Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Speaker 1: What s a pedagogical education? Professor: Well that s a loaded word. Pedagogical has come to have a negative construct. It s Speaker 1: But I ve heard it said that it s more like a tutorial kind of? Professor: Well we think about pedagogs as being a people who flow a rather rigid scheme for teaching. And to be a pedagog today is not necessarily to be well regarded. Pedagogical I suppose in its purest form refers to just a formal kind of education which known principles are passed on to through the best means available, usually in a lecture style, but not necessarily, it can be discussion, seminar and so on. Where it rolls into difficulty I believe is it s over reliance on one or many kinds of presentations I get. Speaker: Well I ve seen it in the IIT literature that they offer pedagogical education almost as if one student said that s it almost as if the students become the teacher. Professor: That s not my understanding of the word maybe we re you should have warned me which ones you want me to check and which ones you don t. Speaker1: That s true. I guess you would say what is the role of professor here? Professor: I think the role of professor as I see it, and I think we have to understand that any university has got a number of different kinds of people here and our approach to education is not uniform, and I would like to hope it never is. Speaker 1: But if the student is the teacher than what is the professor? Professor: The professor is a leader then. Professor chooses appropriate projects and sets the kind of direction he believes will be helpful and that allows the student to find his way. They call that project orientation or project oriented education. Speaker 1: Those sorts of sounds like you re a guiding or mentoring. Professor: Well it s mentorship in a sense, but it s kind of an enlightened one - to use that term - in that you are not heavy-handed. What you are trying to do is encourage the student to learn rather than encourage the teacher to teach. There s a subtle difference there in my estimation. I don t think you can teach anybody anything. I believe that if you put the right kinds of projects in place, and produce a subject that has potential; the student will figure out what he needs to learn. We can help him to do that very well. But to pass it on to them verbatim is probably not going to result in very much.
Man begins talking about Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Speaker: How do you think that that form of education that we were just talking about leads to leadership skills? Professor: That s very clear cut. We ve had lots of experimentation here in that kind of project orientated learning. Not only at the Institute of Design which has had this forever and the Architecture Department also, but even in Engineering which is quite innovative in that regard. What happens is the student is given a responsibility in an open ended kind of project. He has to find how to do it and there are lots of resources around for him to learn that. In the process you have to learn how to deal with responsibility and you also wind up learning how to deal with the leadership roles too because you have to work with other people. In our case, we have classes where students work on teams and there is a leader. And the leader is evaluated for how well he leads. We ve got a class doing that right now. It will shift leadership four times during the semester. Each time leaders and team members are evaluated for those problems.
Man begins talking about Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Speaker1: For all the problems the world has, I was just wondering in your estimation where is the world heading? Where is the country headed? Professor: Well if you want to be an optimist I think some of the most interesting times Speaker 1: Lets be pessimist for a second. Professor: Be pessimist, the problems we have have to do with a number of things from our stand point. Education is a very high priority. We are not doing as good a job educating students in some ways as other countries. Speaker1: In a broader sense, are we heading towards, Leon (?) said we are heading towards a national disaster. Professor: Well it s fun to claim that if something actually happens. I can t really be that pessimistic. I think the country has got potential actually. You re going to have a hard time getting me to be really pessimistic. If you want to talk about the great disaster, it has to do with losing our economy to the rest of the world I suppose. I just don t see that happening. There s a great deal of resilience in this country, It s just that we tend to be crisis orientated. We d have to bring up the crisis first. Speaker 1: Do we have enough engineers, designers, architects to meet all the demands that we face? Professor: No but we re capable of producing them. It s a big country and an awful lot of diversity. If you compare this to Japan, we are twice the size in terms of the numbers of people and have an infinite amount of land more than they do to do things with. So we can respond, we just have to have enough time. We have to have a realization that s necessary to do that and that s a crisis. Speaker: Do we have enough time? Professor: I think so.
Man begins talking about Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Speaker: One of the terms that I came up with, it seemed like generic designers and architects and those kinds of labels for kinds of things facing the world. Those terms seem too provincial to me. I came up with the word techno futurist. And I m wondering is that a good word to describe what IIT is doing here? Professor: I think in some ways that s true. I can relate that very much to some of the work we have done at the Institute of Design, looking at macro design. Project Phoenix which we just finished looks at global warming. I d rather think about the kinds of projects, large in scale to do something with. It s just the latest of a number of projects that we ve done here. Speaker: So, is techno futurist Professor: Is techno futurist an acceptable term for that, I think that would work. You get it some currency by getting it on the air but as long as the public recognizes it. The logic of the word is good and makes sense. Speaker: I just need to have you listen for a second so when I was thinking, actually I m calling this piece the techno futurist. Somehow it all has to come together and I guess I was looking for an appropriate term that would encompass everything that the university was doing. And now I guess I m just trying to keep you quiet at least.