ORAL HISTORY OF JOHN LUND KRIKEN Interviewed by Suzanne ...

on books. It was, to me, astonishing that this would be what longshoremen
would be looking at. And of course it was full of the stories about inequality of
social and economic life in America. So I did, at that point, take it in; and I
admired my friend’s parents.
Riess: Do you remember the name?
Kriken: Schroeder. Steve Schroeder.
Riess: You were talking about your design being identified as the “most romantic.”
You know, that just reminds me of the danger of parents or teachers making
statements like that, because you really do have to then make some sense of it
for yourself.
Kriken: Yeah. I thought it could be some sort of negative defining, unchangeable
quality. [laughter]
Riess: Let’s talk about the Berkeley program in architecture. Did it make sense? Did it
get you out at the other end knowing what you needed to know?
Kriken: It was a five-year program: very intense. Even teaching at Berkeley now, I’m
not sure that the students immerse themselves in the subject as deeply as we
did for five years. We had to lower our academic performance on other UC
courses outside of architecture because of the performance required to do well
in architectural school.
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