architecture - Sam Fox School - Washington University in St. Louis

Dean’s Letter
Architecture,
Washington University
in St. Louis
5
all the more important to be attentive to the context of our work.
In biology complexity = life and diversity = survival, however for
us, diversity also = creativity. Creativity emerges directly from
diversity through new ideas that follow from a rich variety of
experience and perspective. Robert Grudin, professor of English
at the University of Oregon in his book the Grace of Great Things
suggests that the creation of new ideas exercises “a radical act
of freedom” that is risky because we often need to suspend the
security of our own assumptions to consider them. While Grudin
also points out that responsibility is the attendant requisite of
freedom, it is a beautiful observation to see creativity as the
exercise of both. He adds that anyone who engages difficult
tasks with “invention and humane expressiveness” works in the
presence of beauty.
Diversity can also provoke segregation when not understood
within a context that values difference thereby lessening the
potential for creativity. I believe that this is an environmental
issue. Environments have the capacity to enable us. This is
obvious in the physical sense where our environment provides
for the air we breath but it is also true for other kinds of
circumstances. We find it natural to describe environments
as creative or productive and go so far as to feel confident that
there can be such a thing as a “learning environment.” The
concepts of ecology show us that the environment is a network
of relationships through context. Scientist James Lovelock
makes a compelling case that the atmosphere is modulated
by the interactions of life with the earth. Ian McHarg argues
that creativity is the marker of an adaptive and evolving
environment. While it may be a stretch to say that we can design
an environment, we can at least nurture, cajole, instigate, and
most importantly value, certain types of behaviors, which in
turn affect the environment. We do this directly through our
actions and indirectly through our attitudes. Grudin points
this out when he compares ideology, for him a “closed system,”
to the “open system” of philosophy. He goes further to say “for
people to explore [the] idiosyncrasies in their own ideology is
almost as unlikely as it is for them to see through the backs of
their own heads.” Philosophy, according to Grudin, by contrast
is “a structure of ideas with an instrument of self-scrutiny.”
To stretch the metaphor this “self scrutiny” could be for an
enabling environment what natural selection is to the natural
environment.
The National Architecture Accrediting Board (NAAB) uses
related but different language, requiring a policy on “studio
culture” as part of the Architecture Program Report. This
requirement came about more than ten years ago through the
national activism of students and the American Institute of
Architecture Students (AIAS). Lawyer Ava Abramowitz writes: