Teaching
Teaching is in my blood; it is funny, full of energetic, creative and insightful activities. I am keenly aware of the necessity to establish theoretical and intellectual underpinnings to support the technical foundations of the architectural students. It is in the academic arena that such theoretical underpinnings must be most rigorously promulgated, and the true test of theoretical architectural ideas occurs when these ideas are realized in constructed form. My responsibility as an academic is to encourage students to:
– Investigate experiment and develop a personal position in response to theoretical design enquiries;
– Engage the requirements of habitation without diminishing the strength of conceptual and theoretical intentions;
– Establish meaningful language and effective dialogues between architectural elements, and most importantly, challenge theoretical issues that carry relevance beyond the individual to the collective, and beyond that to the universal. Architecture is fundamentally a three-dimensional discipline, and in teaching students to conceptualize three-dimensional design using two-dimensional tools of expression, I conscientiously analyze how each particular student envisions form and space. I also encourage students to challenge architecture to move beyond traditional three-dimensional forms, deriving the essence of architectural design from intimate sensitivity to the human condition, issues of identity, and distinctive experiences to a cultural context.
I believe that teaching should simultaneously encourage the production of highly innovative, highest caliber work from students, promote students’ future careers through community exposure, and uphold the university and its scholarly work within the wider community. In this regard, I critically challenge students to identify themselves as representatives of “the new generation of designers” through design research. Most importantly, I use research to introduce students to diverse means by which the boundaries of architectural design can be actively challenged to lead toward innovative design production.
I teach them to actively reflect upon periods when social change was most pronounced and to consider how dramatic technological advancements or shifting political and economic eras have always been paralleled by innovative responses in other arts. Yet architecture often lags far behind, being very late to interpret major social transformations to which other art forms rapidly respond. I encourage students to understand the importance of addressing contemporary social conditions as a means of discovering new modes of expression, as well as a means of appropriately addressing the needs of contemporary society. Furthermore, when students become cognizant of that other art forms, often find new means of expression in response to social change far proceeding than architecture, they learn to draw from these art forms in establishing new and meaningful directions for architectural design expression.
Equally important within my educational philosophy is fundamental commitment to healthy housing issues. Perfectly positioned to lead such a movement and establish its young designers at the forefront of a new generation of design drawn from sensitive understanding of cultures beyond our own.
My teaching approach is based on multidisciplinary research. Simultaneously I apply neuropsychological and psychological principles to engage both brain hemispheres of my students to improve their learning experience of aesthetic rules, logical thinking, problem solving and innovation. Then I help them to learn how by implementing their learning’s they can meet the needs of their clients by designing constructions that can make their future careers in architecture.