The Secret Architect: Facing down the crit bullies

I believe the term is ‘triggered’. I have been triggered by the ghost of architecture education past. A long-dead memory has returned to hang in the air like spray glue and last-minute prayers for the plotter ink to not run out. I’ve recently guest-tutored at a couple of undergraduate mid-project reviews and it has been… harrowing. Thanks to the pandemic, this is their first real life review. If it was awkward before, it’s ten times worse when they’ve never met each other, never seen each other’s work or – in one case – never been to the city before.

So here we were, sat around their tentative models and half-hearted sketches, trying to imbue the work and the students with the ‘studio culture’ we love so much. As tutors, we were briefed to both ‘let them have it’ and ‘try to be encouraging’; an alarming dichotomy which pushed most of us towards over-generous precedent suggestions like Aalto’s Säynätsalo or Siza’s Portuguese pavilion. Nice diagrams with clear intentions. Lots of fresh air, that sort of thing.

So far so good, but mid-way through the last review before lunch, my corduroy-clad co-tutor lambasted a student with a force that propelled me back to being 19 years old, pinning up for a second-year crit with no idea what I was doing, what I’d drawn, or why it was going so badly.

I had a flashback to a similar guy, puce faced and shouting that as I clearly hadn’t mastered the basics. It was cocky, nay, arrogant to uses arches in this pavilion. You think you, YOU can handle an arch!? Oh, what would Corb say?! Don’t you know I lived through post-modernism the first time? You’re too young for this to have ironic charm.

'NEVER do this again!'

Stunned, pity-filled silence from my peers. Please let the ground swallow me up. The same words, echoing through time like saucepans dropped down the faculty stairs. Flashback over, I’m back in the present, and fuming all over again.

It’s more than the cardinal sin of presenting an opinion as a fact. It’s a flamboyance that establishes an architectural gatekeeper. A core belief in a single right answer – education not as an exploration of ideas but a desperate treasure hunt for a singularity.

NEVER. An order, decreed by a superior in age and income; dramatic, irrefutable, final. Some things are allowed, some aren’t. Choose wrong and prepare for humiliation by a hidden minority. Also, a conversation killer.

DO THIS. Patronising, dismissive, disgusted. 'Doing' words lack dignity, they’re the unwashed siblings of aspirational 'making' words. Nobody 'does music', 'does love' or 'does peace', do they? Making has craft, generosity and a respect for the vulnerability required by the process.

AGAIN. Confusing in the context of ‘never’, but a taunt that this won’t be the last time. The glimmer of hope that if we behave, we may continue.

So yes, when this shiny-faced bore bounced out of his stackable chair and lunged at the present-day shaky-voiced second year, I kind of lost it. He started swinging with 'clearly you don’t know what architecture is' then chuckled to himself about 'whether this was incompetence or ignorance', before switching up a gear into 'you need to learn to think with your pen!'. With each flourish, he pebble-dashed their painfully awkward 1:200 model with erratic markings from his extra-large black pen.

But this time, as he hit the crescendo, someone cut him off. 'History isn’t kind to old white guys who dictate absolutes to those with no choice but to listen. Grandstanding isn’t collaborative or informative. Shall we move on and talk about how YOU got to this rather intriguing model?'

Why were they all looking at me? Oh no. The stunned silence, again. You know this time; I was fine with it.