Pierre von Meiss: architect and pedagogue. As I reflect on how leadership could envision a roadmap for an academic unit, I am reminiscing on my own education, and how I benefited from an enlightened administrator.
After almost four decades teaching at university, I want to share three key moments that were instrumental in my first two years as an architecture student. You might ask, why only two years, when a student’s tenure covers at least five? Is that not an unbalanced assessment in light of a larger pedagogical strategy?
You might be right, but I am emphasizing those first two years as I have come to understand that they represent the seminal moments for a student to receive a solid footing in architecture. Most importantly, if the teaching is done by charismatic and interested faculty, learning at that stage becomes part of a lifelong endeavor.
Now that I have bypassed the age of my own professors at the time of my studies I have occasion to reflect on the many faculty who instilled in me this passion for learning. In particular, I owe much to department head Pierre von Meiss who set in place an ambitious academic vision for a new generation of architects while we were both at the EPF-Lausanne (EPFL). This blog is about three initiatives he led there during my time as a student.
Vertical studios in architecture
When I studied at the EPFL, the second- and third-year architecture studios were linked and appropriately called Vertical Studios. While nowadays combining studios is part of many curriculum—in addition to a foundational introduction to architecture; project-based inquiries; travel opportunities; research; and internship experiences—the early pedagogical roadmap in Lausanne brought together second-and third-year students in a new way.
I must note that in the 1980s—prior to incorporating the higher-education standard of the Bologna Declaration, the EPFL offered a 2+4 master’s degree where students became registered upon graduation. This direct path towards licensure included a required yearlong internship during fourth- or fifth-year prior to thesis.
Today, combined design studios typically take place in the upper years of an undergraduate B.Arch. curriculum. Similarly to travel programs, there is a tacit understanding from faculty that senior students are more mature in their studies, thus can better benefit from meaningful interactions with peers within a vertical studio environment.
Lausanne was also different because faculty had a pedagogical strategy—in fact a vision—that encouraged us to work together early-on in our academic tenure. This was done either through collaborative projects or by formal interaction between academic years within a design studio (second and third year). Both strategies were at the forefront of learning, anticipating today’s approach where collaborative work among team members and between different disciplines is commonplace in the professional environment.
Certainly, the faculty’s position at the EPFL was a precursor to an emerging practice of architecture at the end of the 20th century. At least for me, it was a strength of my education that the virtue of collaboration and understanding the architect’s ability to serve as an anonymous architect was emphasized. I shall one day write a blog about what I mean by anonymous architect versus the tradition of a master architect, or the current star architect trend that is destroying the core of our profession.
Bringing students into a vertical studio early on and entrusting them with complex issues was not the only strength of the program. While my learning experience in Lausanne was amazing, it was in no way easy. Especially during my first year when my immaturity was obvious and my projects were naïve. This was because we were directly immersed in the complexity of the art of building (tectonics, materiality, structure, site strategy, and function, etc.) rather than a homeopathic way of working with basic design principles.
Fortunately, occasional moments of self-doubt—particularly while pulling an all-nighter charette—were balanced with an unrelenting desire to learn and the promise to rapidly hone my skills. I had acquired a strong architecture foundation during first year and I was ready to further my newly acquired sensitivity.
Working together as students in a vertical studio (2nd and 3rd years) and being able to be mentored and to mentor peers was rewarding and pushed us all towards a creative collaboration. This was not easy, as individual authorship needed to be constantly restrained, but team experimentation was favored by faculty. Collaboration became key to our understanding that as future architects, we needed to work with others to be successful.
On this note, I am reminded of a thought regarding collaboration that Pritzker laureate Sir David Chipperfield expressed during his acceptance speech in Athens in 2023.
“Emphasis on individual creativity or artistic innovation in architecture is overstated. In a profession that depends so much on teamwork and the confirmation of common interest, he [Renzo Piano] believed that the idea of creativity was misunderstood and overvalued. He believes that his own talent was obstinacy. And this quality was critical to his career…. If we only see architecture as a singular achievement of creativity, made against the dominant concerns of society, we are endangering of isolating architecture to something unique and special. It is an obvious thing to say that as architects we cannot work independently.”
Finally, vertical studios covered two main topics: programming and projects that engaged the city and its territory. These were both design attitudes that focused on an Architecture of the City (e.g., Aldo Rossi) and were set within a transcalar approach to the built environment. Fortunately, the making of singular objects that only talk of architecture, which is endemic in American academia, was rarely an interest for us as students.
Teaching architecture
In Lausanne, there was a strong pedagogy based on understanding professional expectations as students progressed through their studies. Not simply an understanding of the art of building and the importance of architecture as an intellectual activity (often referred to as an autonomous discipline), but as a pedagogical road map so we could become solid participants in a profession that was becoming ever more complex. This sense of professional accountability was essential, as we did not have the requirement—as defined by NCARB in the United States—of an additional three-year practicum following architecture studies in order to become a registered architect.
In America, there is the luxury to be more playful and often to a fault produce cutting edge formal projects because much of the ‘real stuff’ about architecture is presumed to be learned later in an office setting. We could not indulge in postponing our responsibilities of being an architect as after six years we were registered and ready to practice. Therefore, faculty knew how to instill in us the complex balance of a career that was both based on an intellectual dimension as well as what might be seen as more mundane and necessary transaction between clients, contractors, financing, and regulatory entities to name a few.
This overarching philosophical direction was delivered by faculty within the design studio context through bi-monthly lectures, while weekly desk crits were conducted by teaching assistants. For an American student studying at the undergraduate level, this instructional model makes little sense and is often criticized without having any real context. Students in the US are typically mentored by a faculty member and not TAs and this model has many benefits.
Without praising one over the other, this marks one of the differences between the two educational systems, with the caveat that in Switzerland most TAs were both architects, seasoned teachers, and passionate about teaching, they were not students two or three years ahead. I remember at Cooper Union, Raimund Abraham had TAs and frankly I never thought much of them as they were more interested in courting the master than getting into the weeds with each student project under their supervision.
As part of the European tradition, faculty and TAs were engaged in professional practice, mostly as principles of an office producing remarkable yet mostly humble designs. We wanted to learn from them; there wasn’t the culture of acting like we were the next Wonder Bread or design genius.
Expanding our knowledge through the library collection
The second contribution Pierre von Meiss made at the EPFL was to build up a robust library directly accessible to all architecture students. Today this seems mundane and a no brainer. But as the internet was nonexistent in the 1980s, the architecture library was another rich place for learning about architecture, past and present. Countless books, newspapers, encyclopedias, periodicals and up-to-date international journals and magazines were our primary source to learn about contemporary architecture.
I can fondly remember perusing architecture magazines. Located on two floors of the architecture building, after ascending a narrow nautical-style staircase, I would proceed to a space that resembled a living room and anchor myself in a Cassina Le Corbusier armchair and devour recent publications. I made it a weekly ritual to lay my hands on any new magazine, especially Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, AA, Architecture Review, A+U, and cutting-edge Italian magazines such as Abitare, Casabella, Domus, Lotus, Parametro, Rassegna and, occasionally, Zodiac.
A world of contemporary precedence entered my mind, with the obvious preoccupation of how to get inspired without copying what I believed were innovative ideas about space, program, and aesthetics. Today, I continue to be an avid patron of libraries—especially the one at my current academic institution. I always invite my students to follow suit.
Much has evolved since my studies, and while architecture libraries still offer a cornucopia of magazines, reading them digitally is now at the students’ fingertips in addition to what they see when surfing through tantalizing web sites and blogs showcasing in real time some of the most exciting projects around the world. Perhaps the issue of progress is not analog (paper) versus digital (web), but how students consume information, produce new knowledge, and are able to digest what they see beyond the habitual ‘I like’ comments on social platforms.
I was always attracted to international publications simply because they featured disciplines in art, architecture, design, interior design, product design, landscape architecture, and urbanism; topics that became my passion as I furthered my professional career and eventually began to teach. In addition to the American journal Oppositions produced by the I.A.U.S, the British, French, and Italian magazines I mentioned above had a tradition of articulating a critical position in their essays and presentations.
I will admit that I still shy away from journals that exhibit only bad corporate buildings, projects that have little to do with what I believe architecture is about. Sadly, I must say that current American journals often lack an intellectual dimension in their writings, underscoring other countries’ interest in innovation, quality, and the pertinence of the art of architecture.
Visiting Professors
Finally, and perhaps the most recognizable contribution of Pierre von Meiss to the education of an architect lay in his setting in place a visiting professor program. Parallel to a collaborative learning context in a vertical studio, and learning by browsing architectural journals, there was now the ability to choose a visiting professor during the trimester of our choice in 2nd and 3rd year.
Needless to say, while our excitement about learning increased with this possibility—imagine having Bob Slutzky as a second-year student—the challenges that followed were exponential, especially as we were still young in our studies. Being constantly pushed and challenged to outperform ourselves was exhilarating. Faculty did not take us with tweezers, constantly praising even mediocre work. We were driven to outperform ourselves while dealing with new and increased design complexities. Expanding our horizons demanded passion and self-motivation, but being enrolled in a vertical guest professor’s studio was a consecration. In fact, this dual prospect of vertical studio with a visiting professor defined much of the school’s international identity.
While some permanent faculty seemed to us stuffy and out of touch, we still appreciated their professional approach; an approach that balanced intellectual curiosity with design theory, all peppered with the art of Swiss building. However, I will admit that within this academic context, during my fourth year I decided to attend the I.A.U.S in New York City as I could not fathom learning from Jean Marc Lamunière: a die-hard Louis Kahn follower, recently turned postmodernist who favored a “return to history in the iconographic and imitative sense”!
But we were discussing my second year in Lausanne so I will return there.
The concept of visiting professors was due to the charismatic and visionary leadership of Pierre von Meiss. Pierre was intellectually grounded in a modernist pedagogy that was strongly influenced by proven precedence through the works of Auguste Perret, Ludwig Hilberseimer with whom he studied, Le Corbusier, and Louis I. Kahn. Pierre was a rock within the school and a dedicated and inspiring teacher.
I later came to understand that many schools, in particular in the Anglo-Saxon tradition beginning with Yale University, had already established a visiting critic system in the early 1920s. I am thankful that Pierre brought this to our school; not only because I made a career in the US—influenced by a visiting American professor—but also recognizing that my alma mater was continuously opening doors for its students, and that a balance between the Old World and the New was essential for the school’s identity if it wanted to maintain international stature.
Von Meiss codified in Elements of Architecture: From Form to Place a teaching approach that was systematic in a true polytechnic way. This was done by analyzing constancy through formal elements, a systematization and composition of architecture not dissimilar to that of Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand’s (first director of the polytechnical system of schools). Pierre’s teaching in second year followed a similar strategy with the fundamental difference that he relied on modern architecture; first year focused on a typological approach through vernacular architecture.
Conclusion
At any institution, inspired leadership and committed faculty are key to the education of students. As a professor shy of 40 years in education, I always keep at the forefront of my responsibilities that teaching has not only been entrusted to me by our students and their parents, but most importantly that teaching remains first and foremost a giving profession.
Pierre understood this fundamental calling and never failed to promote the school above any personal gains, intellectual fiefdoms, or nepotism. Additionally, today academia with its publish or perish mantra often no longer favor teachers who excel at teaching.
On that concluding note, I am reminded of Pierre’s immutable calling, which you either have or do not have, when viewing a YouTube video produced in 1990 by the Architectural Association (AA). John Hejduk at that time dean of The Cooper Union, had, during director Alvin Boyarsky’s (1928-1990) Memorial Event at the AA mentioned two types of teachers.
John presented his friend Alvin as a true teacher who had a social contract with his students. In John’s words: “The social contract is as I see it—and I think as Alvin did—was an absolute, passionate, commitment to teaching. That was a generation that was involved really with teaching, not teaching as a means then to do their next step to whatever they have to do; now only to focus for a short span…”
Pierre von Meiss was both an inspiring teacher and trusted administrator.