Visiting professorships. Now, just shy of 40 years of teaching architecture—close to 4,000 students across three continents between undergraduate and graduate design studios, history and theory lectures, and topical seminars—I recognize that I am indebted to my students for the role they have played in my professional growth.

I have also seen the important place colleagues have in the ongoing evolution of my teaching pedagogy. As part of this, and through these years of experience at a variety of institutions, I have come to believe that visiting professor programs should be integral to any curricula as today’s interpretation of the English Grand Tour of the 18^th and 19^th centuries. I believe that setting in place a robust visiting professorship program must build on the following premises:

• When selecting visiting professors, their presence on campus should provide a necessary jolt from the norm. Schools need vitality, pluralism, and constant bursts of creative energy to serve their design programs. Outside views should challenge, to a certain degree, the complacency that is a natural condition of the status quo. Often, academic isolationism promotes past teaching practices as a kind of religious scripture that is difficult to contextualize without outside challenges.

• Visiting professors, with punctual appointments, bring different knowledge base questions; not simply new, but often with innovative and contemporary scholarship. In other words, strategic hiring in this arena would advocate building on the school’s identity while contributing a new perspective on an existing strength; stimulate faculty and students by promoting overlooked topics or simply those that have been purposively avoided! 
  
  This can be done by introducing a broad range of viewpoints and cutting-edge modes of practice by providing polemical approaches, even if they contradict current academic discourse. What needs to be sought are visiting professors who bring vitality through alternate, but always genuine, strong, and distinct points of views. Along this line, identifying promising and up-and-coming scholarly activities and those who are developing them, recognizes that the school seeks specific recognition through supporting the future of the visiting professors as they move onward in their career.

• Along with a robust visiting professorship system, outside expertise contributes to a pluralistic system of education that helps each unit recruit talented students and junior faculty, all the while exciting alumni. Also, recent graduates—who have expressed an interest in academia—might serve as TAs to visiting professors and launch their interests in graduate school and future teaching responsibilities with additional credentials.
• Finally, because of my own experience as a student in a non-architect visiting professor’s studio, I believe that other fields of interest must complement those in place in any design unit. In my current institution, this strategy could balance the polytechnic approach toward crafting with a deeply rooted humanistic input.

Today’s students would benefit from visiting experts in web design, graphic presentations, the architecture of gaming, to name a few examples. Each of them could play a significant role in guiding students to fields of inquiry within architecture while developing parallel talents that they can leverage for future professional positions. This is in addition to the benefit of understanding the design path of a variety of visiting architects.

As stated in a previous blog, students are no longer confined to a box, or asked to break the box. There is no box. They can now invent the profession of their choice, especially if schools of architecture would provide students with a path towards licensure upon graduation. Why shouldn’t design programs seriously want to partake in a contemporary way of teaching by encouraging their students to learn from visiting professors, including those from allied fields.

Who were my visiting professors?

While I was a student at the EPF-Lausanne in Switzerland, department chair Pierre von Meiss must have had the largest rolodex at school as he was able to reach out to outstanding practitioners from leading architectural firms and academic institutions around the world. Many of them were his friends, and it takes connections, cultivation, and much diplomacy to ask professionals to contribute to an academic world when their time is primarily dedicated to their practice.

At the time of my studies, visiting professors included such names as Mario Botta (Lugano), Roger Diener (Basel), Kenneth Frampton (New York), Aurelio Galfetti (Bellinzona), Vittorio Gregotti (Milan), Bernard Huet (Paris), Larry Mitnick (Philadelphia), Rafael Moneo (Madrid), Alvaro Siza (Porto), Luigi Snozzi (Locarno), and Robert Slutzky (New York).

With a few exceptions, visiting professors were teacher-practitioners and when hired by the EPFL, they were well-known names who brought the authority of their experience. Many were already at the height of their prowess. Of note, the above-mentioned names during the time they were at the EPFL had an average age of 42, which was strikingly young at the time of my studies. 

Having two to three visiting professors to choose from over the course of a year created a vibrancy for students and permanent faculty. There was such pride and energy created around having an outsider teach you about their discipline, particularly when accompanied by field trips to their completed works. Along with their design studio commitment, visiting faculty gave public lectures, all of which contributed to a healthy competition among students to prove that they had made the best choice in their selection of a visiting professor. 

Case in point, while I was adamant and honored to study under the painter Robert Slutzky, I had expressed an interest in Alvaro Siza’s studio. Needless to say, that the work of my peers under Siza’s mentorship became inspirational and merged in my later years as part of my design interests.

Many events surrounding each visiting professor were public. In particular, the lectures. Edith Bianchi, in addition to being my first-year drawing and color theory teacher, was responsible for most public events at the school. Edith was a master in the way she captured the personality of each visiting professor for their exhibition and lecture poster (Image 5, above). 

Although ephemeral in its outreach—”[artisanal] product for one day, obsolete the next day, [and] stolen the day before”—these posters became the pride of collectors, which included me! Edith’s dedication to raising awareness of our school both internally and externally, became a staple of the cultural life and expression of the school’s open mindedness towards tradition and innovation.

Finally, the visiting professor’s design studios were responsible for an end of semester publication of their work. Each issue was meticulously prepared and shared beyond those enrolled in the studios; it became a way to broadcast the school’s excellence. I look back at those publication, and can count over 90 issues in my collection, all starting with the title DAInformation (Image 6, above).

Conclusion

The value of a visiting professor program should not be underestimated. It connects the academic unit with the outside world and brings an undeniable energy to the faculty and students within the unit. Plus, many long-lasting connections and memories are formed for all.