Critique is not a crime

Hello Fellow Students and Faculty too! Thanks for joining the debate.
As you know, recent acts of student expression have been met with a harsh faculty response. Some of us witnessed an attempt to "flush out" the supposed perpetrator of threats against Bruce Mau in studio last week. We read the poster and found no personal attack, only an exasperated voice calling for an outcry. While we don't necessarily agree with the student's clandestine methods, we see his/ her action as an indication of the rising need for dialogue. Critique is not a crime, it's necessary. Pasted below is a very eloquant example of the kind of response and call to debate we so sorely need. Thanks, Taylor, for fanning the flames.
Yours Sincerely in Dissent,
Cara Ellis
MArch
AIADO, SAIC

I am a regular attendee of most consequential architecture lectures in Chicago. In the past few weeks following
the recent spate of lectures, I have spoken with a number of faculty from our department about the want of vocal
critical culture in both the school and in the architectural community at large. I earnestly sympathize with this
shared frustration towards a deficit, or at least and most lamentably, a silence, in criticality amongst architecture
audiences, and I certainly applaud the efforts of faculty like Ben Nicholson who actively pronounce and advocate
trenchant questions of the work we are impelled to sheepishly applaud.
I hope you can appreciate my disappointment, then, when Professor Grimes interrupted our studio on
Wednesday in high dudgeon, and proceeded to vocally denounce a student-made poster protesting both Bruce
Mau’s less than involved presence in our department and (from what I understand) decrying the recently
demonstrated superficiality and exclusivity of his design ethics. Professor Grimes then admonished any coconspirators,
notifying them, “we have caught the student responsible on camera.” Am I to understand, then,
that upon seeing the offending document, Professor Grimes or the department instructed the security to speed
through hours of mundane security footage in order to identify the student bold enough to express his or her
ideas—that I MUST add are almost ubiquitously shared—in order to punish rather than commend his or her critical
voice? From what I understand, there was no vandalism, no theft, no words presenting any “clear and present
danger” to anything besides Mr. Mau’s prodigious ego. How can we begin to cultivate a critical community while
publicly criminalizing and diminishing acts of student dissent? Are we, the students, meant to train our critical
scopes, only on distant architects and intellectuals, those not-affiliated with our department, and simultaneously
expected to meekly venerate whatever luminaries condescend to grace our department? It is incumbent upon
us to foster, maintain, and support SAIC’s iconoclastic impulses; Chicago already has a school down the street for
architectural sycophants.
On multiple occasions, the faculty has attempted to chide our idle voices by contrasting the torpor of our
criticality with the zealousness of European architecture audiences. HUNCH and student blogs recounting
critiques and conferences in their authors’ respective schools (www.archinect.com) have clearly supported,
documented, and at times lauded in print, challenges to their visiting visionaries’ words and work. Still, Hadid,
Hays, Koolhaas, Lootsma, Lynn, Prix, Van Berkel, et al continue to circulate through the AA, Berlage, and Vienna’s
Institute of Architecture circuit, materially participating in studios, master classes, conferences, etc. Arguably, it is
due to the challenge such critical communities offer practitioners that architecture’s vanguard elects to frequent
and immerse themselves in such institutions. When they want sycophants, they speak at $2,000 a night New
Yorker benefits; when they want dialogue and contributions they head for the elect design school studios.
If, perhaps, more students enunciated their reservations against Mr. Mau and his work, would he be inclined to
involve himself more in the studios just down the hallway? We are directed to emulate European audiences;
might visiting faculty not be obliged to do the same by participating in, at the very least, charettes or Berlage-like
master classes? Should the ‘fugitive’ student really be policed and censured for asking the same thing of Mr.
Mau?
I don’t think the aforementioned deductions reflect either the department’s nor, especially, given both her work
and gratifyingly electric personality, Professor Grimes’ intent; however, yesterday’s performance certainly
provokes such readings—I can only assume all the Sullivan center’s bays were treated to such denouncements,
not just the year 2 M.Arch contingent. I would encourage the department to respond to both the boldness of
the student’s actions and the content of his or her complaint in a manner commensurate with AIADO’s critical
ethics and aspirations, and not pursue any silencing and damaging act of retribution.
Taylor Lowe
M.Arch candidate
AIADO, SAIC