Matthias Moroder 1973 Transformations in Architectural Education and Urban Governance.198 Into the great In 1973, Alvin Boyarsky — chairman of the Architectural Asso- ciation School of Architecture (AA) in London from 1971 to 1990 — re-structured the school's educational programme by launching the so called “Unit System’, a series of autonomous, vertical studios competing with each other, countering the mod- erist horizontal teaching. This re-organisation provides a histori- cal perspective that brings into focus a broader transformation in the education of architecture, as Irene Sunwoo has pointed out, by departing from a post-war modernist training, which deter- mined the role of architecture in designing and building for soci- ety's needs, to a postmodernist education that framed architec- ture as an intellectual as well as a critical endeavour." In the same year, David Harvey asserted the beginning of a par- adigmatic re-orientation in the governmental attitudes towards city-planning in the advanced capitalist world, which he termed as the shift from urban managerialism to urban entrepreneur- ialism. While post-war managerial practices essentially focused on the local provision of facilities, services, and benefits for the urban populations, entrepreneurial ones became increasingly concerned with finding novel ways in which to promote local economic development and employment growth in a context of inter-urban competition. By the late 1980s, there was a general consensus across national boundaries, as well as political parties and ideologies, that benefits were to be had by cities adopting an entrepreneurial attitude.? 1 See Sunwoo, |. (2012). From the ‘Well-Laid Table’ to the ‘Mar- ket Place’: The Architectural Association Unit System. Journal of Architectural Education, 65(2), 24-41. p. 24. Sunwoo's study ‘on Boyarsky and the institutionalisation of the “Unit System” at AA is taken as the main source for this study because it deals in detail with Boyarsky's institutional conception of the AA. For the first time, it takes into account several audio tapes recorded during the “lID Summer Session’ in 1972, in ‘which Boyarsky articulates his notion of the AA as a contem- porary architecture school, which are essential for this study. 2 Harvey, D. (1989). From managerialism to entrepreneurialism: ‘The transformation in urban governance in late capitalism. Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography, 71(1), The Roots of Geographical Change: 1973 to the Present, 3-17. p34.The following study will cross-read the broader transformation in architectural education brought into focus by the institutional- isation of the “Unit System” at the AA by Boyarsky in 1973, with the transformation in urban governance, as asserted by Harvey, that started out in the same year. In order to do so, | will dis- cuss the situation of architectural education in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the first section, with a specific focus on the United States since Boyarsky taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle from 1965 to 1971 and experienced the edu- cational consequences of the political and social movements in that context. This will serve as a historic backdrop for Boyarsky’s. consequent academic re-organisation at the AA, which will be discussed in the second section. Harvey's main conclusions con- cerning the shift from urban managerialism to urban entrepre- neurialism and its economic causes will be elaborated in the third section, in order to cross-read the two transformations in the final fourth section. |. The situation of architectural education in the late 1960s and early 1970s What initially sparked the severe questioning of the role of architecture as well as that of architectural education, as Mary McLeod pointed out, was the political turmoil and the conse- quent social revolution of the 1960s. Universities at large, as well as architecture schools specifically, were marked by the protests against the Vietnam war, the civil rights movement, and the rise of a new feminist movement. The political and social movements encouraged the questioning of the increasing instrumental ten- dencies of the social sciences in academia as well as of govern- ment-funded research, and subsequently led to a critique of the alliances between architecture and economy as well as between architecture and powers 3 See McLeod, M. (2012). The end of innocence: From political activism to postmodernism. In Ockman, J. & Williamson, R. (Eds) Architecture School. Three Centuries of Educating in Architects in North America. Cambridge, Mass; London: MIT Press. pp. 160-201. p. 163.In the spring of 1970, the protest movement spread rapidly across almost every university in the United States — with around 4 mil- lion protesting students — after the US. incursion into Cambodia, as well as the killing of four students by the National Guard at Kent University. Boyarsky, at the University of Illinois in Chicago, opted to work with the students, thereby making the school of architecture a “center of dialogue”. He described the almost immediate transformations as follows:* It's amazing what can be done in 48 hours. [..] Walter Netsch's crystal geometry has been energized into an all-happening, electronically- geared graphically-revolting communication center and all teaching activities for the rest of the academic calendar are suspended. Instead, we are in the propaganda business as a faculty and student body, guerrilla theatres carrying suitable messages from the backs of tuned up university service vehicles [..] The motto universally is FUCK NIXON and more locally, Build People, Not Buildings.* The impact of the student revolts of the 1960s and early 1970s on the education of architecture were immediate, as McLeod indicated, thereby eliminating the last traces of the Beaux-Arts educational system, starting to erode the elitist ‘old boys’ milieu Present at many architecture schools, as well as helping to undermine the predominant focus of the 1950s and 1960s on the methods and systems of architectural design. For most schools, 4° See ibid, 5 Boyarsk, A. Letter from Alvin Boyarsk to Colin Rowe, 12th of May 1970. Quoted in Marjanovié, |. (2010). Alvin Boyarsky's Chicago: An Architectural Critic in the City of Strangers. AA Files, 60, 45-62. p. 48,this implied a new emphasis on political and social issues and an endorsement of a less hierarchical teaching system that allowed different perspectives. As a consequence, educational Programmes were also devoted to social activism and hands-on learning, by focusing on urban revitalisation, low-cost housing, community development, and other social issues. Furthermore, a few architecture schools slowly started making efforts to recruit students and faculty members from minorities, as well as slowly responding to the woman's liberation movement. However, for McLeod, the two major consequences of the polit- ical turmoil and the experiments in social engagement for the education of architecture in general were firstly, that modern architecture lost its validity as a model to emulate or to teach without extensive questioning because of its restricted capacity to react to different social desires and needs or to modern life's complexities. Secondly, that architecture was not suitable as an agent of social reform, which was confirmed by the failures of self-build projects and advocacy architecture to tackle the needs of large-scale housing and the destruction of the urban fabric in a lot of European cities.” ll. Boyarsky and the institutionalisation of the “Unit System” at the AA in 1973 Facing this general situation of the education of architecture in the early 1970s on the one side, and on the other, a failed institu- tional merger with the Imperial College of Science and Technol- ogy mandated by the Royal Institute of British Architects’ (RIBA) Post-war educational reform, the AA, Britain's oldest independent 6 See McLeod, M. (2012). The end of innocence: From political activism to postmodernism. in Ockman, J. & Williamson, R. (Eds) Architecture School. Three Centuries of Educating in Architects in North America. Cambridge, Mass; London: MIT Press. pp. 160-201. p. 164, 168, 7 See ibid, p. 170.20; Into the great wide op school of architecture, started its institutional re-organisation with Boyarsky’s election as chairman in 1971.8 ‘Two years later Boyarsky launched his revised version of the “Unit System” at the AA, which was actually a descendent of a teaching system that emerged out of modernist polemics, and in 1936 overturned the school's previous five-year Beaux-Arts teaching programme, based on the “Year System’. The new teaching system organised the student body vertically into fifteen different “units” in each academic term. Following the end of the WWII however, the educational system at the AA was reframed in relation to the post-war reconstruction and planning promotion 8 See Sunwoo, |. (2012). From the ‘Well-Laid Table’ to the “Market Place’: The Architectural Association Unit System. Journal of Architectural Education, 65(2), 24~41. p. 24. RIBA'S Post-war institutional reform mandated the consolidation of schools of architecture into universities and polytechnics. It was directly informed by the minutes from the proceedings of the RIBA Oxford Conference on Architectural Educa~ tion in 1958. (See ibid, p. 24) On the conference see Roaf, S. & Bairstow, A. (Eds). (2008). The Oxford Conference: A Re-Evaluation of Education in Architecture, Southampton: WIT Press. Sunwoo is currently preparing a book on the history of the Architectural Association. Literature on the recent history of the AA and the chairmanship of Boyarsky is otherwise restricted to shorter texts such as articles, book chapters, and essays. For example, see Dunster, D. (2005). Boyarsky and the Architectural Association. In Davies, P. & Schmie- deknecht, T. (Eds). An Architect's Guide to Fame. Oxtord: Architectural Press/Elsevier. pp. 33-50; Marjanovié, |. (2005). Cheerful chats: Alvin Boyarsky and the art of teaching of critical architecture. In Hejduk, R.J. & van Oudenallen, H. (Eds). The Art of Architecture/The Science of Architecture, Washington DC: ACSA Press. pp. 186-194; Marjanovic, | (2007). Alvin Boyarsky's Delicatessen. In Rendell, J. (Ed) Critical Architecture, London: Routledge. pp. 190-199; Higgott, ‘A. (2008). Searching for the subject: Alvin Boyarsky and the Architectural Association. In Higgott, A. Mediating Modern- ism: Architectural cultures in Britain. London: Routledge. pp. 184-187. An exception is Marjanovié, |. and Howard, JM.'s (2015) book on Boyarsky’s collection of drawings, Drawing ‘Ambience: Alvin Boyarsky and the Architectural Association. Washington DG: Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. For a informative historical account of the 100 years of the AA see ‘Summerson, J. (1947). The Architectural Association 1847- 1947. London: Pleiades Books (Published for the Architectural Association).by developing an approach to the education of architecture that centred student projects on contemporary building schemes in Britain such as housing, schools, social facilities, and urban rede- velopments. Facing an increasingly professionalised educational agenda as well as a growing student body, the AA soon re-ad- opted the “Year System" for its modernised curriculum, which remained in place until the mid-1960s.° The “Year System” was an educational model in which every student would ideally undergo exactly the same education by having one specific programme each year increasing in complexity the further students pro- gressed in their studies. In this so called horizontal way of teach- ing, students on the same educational level studied together, sep- arately from those on other levels. As a response to the political and social movements in Britain and as a critique of the post-war technocratic curriculum of the AA, the chairman John Lloyd gave up the “Year System” in 1967 and resuscitated the “Unit System” in an effort to promote inde- Pendent decision making, research, and a “shift in emphasis from the teaching of a curriculum towards the education of the indi- vidual will”.'° While the “First Year” of the curriculum maintained its foundational ambition, and the “Fifth Year” stayed devoted to student's personal work, a so called “Middle School” for the sec- ond, third and fourth year was institutionalised with nine different “units” to choose from." In 1970, the negotiations concerning the AA's merger with the Imperial College crumbled after nearly an entire decade of debates and on the verge of closure, the school's institutional crisis culminated in the resignation of Lloyd and the consequent election of Boyarsky by the school's staff and student body in the summer of 1971, thereby defeating his opposing candidate, the architectural historian Kenneth Frampton. In a discussion after a presentation at the “IID Summer Session” in 1972 — a summer 9 See ibid, pp. 25-26, 10 Lloyd, J. (1968). Principal's Comments, Architectural Associa- tion School Handbook. p. 2. 11 See Sunwoo, |. (2012). From the ‘Well-Laid Table’ to the ‘Mar- ket Place’: The Architectural Association Unit System. Journal of Architectural Education, 65(2), 24-41, p. 26-27,4 Into the great wide: school running from 1970 to 1972 in London where Boyarsky tested his institutional ideas — he expressed his understanding of a contemporary architectural school as follows: A school has to “be a critic of society”,”? instead of just being a provider or a form giver.*8 For Boyarsky, in order to make a school of architecture oper- ate as a critical thermometer of the contemporary production of architecture, it had to be activated by “the energies and interests of a lot of people, so that the school community is bubbling with dozens of sometimes contradictory interests and activities’. Therefore, the “so-called curriculum” must be “conditioned daily, weekly, and annually”."® This constant ideological friction was defended by Boyarsky as “the most responsible activity of all for a school of architecture’.® “It makes everybody uncomfortable and edgy” he stated, “because everybody has to justify their own existence to themselves”."” This “interactive kaleidoscopic situ- ation””® of ever-changing architectural positions that formed the foundation of the AA's educational programme was possible by not granting tenure to any of the academics. Furthermore, the students and the teaching stuff primarily worked at home as well 12 Boyarsky, A, (1972). “Toronto Curriculum” presentation. Par- ticipants Forum, audio recording, 10 Summer Session, Lon- don, 2 August, 1972, ABA. Quoted in Sunwoo, I. (2012). From the ‘Well-Laid Table’ to the ‘Market Place’ The Architectural Association Unit System. Journal of Architectural Education, 6512), 24-41. p. 33, 13 See: Sunwoo, |. (2012). From the ‘Well-Laid Table’ to the ‘Mar- ket Place: The Architectural Association Unit System. Journal of Architectural Education, 65(2), 24-41. p. 28, 33. Concerning the “IID Summer Session’, see Sunwoo, I. (Ed.). (2015). In Progress: The llD Summer Sessions. London: AA Publications and Graham Foundation. 14 Boyarsky, A. (1972). Participants Forum, audio recording, ID Summer Session, London, 31 July, 1972, ABA. Quoted in ‘Sunwoo, |. (2012). From the ‘Well-Laid Table’ to the ‘Market Place’: The Architectural Association Unit System. Journal of Architectural Education, 65(2), 24-41. p. 33. 15: Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid.as in close-by offices.'® Respectively, Boyarsky proudly described how the AA “doesn't have any facilities” and even added that “there's no place, there's no money, and nobody's there for very long periods of time. It's very interesting’ 2° Since the four-year-old “Unit System” that Boyarsky inherited by Lloyd was still predominantly in its nascency he radicalised it to its extreme consequences and declared that the “AA philosophy is one of selection by choice”! Therefore, Boyarsky's “Unit Sys- tem” was divided into a “First Year” (with four “units” to choose from after participating in a short common course), an “Interme- diate School” (second and third year), and a “Diploma School” (fourth and fifth year), with over a dozen “units” to choose from in each of them. On the one hand, the “Unit Masters” were encour- aged to autonomously push the repertoire of architectural prov- ocations further in their “Unit Agendas’, and on the other, stu- dents were invited to behave as “predatory creatures’ 2? the “Unit System” consequently resulting in an educational model based on production, as well as consumption. Furthermore, the principle of the “Unit System” was extended by Boyarsky to the so called “Service Units’, which for the AA's design programme operated as an additional support structure and comprised the “Technical Studies Units’, the “General Studies Units” teaching the history and theory of art and architecture, and “The Communications Units” instructing in all visual media. All this created a cyclical self-organising and equally self-effacing system of architectural education conceived to make its own obsolescence impossible 19. See Sunwoo, |. (2012). From the ‘Well-Laid Table’ to the ‘Mar- ket Place’: The Architectural Association Unit System. Journal of Architectural Education, 65(2), 24-41. p. 33. 20 Boyarsky, A. (1972). Participants Forum, audio recording, IID ‘Summer Session, London (undated) 1972, ABA. Quoted in ‘Sunwoo, I. (2012). From the ‘Well-Laid Table’ to the ‘Market Place’: The Architectural Association Unit System. Journal of Architectural Education, 65(2), 24-41. p. 33. 21. Boyarsky, A. (1972). Lower School First Year. AA Newsheet, 1, Session 1972/1973, Autumn Term, London. 22 Boyarsky, A. (1972). Participants Forum, audio recording, ID ‘Summer Session, London (undated) 1972, ABA. Quoted in ‘Sunwoo, |. (2012). From the ‘Well-Laid Table’ to the ‘Market Place’ The Architectural Association Unit System. Journal of Architectural Education, 65(2), 24-41. p. 33.by continuously obstructing any certainty of the discipline of architecture, as Sunwoo asserted.’ The “Unit System’ in that sense is an educational model in which every student would ide- ally choose an absolutely individual education. lll. Harvey and the shift from urban managerialism to urban entrepreneurialism David Harvey's research focuses on the relationship between economic change and cultural transformation. In his text, “From managerialism to entrepreneurialism: The transformation in urban governance in late capitalism’ from the year 1989, he states that there has been a symptomatic re-orientation in the governmen- tal attitudes towards city-planning from urban managerialism, so typical of the 1960s, to urban entrepreneurialism of the 1970s and 1980s.** For Harvey, this shift has something to do with the difficulties that have beset capitalist economies since the recession of 1973. Deindustrialisation, widespread and seem- ingly “structural” unemployment, fiscal austerity at both the national and local levels, all coupled with a rising tide of neoconservatism and much stronger appeal (though often more in theory than in practice) to market rationality and privatisa- tion, provide a backdrop to understanding why so many urban governments, often of quite 23 Quoted in Sunwoo, |. (2012). From the ‘Well-Laid Table’ to the “Market Place: The Architectural Association Unit System. Journal of Architectural Education, 65(2), 24-41. pp. 33-35. 24 See Harvey, D. (1989). From managerialism to entrepreneur- lalism: The transformation in urban governance in late capital- ism. Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography, 711), ‘The Roots of Geographical Change: 1973 to the Present, SH7.p.4.different political persuasions and armed with very different legal and political powers, have all taken a broadly similar direction. The greater emphasis on local action to combat these ills also seems to have something to do with the declining powers of the nation state to control multinational money flows, so that investment increasingly takes the form of a negotiation between international finance capital and local powers doing the best they can to maximise the attractiveness of the local site as a lure for capitalist development.25 Further, he argues that this shift “towards urban entrepreneurial- ism may have had an important role to play in a general transition in the dynamics of capitalism from a Fordist-Keynesian regime of capital accumulation to a regime of ‘flexible accumulation.."2° The previous decades were based on managerial practices, which in his reading essentially focused on the local provision of facilities, services, and benefits for the urban populations. In contrast to managerial practices, entrepreneurial ones, which became increasingly concerned with finding novel ways in which to encourage and promote local development and the growth of employment in a context of inter-urban competition, have three distinguishing characteristics: firstly, they are centred around the idea of a public-private partnership, which as a consequence inte- grates the traditional local ‘boosterism’ over the use of local gov- ernmental power in order to attract new external funding sources, new portfolio investments, or new sources of employment. The activities of this public-private partnership are secondly entrepre- neurial precisely because they are speculative in nature and all the associated risks are often carried solely by local public agen- cies. Harvey argues thirdly that on the one hand entrepreneurial 25 Ibid.,p. 5. 26 Ibid,activities decidedly focus on the political economy of specific cit- ies, rather than on specific territories but on the other hand, the effects of these interventions are no longer able to be conflated with the territories in which they are based.2” In adopting urban entrepreneurialism, Harvey further claims that four broad strategies present themselves. The first involves the establishment of the exploitation of specific advantages for the production of services and goods within the international division of labour. Some may derive from the location or the resource base of a city, others from investments in the physical and social infra- structure that subsequently increase production or the offered possibilities of reducing production costs. A second strategy is to seek to improve the competitive position of a city within the spatial division of consumption. This can involve measures like the encouragement for gentrification, the promotion of consumer attractions, the organisation of urban spectacles or the overall physical up-grading of the urban environment. The spatial divi- sion of crucial control and command functions in government, high finance, or information gathering and processing — that are dependent on the provision of the required infrastructure — pro- vides a third strategy for entrepreneurial activity, while the redis- tribution of surpluses through the central government provides a fourth strategy for local revenues.?8 IV. A cross-reading of Boyarsky’s “Unit System” with David Harvey's urban entrepreneurialism. By considering the entity of a “unit” of Boyarsky’s “Unit Sys- tem” as an entrepreneurially-governed city analysed by Harvey a cross-reading between the two seems to be allowed — in doing so | am aware that this notion does not work out even. The modernist education of the “Year System” can be read as a managerial teaching practice in which each year of the archi- tectural education provides local instruction, knowledge, support, 27 See ibid., p. 3, 7. 28 See ibid. p. 810,and services to the students of that specific year by its respec- tive tenured teaching stuff and the fixed design assignments. In contrast to managerial teaching practices, entrepreneur- ial teaching practices of the “Unit System” have, paraphrasing Harvey's arguments, three distinguishing characteristics: firstly, they are centred around the notion of a public-private partner- ship, between the “Unit Masters” and the “Unit students” — which become entrepreneurial academics and entrepreneurial students —,in which a traditional ‘boosterism’ of students is integrated with the use of the local governmental power of the “Unit Masters” to try to push the current students to the best possible projects and to the achievement of academic rewards, and hence attract future students, academic attention, publications, and external sources of support, etc. Secondly, the activities of these part- nerships are seen to be speculative in nature with the risk preva- lently borne by local public agencies, which in this relation are the “Unit Masters” and the “units” existence as such. Since the “Unit Masters” are not tenured, their contracts are not extended if they do not attract enough students to their “units” at the beginning of each academic year, or the overall work of their students is not deemed good enough. The speculative qualities of the “units” derive from the inability to predict exactly which ideological “Unit Agenda” will succeed and which will not in a school of consider- able instability and volatility. Thirdly, the effects of the projects associated with these “unit” activities can no longer be conflated within the academic year or the school in which they are located. All the “units” are in a fierce competition with each other inside the school and gradually with all the other “units” or “studios” internationally emerging in other schools of architecture. In reading the “units” as entrepreneurially governed cities, it is further possible to claim that all four broad strategies for action asserted by Harvey present themselves to specific “Unit Mas- ters” in order to promote their “unit” in a situation of inter-“unit” competition. The first involves the creation of specific advantages for the production of conceptions, constructions, proposals and theories within the international division of architectural ideolo- gies. Some may derive from the location or the resource base of the city in which the school of architecture is situated and itsculture, others from investments in the engagement with the his- tory of architecture and philosophy or the adoption of agendas outside the realm of architecture. A second strategy is to seek to improve the position of the “unit” within the spatial division of consumption. This can involve a host of measures including the promotion of student attractions, the invitation of special “unit” guests for lectures or workshops, the organisation of “unit” spec- tacles and symposia, exceptional “unit” trips, or the promise to show students work at famous exhibitions. The spatial division of key control and command functions provides a third avenue for entrepreneurial activity of “units” by exclusively focusing on spe- cific new media, software and technologies, or on the process of manufacturing and building itself, while the redistribution of sur- pluses in confidence, sympathy or support by the chairman of the school of architecture to specific “units” provides a fourth — at least potential — source of “unit” revenues. Strikingly Harvey's distinguishing characteristics of urban entre- preneurialism and its strategies for action are applicable on Boyarsky’s “Unit System” and reveal its own characteristics and strategies for action. Thereby, the structural analogies as well as the interrelated conditionalities of the postmodernist education in architecture and the governmental attitudes towards city-plan- ning become visible. Furthermore, it makes it possible to assert, that this postmodernist education in architecture is in its essence an entrepreneurial education.