I am sitting on the window seat in my
cozy kitchen to take a break from the intensity of this semester. I
have shoved aside the Building Energy homework, the papers to be read and
written for Architectural Theory, the drawings for Analysis, and the renderings
for Studio. For a few moments, I want just to pause and to reflect.
My “post-retirement” journey as a
student of architecture continues. This past summer, under the
auspices of California College of the Arts, I spent three weeks drawing in Rome
and two glorious (but hot) weeks exploring architecture in
Japan. Then followed a three-week intensive studio, which proved
dissatisfying for a number of reasons. Yet all of this got me pumped
up for the fall, so I put in a request to take the full set of courses,
including Studio 3.
This year, the theme for Studio 3 is
collective housing for seniors. Each of us had to choose a very
narrow demographic, and I selected single, female visual artists. I
designed a neighborhood of detached individual living pods with shared dining,
wellness, and studio centers. It is a rather complicated scheme but
seems to be panning out.
Studio should be the centerpiece of the
architectural curriculum, but Studio 3 is my least favorite course, and I
attribute that entirely to the instructor. He and I butted heads on
my very first “desk crit”. As it happened, that evening my book club
met and they sympathized when I lamented that I was going to drop out because,
"If I can’t survive Studio, what is the point?" But
I needed another ear and reached out to my ex-husband. He is a
surprisingly good listener, and by the end of our conversation he said, “You
can’t let one guy ruin what you’ve set out to do and worked so hard
for.” I got back on the saddle, and now the end of Studio is in
sight.
But it has not been easy. I
do not feel intellectually or emotionally safe with this instructor, and as it
turns out, none of the other students do either. He is abusive,
either through design or cluelessness, and we are all
suffering. Indeed, one young student has even developed stress
cardiomyopathy.
Fortunately, the other
three classes are superb, and with each of these I’m on an incredibly steep
learning curve. My theory teacher is a goddess and my analysis
teacher is a god. My energy teacher is whip-smart and lots of
fun. And so I will continue in the spring semester, looping back to
take Studio 2 in addition to three other classes, and hoping for inspirational
and kind instructors. Perhaps next summer will bring another
opportunity for study abroad and a chance for an internship.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Later today I get on a plane for Minneapolis to spend this holiday with my sister Mary and my daughter Annie, who is living in Minnesota, in and out – and back in again - of yet another rehab. Our visit, like this little respite to write, will be all too brief.
