Support Our School

Pip Cheshire reflects on recent events on Symonds Street

It is probably pointless to unravel the events around Professor Peggy Deamer’s exit from the Auckland School of Architecture, and it would be of little use; when large organisations make a decision they are invariably final and non-negotiable. Suffice to say that the Auckland University School of Architecture has lost a Head of Department who, in a very brief time, has managed to gather the support, respect and loyalty of much of the student body and of those in the profession who came in contact with her. While Professor Deamer’s departure is a particular and significant loss to the school and, one presumes, to her too, it also suggests difficult times ahead for the school in its search for direction.

The ruthless accounting of contemporary tertiary education funding has been hard on architecture; the space hungry requirements of lecture theatres, studio space and specialist workshop areas are a heavy overhead in a discipline with limited means of generating external revenue. The consequence has been a slow and inexorable decline in facilities available to students and an increasing feeling of embattlement by the staff, the relentless bureaucratisation of duties choking the enthusiasms of committed staff.

While the machinations at the School of Architecture might sound like business as usual to those with an infrequent contact with the school (was it only two issues ago I wrote of the protests against Professor Light’s appointment as Head in the 1950s), the exit of Professor Deamer has to be seen as part of an inexorable change at the school; a change the profession has a significant interest in and should take a more significant role in shaping.

There are complex forces at work in University funding, forces that drive inter-University competition for scarce funding and which have spawned a plethora of numerical measures used to assess the performance of department against department, faculty against faculty, university against university and, ultimately country against country. Savvy university heads now manipulate course structures to achieve more favourable numbers in the measure of research work undertaken and the number of graduate versus undergraduate students.

There is little point in railing against such restructuring in pedagogical terms. The University’s academic heads are as well versed in the strategies of funding as the accountants and are experts at maintaining the highest possible academic standards while creating the best scores in the various acronyms by which success and funding are linked. The Institute of Architects has a much more potent lever with which to affect some sort of change within the University: that of a customer, a user of the institution’s graduates- it is high time this lever was employed.

Architecture is a sort of broad spectrum discipline; its location on the campus midway between engineering and fine arts being roughly representative of the mix within. While there are many in the profession who call for graduates to be equipped with greater craft skills, it is the development of the intellectual skills of enquiry and research which are the truly valuable outputs of a university and which, when required, will facilitate the rapid uptake and assimilation of the profession’s necessary skills.

The School and the profession have often struggled to reconcile these conflicting expectations, the profession sounding wheedling and pedantic, the school aloof and indifferent. A head of school with a clear vision of architecture, its education, its research and its profession can bring these disparate views together and see symbiotic growth rather than conflict. Professor Deamer saw the possibilities for both profession and school in closer engagement and sought to facilitate interaction through her presence at Institute meetings, the greater use of the profession in teaching and the initiation of a long overdue lecture series by local architects. It should not be necessary to remark on her presence in the studio too, but such is the administrative pressure her predecessors have been under that the regular appearance of the Head in a studio teaching role was a welcome change too.

One might argue that a single person does not make a school and indeed the School has generally maintained its quality of education through many ructions and the coming and going of many personalities. There is though no doubt that a strongly articulated vision of architecture and its education as Professor Deamer illustrated will strengthen the School in its ability to attract students and staff, to undertake research and education and in its relationship with the profession.

The Institute must engage with the University to ensure that the school is again led by someone who is able offer this vision, and to ensure that any future appointment be supported to meet the relentless administrative demands of the University. The loss of Professor Deamer will make it hard for the University to attract such a candidate again and we must do all we can to ensure that efforts are directed to find someone with knowledge, vision and experience - any new Head of School must have, and personify, an inclusive vision of architecture.

It may be that the Institute is at work lobbying the University Council, the Vice-Chancellor and the Faculty but I have my doubts; if I am wrong let us rank-and-file members have some hint of the action afoot. It is not enough to wait for the visiting reviews or to suggest the School is no longer top of the list for prospective students; these are too slow in their effect. The Institute Council should request a joint working party with the University, acknowledging the University’s academic and fiscal responsibilities but acknowledging too that the profession the Institute represents has a significant interest in the quality and nature of the education offered.

The Visiting Panel is coming to the School on Friday 9 November. The purpose of their visit is to report on progress in relation to recommendations arising from the NVP Report and any changes in the programme which have occurred during the previous 12 months.

The format for the day is that the Panel meets in separate sessions with the Head and Deputy Head of School, staff and students in the morning. In the afternoon they prepare a report and present it to the Head at the end of their visit.

10.45am
Friday 9th November 2007
Design Theatre, Conference Centre
22 Symonds Street

A session of 45 minutes has been arranged to meet with students from 10.45-11.30am.  Please come to show your support and be heard.