Any fan of architecture is familiar with the rich history of the Yale School of Architecture (YSoA). If they aren’t they are likely familiar with some of the projects that have resulted from the school’s influential concrete halls. From Paul Rudolph’s heroic brutalism to Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown‘s “Learning From” series—and the productive friction between the two—the school has had an impact on much of the history of 20th and 21st century century architecture.
A new exhibition, “Pedagogy and Place,” organized by YSoA dean Robert A.M. Stern and curator (and AN contributor) Jimmy Stamp with Alfie Koetter, presents a range of student work that tracks the history of Yale architecture, and in parallel, the history of American architecture alongside political change in the U.S.
The show is located in the YSoA Gallery in Rudolph Hall and is free and open to the public. With the bush-hammered concrete walls enveloping visitors, the show unfolds as a series of eight “eras” in Yale’s history, including its beginnings as the American Beaux-Arts, to the beginnings of Modernism, to the high-flying Heroics of Rudolph and company, to the radical experiments of John Johansen and Charles Moore.
The material in the exhibition is all student work, labeled as such with student names and their professors credited as well. It reads like the old issues of Domus or Progressive Architecture, but with student work illustrating each period and line of thinking. Education and the academy plays a serious role in the pursuit of intellectual innovation in architecture, and Yale is one of the leaders.
Chapel Street elevation (1919). Feldman’s thesis project was used by
Everett Victor Meeks to help persuade Yale University to expand the
School of the Fine Arts. Courtesy Yale University Library Manuscripts
and Archives. (Courtesy Yale School of Architecture)
A related publication, “Pedagogy and Place: 100 Years of Architecture Education at Yale,” will be published in April 2016 by Yale Press. A symposium, “Learning/Doing/Thinking: Educating Architects,” will be held April 14–16 in New Haven. All of this coincides with the changing of the guard as Stern moves on and Deborah Berke, architect and founder of the New York-based design firm Deborah Berke Partners, assumes deanship July 1.
Pedagogy and Place
YSoA Gallery in Rudolph Hall
180 York Street
Monday–Friday 9 a.m.–5 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
