“Something I always tell my students is that it’s important to fail on a continuous basis—and I’m not talking about the grade. I mean it’s in the spirit of risk, that you have to be willing to free yourself from a set of preconceptions in order to get to this new place. And if failing constitutes making mistakes in order to learn from these mistakes, then you have achieved an enormous amount. In fact, you’re only able to move forward because of this new-found knowledge.”
In this segment of their Archiculture series, Arbuckle Industries interviews Evan Douglis, the Dean of the School of Architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the principle of Evan Douglis Studios, LLC, and the former undergrad chair at Pratt Institute. In his interview, Douglis discusses the ideal architecture student, and how students can best move forward in their architectural learning. Douglis goes on to describe the individual culture in the learning environment of architecture schools, as well as the value of the thesis project.
