Experimental Education, from Taliesin to Virginia Tech

Aaron Betsky on why the School of Architecture at Taliesin should be saved, and on what his next chapter holds.

7 MIN READ
Aaron Betsky

Roderick La Foy for Virginia Tech

Aaron Betsky

Now that we face the emergence of a different kind of world after the coronavirus pandemic finally subsides (whenever that may be), I think it is even more important that we understand architecture and design as experimental cultural practices. Which is to say, ways of figuring out how to make the world we inhabit together (even if currently at a safe social distance) more sustainable, more open, and more beautiful.

That pursuit has engaged me for quite some time, including for the last five years during my tenure as president of the School of Architecture at Taliesin. I believe that Frank Lloyd Wright’s spirit of experimentation, his belief that we needed to imagine radically new ways of living, working, and playing, from the arrangement of our homes, to the structures of our neighborhoods and cities, to the materials and forms we use, is a legacy on which we can continue to build. Wright entrusted his homes at Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisc., and at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Ariz., for that same purpose, and I believe that they should also be dedicated to those principles.

Wright felt that such experimentation, as well as a dedication to architecture as a sustainable (organic) and inclusive social pursuit, could not take place in the American architecture schools as they were then constituted. He was not alone. Starting in the second half of the 19th century, design education—and education in most other fields—became more standardized and focused on producing efficient problem solvers, trained to work within the status quo of both social and economic relations and building practices. Some teachers and designers around the world rejected this path, however, and developed alternate modes of learning and creating architecture and design. From the Arts and Crafts communities that arose in Europe and the United States (including the C.R. Ashbee’s Guild of Handicraft, the “Werkstatte” in Austria and Germany, and the Roycrofters in the U.S.), to the revolutionary forms of education and practice that flourished for a while in the new Soviet Union, to institutions such as the Bauhaus, Cranbrook, and, later, Black Mountain College, that came out of this tradition, a set of communities emerged that were dedicated to communal learning and living.

I believe the School of Architecture at Taliesin should not only continue but expand to embrace the design and arts activities Wright believed were integral to this purpose. The school has the means and the ambition to do so, and the foundation’s attempts to close it down to replace it with some form of continuing education or education-for-hire is an insult to Wright’s legacy.

After the Second World War, even as the design professions became ever more regulated and regularized, some educators began to think that their experiments could be carried out within existing academic structures. The influence of the Bauhaus graduates and teachers (the Bauhäusler) helped break open the rigid structures of schools such as Harvard and—of special interest to me—Virginia Tech. They allied the notion of experimentation with modern technology and the need to invent new ways of living, working, and playing in societies that either had to be rebuilt from the ground up after the ravages of the war, or had to respond to rapid expansion and change.

The fatal mistake many of them made, I believe, was to sell their work as advanced problem solving. Their solutions—from the massive housing projects to the repetitive ranks of boxes that took over downtown areas to the overblown monumentality of stadia and cultural institutions—failed. That was often not their fault, as the social policies they were counting on to support their experiments were often absent. But what was a problem was their decision to focus on what they knew—traditional urban patterns and technological processes—rather than on emerging issues, from changing definitions of society and identity to sprawl.

Few of the communities and experiments that chose to operate outside of this structure survived. In this country, Cranbrook became a tiny atelier-based institution financed by a large prep school and endowment. Frank Lloyd Wright’s apprenticeship program became an accredited school, but the foundation that manages Wright’s legacy is now threatening to shut it down. New experimental institutions have emerged, ranging from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) to the Rural Studio in Alabama, but all have sought to operate under conventional academic structures. Even more notable is the fact that these communities and institutions have almost completely focused on architecture, relegating all other aspects of design into process-oriented activities that confront real and important issues with solutions called wayfinding, human factors, flood remediation, and the like.

I believe that it is of crucial importance that we not only continue the spirit and history of experimentation in design, but also include all aspects of that endeavor. Luckily, I think the influence of pragmatists such John Dewey and the still somewhat entrepreneurial spirit of American higher education allows such experiments to take place within accredited institutions.

I had thought I might focus my ideas about experimental design and design education on writing, lecturing, and freelance teaching, but an opportunity at Virginia Tech made me change my mind.

Certainly, that spirit of experimentation should continue at Taliesin and Taliesin West, campuses tailor-made for the purpose. The school there has produced some of the most concrete and beautiful examples of experimentation in architecture. I believe it should not only continue but expand to embrace the design and arts activities Wright believed were integral to this purpose. The school has the means and the ambition to do so, and the foundation’s attempts to close it down to replace it with some form of continuing education or education-for-hire is an insult to Wright’s legacy. The school has appealed for mediation in the case after the foundation announced it was prepared to let its lease with the school expire in July.

Because of the difficulties I encountered working with the foundation, I decided last fall that I would leave my position at the School of Architecture at Taliesin. After guiding the effort to save the school five years ago and working with its amazing faculty, staff, and students to refine and further develop a fully accredited program that represents the best of what architecture should be, I felt that the institution now needed a leader who could better focus on the bureaucratic and legal issues that working with the foundation presented.

I had thought I might focus my ideas about experimental design and design education on writing, lecturing, and freelance teaching, but an opportunity at Virginia Tech made me change my mind. From 1964 to 1979, under the inspired leadership of Dean Charles Burchard (a student of Gropius’s), and with the help of the designer Olivio Ferrari, Virginia Tech played an important role in the innovation of the design curriculum. That tradition still lives on in the institution, and its current dean, Richard Blythe, is seeking to give that effort new energy. The university itself has a clear mission and strategic plan that are motivated by the importance of using technology not as a means to an end, but to serve both its local and professional communities. As a land-grant university, Virginia Tech also draws on a tradition of experimentation and service in many other areas, including its agricultural field stations spread throughout the state.

For these reasons, I decided to accept the position of director of the School of Architecture and Design within the College of Architecture and Urban Studies. The school includes interior design, industrial design, and landscape architecture programs in addition to those in architecture. I very much look forward to developing interdisciplinary projects within these programs, and with other programs in the university. I also expect to build on the school’s achievements to enhance the spirit of experimentation, to focus on how we can reuse, rethink, and reimagine our designed environment, how we can break barriers to invite all human beings to learn and grow to their fullest potential, and how we can use the beauty of what we design to not only enhance our lives and delight us, but to make us more fundamentally human.

The School of Architecture at Taliesin should survive and flourish, because its work is essential, and its spirit is strong. I look forward to my new chapter at Virginia Tech even as I continue to support the experimentation at Taliesin and other places of innovation.

Aaron Betsky is a regularly featured columnist whose views and conclusions are not necessarily those of ARCHITECT magazine nor of the American Institute of Architects.

About the Author

Aaron Betsky

Aaron Betsky is a critic and teacher living in Philadelphia. Previously, he was Professor and Director of the School of Architecture and Design at Virginia Tech and, prior to that, President of the School of Architecture at Taliesin. A critic of art, architecture, and design, Mr. Betsky is the author of over twenty books on those subjects. He writes a weekly blog, Beyond Buildings, for architectmagazine.com. Trained as an architect and in the humanities at Yale University, Mr. Betsky has served as the Director of the Cincinnati Art Museum (2006-2014) and the Netherlands Architecture Institute (2001-2006), as well as Curator of Architecture and Design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1995-2001). In 2008, he also directed the 11th Venice International Biennale of Architecture. His latest books are The Monster Leviathan (2024), Don’t Build, Rebuild: The Case for Imaginative Reuse (2024), Fifty Lessons from Frank Lloyd Wright (2021), Making It Modern (2019) and Architecture Matters (2019).

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