Hooray! I'm the proud owner of my first piece of official paperwork from the State of Alabama - a provisional drivers licence. Yes, only just provisional...but given the tortuous bureaucracy involved, this feels like a major achievement. Next week I can take the real thing.
I've been talking to several people here about studying in Europe/the UK, and getting an email yesterday from a Cambridge friend saying how dying that school seems now, was pretty sad for me. That a small, unique and well-respected school like Cambridge should have to axe its diploma course, and suffer the inevitable decline that follows, seems to me absolutely ridiculous when viewed on a global scale. The name of Cambridge, and the global reputation of the university offers a unique opportunity for the architecture school to lead on the world scale as a proponent of an alternative credo to the obscuratism and formalism of other schools. It is shaming that both within the department and the university as a whole there lacked the leadership and vision to re-establish a confident agenda for the school. Now I have to tell people here that going onto a graduate degree at my alma mater now, one of the most famous names in education worldwide, is not even possible any more due to its minute budget being deemed excessive.
The Rural Studio has managed to build its reputation without a famous university behind it, and also continually faces a battle for its existence and pressure from its mother ship. Auburn also can't understand that the Rural Studio is the university's only export on the global stage, and that its football team is a pretty parochial concern. From what I've heard, they tend to think that its a holiday camp for architects, that we don't really do anything and that our shoestring management budget (which itself was only grudgingly instituted after Mockbee won the MacArthur Prize) is not justified, despite the RS managing to fundraise all the money for the actual projects on the basis of its national and international reputation.
Anyway, rant over. I feel like I haven't posted enough pictures recently, so here's a snap of Lyle's soul food diner for y'all.
I've been talking to several people here about studying in Europe/the UK, and getting an email yesterday from a Cambridge friend saying how dying that school seems now, was pretty sad for me. That a small, unique and well-respected school like Cambridge should have to axe its diploma course, and suffer the inevitable decline that follows, seems to me absolutely ridiculous when viewed on a global scale. The name of Cambridge, and the global reputation of the university offers a unique opportunity for the architecture school to lead on the world scale as a proponent of an alternative credo to the obscuratism and formalism of other schools. It is shaming that both within the department and the university as a whole there lacked the leadership and vision to re-establish a confident agenda for the school. Now I have to tell people here that going onto a graduate degree at my alma mater now, one of the most famous names in education worldwide, is not even possible any more due to its minute budget being deemed excessive.
The Rural Studio has managed to build its reputation without a famous university behind it, and also continually faces a battle for its existence and pressure from its mother ship. Auburn also can't understand that the Rural Studio is the university's only export on the global stage, and that its football team is a pretty parochial concern. From what I've heard, they tend to think that its a holiday camp for architects, that we don't really do anything and that our shoestring management budget (which itself was only grudgingly instituted after Mockbee won the MacArthur Prize) is not justified, despite the RS managing to fundraise all the money for the actual projects on the basis of its national and international reputation.
Anyway, rant over. I feel like I haven't posted enough pictures recently, so here's a snap of Lyle's soul food diner for y'all.
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Praise the Lord and pass the peaches, amen.