Session 3: The Architecture of Education

Gabriel Kurczewski - Museums and the Jagellonian University Collegium Maius: The Role of the Museum in Preserving & Sharing the Idea of the University
Jagiellonian University, Poland

I would like to give an example of the function of the university museum as a place were university traditions and values are not only preserved and taught but also reintroduced. The oldest building of the Jagiellonian University Collegium Maius (c. 1400) historically used as theological college was - in years preceding world war II - the house of the university Library. It's original architecture was covered under neogothical decorations of late XIX c. After the war it was transformed into the Museum- the oldest rooms of the college: Stuba Communis, the Assembly Hall, some professorial flats, the Treasury, the jail and lecture rooms were reconstructed. Architecture was cleaned from later additions and brought to almost its original look. With medieval astronomical instruments and historical rector's sceptres inside it was enough to create small but impressive museum.

But thanks to its directors it became more. Museum was created by Karol Estreicher- art historian, his successor as director is since 1978 Stanislaw Waltos, professor of Law. Both recognized as professional authorities in their fields they played also a central role in all university ceremonies, being like "mis en scene" of the doctor honoris causa ceremony or processions of faculties at inauguration of the academic year, or special anniversaries etc. Actually, their created much of what is recently "alive" academic tradition of the Jagiellonian University. In Collegium Maius they created almost mythological place. Estreicher painted in assembly hall a small inscription: "Plus Ratio Quam Vis" it soon become official motto of the six hundred year old university, quoted thousand times. Two years ago Waltos created following remarks in old university chronicles clockwork carillon at the courtyard of the museum. It is becoming one of Cracow landmarks now.
Greatest Polish artists are also recognizing Collegium Maius as there home: Nobel prize winner in literature Szymborska donated her Nobel prize medal to the museum while Wajda gave his Oscar for all his achievements in film art. to the collections.

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Nancy Levesque - Partners in Education: The Role of the Academic Library
Director, Library & Information Services, University College of the Cariboo, British Columbia, Canada

Learning is a process that needs partnerships between the library and faculty to ensure students have an environment which supports their study.

The traditional image of the university library as a storehouse for print collections and a place for quiet study is changing. New developments in information and computer technologies has impacted the way learning resources are accessed, stored and distributed. New teaching methodologies and a diverse student population have affected the way academic libraries deliver training and support to students on campus and at a distance.

The University College of the Cariboo (UCC) Library in Kamloops serves a region the size of Portugal in the interior of the province of British Columbia, Canada. Kamloops, with a population of 80,000, is the largest centre. UCC offers twelve undergraduate degrees and over fifty diplomas in career and trades programs to 8,000 students.

The challenges for the UCC Library are similar to other libraries; infinite needs and finite funds. The UCC Library uses information technologies to enhance access and services: an interactive PC lab/classroom; proxy server access to licensed databases; linking databases citations to UCC holdings and other partner libraries; direct online requesting by users; ariel document delivery system; online Table of Contents of books; self-serve features, and more. Online subject guides, forms, tools and support onsite and online enables the UCC Library to reach out to students day and night.

The UCC Library staff's expertise and the value-added services offered have helped prove our worth with students, who often go first and only to the Web, and then come to the library and discover the richness and relevance of our collections.
Planning, meeting and working with faculty enables the UCC Library to be more responsive in developing library collections that expand students' classroom experience. UCC Library classes are focused on key learning outcomes to help students gain competency in evaluating information in books, journals, databases and websites. Library sessions that are interactive with students, the professor, and the librarian sharing insights and ideas make for a community of learners.
UCC's plans for a new library building will incorporate our vision of the library as a learning place where our users gather for study, scholarship, and discovery.

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Nikolaos Patsavos - Capitalism and Schizophrenia; Business. Research. Architecture
Architectural Association, London; Greek State Scholarship's Foundation & A. S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation Scholar

'Modernization must now be understood in Asian terms'. (Rem Koolhaas, Harvard Project on the City)

This paper will be questioning the ways in which operativity and scientism have been (re-)introduced in design education during the past decade in 'central' Schools of architecture and design. Within the theoretical diagrams provided by the work of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and with reference to the ongoing discussion on the category of the virtual, various possibilities for innovative educational strategies and techniques have been raised in such academic contexts as those of Columbia University, Southern California (SCI-Arch), MIT and the Architectural Association (AA). Concepts from post-fordist management and organisation theory, complexity and evolutionary game theory et. al. have been asked to help the re-orientation of the 'architectural avant-garde' from philosophical critique to an interest in 'operativity'.

It will be argued that, addressing the design product and process "only within an academic framework that understands architecture as a research based business rather than a medium of artistic expression" (Schumacher: 1998-99, p.34) [my emphasis], succeeds in stimulating the architectural discourse by choosing to situate it in a new interdisciplinary environment for the Sciences of the Artificial (Simon: 1996) and contemporary innovative corporations. However, by negating the aesthetic in a total manner, it overestimates the legitimising potential of such a reference to business and research while underestimating its intrinsic value which lies on the way both the fields of corporations and science have been actually reorganised in terms of an underlying aesthetic paradigm.

The paper will focus on the example of the AA Design Research Laboratory (AA DRL) in order to trace the main arguments and questions forming the agenda of the present discussion. A comparison with the ways philosophers, scientists and managers are facing similar issues is expected to help the attempt to test the consistency of the business-research-architecture compound. Eventually, the subject will be re-examined in terms of a more architectural literature.