A Beginners Mind

PROCEEDINGS
21st National Conference
on the Beginning Design Student

Stephen Temple, editor

Conference held at the

College of Architecture
The University of Texas at San Antonio
24-26 February 2005

A Beginners Mind
PROCEEDINGS
21st National Conference
on the Beginning Design Student
Stephen Temple, editor
College of Architecture
The University of Texas at San Antonio
24-26 February 2005

Situating Beginnings
Questioning Representation
Alternative Educations
Abstractions and Conceptions
Developing Beginnings
Pedagogical Constructions
Primary Contexts
Informing Beginnings
Educational Pedagogies
Analog / Digital Beginnings
Curriculum and Continuity
Interdisciplinary Curricula
Beginnings
Design / Build
Cultural Pluralities
Contentions
Revisions
Projections

Offered through the Research Office for Novice Design

Education, LSU, College of Art and Design, School of
Architecture.
Copyright 2006 University of Texas San Antonio
/ individual articles produced and edited by the authors

Printed proceedings produced by Stephen Temple, Associate Professor, University of Texas San Antonio.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without
written permission of the publisher.
Published by:
University of Texas San Antonio
College of Architecture
501 West Durango Blvd.
San Antonio TX 78207
210 458-3010
fax 210 458-3016

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Temple, Stephen, editor
A Beginners Mind: Proceedings of the 21st National Conference on the Beginning Design Student /
edited and compiled by Stephen Temple
1. Architecture - Teaching 2. Architecture - Design 3. Design - Teaching

ISBN 0-615-13123-9

The touch of hands and the awakening of senses

RAFAEL URBINA
School of Architecture and Urbanism.
Universidad Central de Venezuela.
if we would recuperate the lost soul, which is after all the main aim of all depth
psychologies, we must recover our lost aesthetic reactions, our sense of
beauty
Hillman James The thought of the heart
The pure meaning of initiation isn't merely to initiate something, start, depart from a new
point... Initiation, as seen from the beings' interior viewpoint (true initiation), means
transformation; a symbolical death... To bring about a process of initiation, it is necessary to leave
behind a part of us, "leave it to rest"1, in order to make room for a new and renewed being.
The true rites of initiation may have very little significance to the collective actions of our
modern societies. A true transformation belongs more to the psychological inner movements,
which are triggered by unexpected "happenings", profound encounters that mark us: those rare
cases where a genuine experience takes place, where an echo is left, a resonance, an energy
that urges us to continue...
Each stage in our life is marked by thresholds of initiation - we leave something behind, a
part of us dies: when we enter this world, when we're separated from the breast of our mothers,
when for the first time we're left in school, ascending through college, arriving at university...
some leaving marks more profound than others, some being displaced by events of greater
importance that mark us even more profoundly.
In our modern societies, the journey through adolescence into the adult world, coincides
with the entrance into higher education, and collectively muffles the emergence of the inner
calling; the vocation is represented by the action, connected to the overruling question of socialcollective usefulness, the action as social service. Now... What will I become? Will I be useful?
Those are the questions that overwhelm the majority of our youngsters with anguish upon leaving
secondary education.
Most of the students arriving at our universities come from a one-sided education, mostly
oriented towards the scientific and rationalist angle, forbidding those sensorial and perceptive
aspects of their personalities. On the other hand, they have no specific preparation to do
something useful or work. In this sense, students aspiring to be architects arrive at university with
a sensation of emptiness, with an incomplete vision for approaching the world.
The architect Louis Sullivans words sound quite assertive:
How strange it seems that education, in practice, so often means suppressions:
that instead of leading the mind outward to the light of the day, it crowds things
upon it that darken and weary it 2
As a fact, students aren't aware of all that they carry within: strength of expression, vitality,
questions, interests, innate talents... also mixed up with confusion, doubts, bore... all factors
hiding their real vocation.
They are unaware that what is to be revealed and developed, has to spring forth from what
already exists within, nothing happened in my imagination, professor, you should see my
work, are the usual comments for expressing their anxiety and juvenile desperation, for

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something they feel they dont possess in that moment, something that was suppressed.
Something he feels that is no longer his, contrary as to when he was a child: feeling and
response.
As Rilke said to the young poet:
You wonder. Are my verses any good? You ask me, and before, you've asked
the same questions to others Now that you have authorized me to give you
adviceI will ask you to abandon all this. You are looking outwards, and this is
fundamentally what you shouldnt be doing now. Nobody should give you advice
or help you. Nobody, there is just one way. Go across your inner self. Examine
the reason that drives you to write; observe if it extends its roots into the deepest
place of your heart. Confess if you would die if someone forbids you to write
anymore. This is the most important point3

You look outwards and this is what you fundamentally shouldnt be doing, Rilke says,
pointing out a possible and a necessary way in re-education: recuperate that which has been
suppressed.
Rilke, the mentor, disappears in the moment when the young man requires his presence,
and points towards the necessity to search in the fountains of his being; the vocation which aids
in overcoming all that which counteract realization.
The mentor takes his absence, but his poems are now in the hands of the young disciple:
the bridge is sketched; it's now up to the young one initiating himself to cross it with his own
words, with his own poems, ceding space for a new being.
It's now up to the student to reconstruct a body that is capable of surprise and wonder at
encountering matters in their material qualities. A physical body that touches and sees; that starts
to feel and perceive again; that starts to awaken from the long sleep to which it was confined
through rationalization.
It's up to the student to search in the ancestral fountains of his body. To initiate, in one way
or another, also translates into returning; returning to the body of sensation and perception,
restore to the body that which was "removed": the aesthetical response, that which makes us
unique.
But, how do we bring back those treasures that concern the individual and the particular
potentials? Those treasures that make us different from the others that are hidden beneath our
skin. How do we recuperate that vital sensibility connected directly to the heart? 4
Which is the ritual that we have to perform in order to recuperate it?
In his book, Icon and idea 5 Herbert Read recalls that:
The Greek Word for ritual is dromenon, thing made, and the word is highly
illustrative. The Greeks had noticed that in order to do a ritual you have to do
something, which means not just to feel it but to express it through an action
Not just to receive an impulse but to react in front of it6
To feel and to express; to touch and to do, and to touch, according to the dictionary, is:
- to get something without grasping it
- to stumble something slightly against something else
- to approach something to something else, to communicate a certain virtue
- to try a piece of gold or silver on top of a touch stone, in order to know the proportion
of metal that it contains
- to find the greyhound after the hunt7

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This touching without holding, this slight stumbling, and this practicing until getting the
trace, implies a game, an erotic-sensorial dialog between the senses of our body as a matter that
feels, and the matter of the world that we touch. Now when the cult is celebrated on top of the
stone, it is not oriented to the stone but to the god, who has it as his residence8
The ritual that is performed on the matter as stone, doesnt point to the matter as
such, it points towards the images that the matter activates in us.
The beginners realm as a space to grow, appears as a place where the young
student could recuperate his sensitive and sensible body, through the practice of
touching the matter and doing things with his hands, as a bridge towards his interior
world. This could be seen as a process where sensibility and those ancestral senses
of the body get activated - a process where the mind gets enlightened through the
steps of designing, conceiving and making things.
Not as separate steps of a linear process, but as an active and multi-directional process
where design melts with its Latin roots, which means to draw in the ample sense of the word, as a
tool to develop, to undress things. A drawing that activates and nourishes the imagination. A
drawing that also build and conceive the world from the imagination
Through all these years, the main objective has been the awakening of the young student
through a process where he approaches the essential elements of art and architecture through
the contact with those qualities, which, by their presence, attract and speak to us.
In spite of the diversity and multiplicity of the character of the work, all our approaches are
supported by two fundamental columns consisting in the teaching of art crafts and the method
called learning by doing through the design and construction of objects full size scale 1:1.
In the first stage, the student gets in contact with his own sensorial and expressive potential
through the innate qualities of different medias, starting with the noble and softer materials such
as pastel, charcoal, and graphiteafter that, high relief with clay, carving blocks, to in the end
working with cardboard, wood and other materials that implies more sophisticated techniques.
In this stage, the young student is encouraged to explore all techniques except digitals,
which are on purpose denied.
In the second step, the beginner discovers his own possibilities with different material in the
constructive structural sense; how to assemble them, while also having to build the proposals, the
student gets into the economical aspects. This way the beginner is captured in short time by the
essential elements of architecture. 9
We have developed two different types of exercises. Those called introductory or
complimentary, and the regular exercises developed during a semester (sixteen weeks).

Introductory exercises

Fig. 1
First week (welcome)
As an activity of the first week, the beginner is asked to bring something personal, done by
himestablishing thereby the departure point to support his initiation and in order for him to
recognize himself and his potential in front of the group - showcasing our small things done with
individual effort and desire. They bring something to share, to introduce themselves, and
welcome themselves into the group. The approach to architecture starts from small things.

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First day
The first day requires the organization of the furniture in the classroom, the students
thereby facing themselves into working with the body, afterwards asking them to find the best
distribution for the class tables. The explanations will come: the way we will work in the studio,
how big the group is, how many tables we have, how the windows are located in relation to the
columns, the tables, and the door - a verbal play to make them talk, to make the opinions spring
forth, to establish an order in the classroom and general rules during the study time.
About the presentation and the critique
Each day requires that the exercises done at home and in the studio get displayed on the
wall at the end of the session. The students have to give their opinion and express how they feel
about what is hanging on the wall, thereby minimizing the professor assistance. This way, the
students will build confidence in their own opinions, the critiques will arrive as impulses according
to what they feel; their eyes will start to see in a new manner. The organization of these works on
the walls may need an effort in composing them, and will give them the first knowledge about
composition: to get the horizontal line, the separations in between them, the way to place the
tape, the way to get rid of it. The color composition, or contrast if it necessary.

Complimentary exercises

Fig. 2
During the following two weeks, beginners are asked to do some parallel exercises. These
are regular exercises during a semester, generally done as introductory in the inner world and in
the media expression. These exercises are advised to be done during the hours in which they are
most calm, taking the necessary time to reflect upon them, trying to get as relaxed as possible. In
this way, the student will get time to make some reflections about himself through his drawings,
and at the same time, a plastic activity where the results will begin to surprise him. This is a
process that goes from the intimate to the collective critique. It is necessary to point out that these
exercises have to do with the psychic aspects, but the discussion is always framed within the
plastic discussion. The composition and the expression are the main topic of the work. The
psychological and intellectual will be nourished and enlightened by the work.
Self-portraits
The student is asked to do three drawings per day. It is basically an exercise in training his
eye and his sight. The drawings start out trying to be realistic, the student gazing at himself in the
mirror. Slowly it gets more complicated, from being drawings of just lines, then volume, details,
until the final work is a free composition based on ten details or more, taken from previous
drawings and done in letter size papers.
A flower diary
This exercise is for establishing a short-term relationship to something alive for a very
short time. The student should select a flower that attracts him. The process is similar to the self
portraits. During a period of two weeks the student will do a set of plastic and expressive
drawings. At the end of the two weeks, the drawings are shown to the others to be discussed and
critiqued.

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The signature exercise

This exercise has the same goal as the ones mentioned before, but departing from the
students own signature. Starting from writing it on a letter size paper, students have it as first
composition, and then they have to enlarge it in several windows zoom. It becomes an
extraordinary exercise in observing and fine-tuning the eye aptitude of appreciating width,
proportion, scale, character, etc.

Regular exercises
All exercises, apart from the Topic they are dealing with, are done applying the same or
similar methodology. It starts with the analysis of one concrete object, starting with drawing in all
the variants, through a special research that ends in an architecture exercise or in a design of a
utilitarian object in real scale.
The product of each exercise step has a value in its own, that hinges with the next one until
they get together to the final work. The design exercise then becomes a product of a research
process where the beginner builds, during the process, a world of references of his own
inspiration.
Exercise type 1

Fig. 3
From the object to the architecture
Point of departure They start choosing a utilitarian object. In this case it is necessary
that the students select it because of its color, shape, texture, design, originality, etc., which
builds up a kind of perceptive and sensorial connection.
Exercise type 2

Fig. 4
The wooden cube exercise
Point of departure As the first step, the students have to build up a cube made of wood
(20 cm. side). It should be done with pieces of wood taken from the carpentry trash can, and with
any preliminary idea of composition (at first), maintaining the orthogonal and geometric laws of
the cube.
Commentaries on exercises type 1 and type 2
Also when the design process and the training could be similar or identical for both cases,
the result is different. In one occasion, from the wooden cube, derives in a final object absolutely

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organized in a Cartesian way, in contrast to those who depart from a utilitarian object, since the
final result tends to be more organic and looser in its final expression.
The starting point conditions or predetermines the final result.
The method that we use to introduce the beginner into the architectural problems, differs from the
traditional order established in the traditional education. Not trying to say that ours is innovative or
unique, it is simply the result of looking for a way of recreating the learning process in the field of
architecture as a need.
Explicitly we obviate architectonic references, styles and studies of the great masterpieces
as the main point of departure; instead the starting point is the geometric laws of the
compositions obtained form the objects we study, not the historical references.
Exercise type 3

Fig. 5
Design and construction of utilitarian objects. real scale, 1:1.
Point of departure In this case the departing point is diverse, depending on the element
to be designed: a domestic chair as an analytical approach to the design of a chair; the main
page of a news paper, or a tabloid sheet of paper in the case of designing a screen; tools taken
from the kitchen in order to look for referential figures and shapes to design after a chess game.

Fig. 6
Final Commentaries
In this type of exercises, the acquired or adopted intellectual knowledge does not
participate. The blinding light of intellect is left out, and the student starts to "wander" in the
shadows of sensations and bodily perceptions, as such displacing the center of thinking from the
brain to the heart, from the cognitive understanding to the aesthetical sensibility... establishing an
immediate connection between the heart and the imagination 10
The cognitive task at this point, does not consist in understanding the meaning, but in being
sensitive to the details11
And as such, at this stage, rather than proposing tasks to be solved through a
constructive-intellectual process, we propose themes that can be solved through free
experimentation in composition, and imagination - leaving out all elements inducing the anecdotic,
instead attempting to capture a sense of composition rather than an idea of composition, in order
to understand, at a later point, what happened to the composition in rational terms.
In conclusion, we feel that these exercises produce a high level of results as a specific
solution to an immediate design problem. We have experienced significant influences in the way
these beginner students confront the following architectural problems, apart from the scale or the

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depth of the exercises. As a teacher, the most gratifying experience has been to witness how the
students are flourishing from the things they do with their hands... How these same things evolve
into an echo that nourishes them to confront the next design problem in superior levels,
transferring into them a spiritual energy that most of them recall as memorable even after school.
And so, the Touch we're referring to, in the words of Sullivan, acquires a new dimension
which illuminates us:
This something that he is doing, and the physical and psychic state that it
implies, we call Touch: meaning not the touch of the painter, not the touch of the
sculptor, not the mechanical and technical touch of the fingers only, nor quite
their negligent contact with things, but the exquisite touch of the sensibilities, the
warm physical touch of the body, the touch of the sound head and a responsive
heart, the touch of the native one, the poet, out of doors, in spontaneous
communion with Nature. 12
Notes
1 Jean Chevalier / Alain Gheerbrant, Dictionary of symbols. (Barcelona. Herder, 1991)
2 Louis Sullivan. Kindergarten Chats, (Dover. New York, 1979. Page 192)
3 Rainer Maria, Rilke, Letters to a young poet (Editorial y library Goncourt. 1977)
4 Cf. James Hillman, El pensamiento del corazn. (Madrid: Siruela, 1999)
5-6 Herbert Read, Imagen e idea. (Mxico: Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1993, Pages 35, 36)
7 Diccionario de la Real Academia Espaola, (Madrid, 1992)
8 Jean Chevalier / Alain Gheerbrant, Dictionary of symbols. (Barcelona. Herder, 1991)
9 Cf. Emil Vestuti Paper presented at ACSA/EAAE Conference (1993)
10-11 Hillman James. El Pensamiento del Corazn. (Madrid: Siruela, 1991. Pages 158, 164)
12 Louis Sullivan, kindergarten Chats and other essays. (London Dover publications, Inc, 1979.)

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