9/10/2010 Architect Neil M.

Denari 2

Interview with Neil Denari Page 2

Architecture
What directions will SCI-Arc be heading in the future? Degree
BSc (Hons)
We want to raise the level of discourse in architecture, which can and Architectural
should be very broad. We would like to concentrate on a variety of issues, Design and
Technology. Apply
such as making architecture and architecture students a more literate
now!
culture than ever before. We are going to be paying closer attention to www.sobe.salford.ac.uk
writing and research and things that don’t necessarily involve a specific
aspect of design. We will be looking at not just spatial problems, but
Interior Design
human and cultural problems. I do not have to turn the place on its head, Courses
because I believe we are going in the right direction right now. Yes, there Online/distance
are some specific things that need to be done, but SCI-Arc is a good place learning - career or
already. We are doing things that other places are not doing. for fun, begin
studying - today!
In a school such SCI-Arc, do you have to keep redefining and reevaluating what you are? www.rhodec.org

Yes. The worse thing about other schools is that they tend to become calcified, like rock. This is something to be Architecture
avoided, and it is why I am at SCI-Arc and not someplace else. It is also why I came to California 10 years ago to Schools
teach here. There is no tenure, and while we don’t want to make the teacher personally unsteady, we do want to Search
make the school critically unsteady. Everybody should be alive and moving. We don’t want SCI-Arc to be a place Architecture
Courses Abroad
where everybody settles down and takes their place for granted. That is not why I was hired. There should never
Find Your Course
be a status quo, ever, at SCI- Arc. We can have the one school that really prides itself on everybody working and Quickly & Easily
moving and teaching and constantly going somewhere. Maybe sometimes the course isn’t even about getting StudyLink.com/Study-Ar
from here to there. SCI-Arc has to be this way. My job is to make sure the fires are lit and things are happening. If
I sense some kind of stasis, which I think might be bad, I will have to go in and do a little positive terrorizing. Investing In
Energy
Learn About
Carbon Futures &
If you were talking to a student who was trying to make the choice between SCI-Arc and somewhere Other Energy
else, what would you say? Investments. Free
Download!
www.The-Green-Guide.
I would say that the ultimate strength of this school is the way it chooses to teach architecture and the allied arts.
Architecture is our only goal; it is what the school is about. I think that focus means everything. Liberal arts and the
other disciplines of physical sciences, structures, and technologies are tightly built into the school and around the
core, which is always architecture. SCI-Arc is constructed so that if you come to this school, the focus is going to
be so strong, so coordinated, that the education is going to be by definition more intense.

You will be entering into an atmosphere that is clear: Architecture is your focus. All of the things that we do not offer
to the student who is looking into a university education have really never inhibited the best students from coming to
SCI-Arc. Those resources are out there and they exist. What doesn’t exist anywhere else is the intangible aspects
of the focus and the compressed way in which you can study here: A single discipline, in a single place.

WORKING PHILOSOPHY

Through the reading of late sixties post-Marxist Jean Baudrillard, the 1960's films of
Michelangelo Antonioni, an acute understanding of the persuasive power of graphic
design, and a thorough belief that architecture is geometry saturated with symbolic
codes, Cor-Tex Architecture produces buildings which operate under a manifold of
concepts. With a global program in mind, Cor-Tex moves toward the question of place
with the same dynamic flow as a Boeing crossing the International Dateline headed for
the arrival lounge at Narita Airport.

How does SCI-Arc’s vitality contribute to the students and their work?

I think the vitality is manifested in that the people at SCI-Arc feel free to explore and push to the edges of the
frontiers of architecture. This sense of exploration comes from the faculty and the whole aura of the school.
Students feel free to organize their own thinking along various lines that they can develop with the help of the
faculty. Certainly this spirit can be summed up as: if you think it, you can do it. This spirit comes out, I think, in
people’s work and the way in which they treat the building as a site for exploring work. We don’t have rules that
inhibit. There is not a lot of bureaucracy at SCI-Arc, so one is free to act spontaneously.

Looking back on the relatively short history of SCI-Arc, what do you think the school’s accomplishments
have been in terms of architectural education?

The origin of the school was to create a more open atmosphere and to offer some alternatives to the oppressive
structures that the university system was delivering at the time. In 1972 almost everything seemed oppressive!
The interesting thing is the relationship between students and professors. Everything is more intimate, and things
are more collaborative.

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9/10/2010 Architect Neil M. Denari 2
What are the strengths of having such a diverse faculty of not only architects, but industrial designers,
scientists, artists, and critical thinkers? What does this give the students?

It gives them a lot of expertise in areas that we all need to know about. It allows students to go up to someone who
knows how to talk about the related disciplines, and allows the architect to teach architecture. Here, disciplines do
not become divided. Everyone teaching here is interested in architecture. There are no disciplinary ghettos. We
like to make the connections all the way around. It allows everyone to take advantage of their special knowledge
and to teach in a very strong way. Students are getting first-hand information and relating to people who have
researched 20 to 30 years on a particular subject.

My goal is to make sure that the dialogue is strong, critically. None of us just takes up space and declares a
domain and then doesn’t talk to anyone else. Having incredibly knowledgeable people helps students learn how to
research in ways that architects often aren’t required to undertake. Our work includes being writer, critic, historian:
we connect the dots. This is where SCI-Arc really does provide the university experience under one roof, in one
house so to speak. This allows us to teach students to be agile intellectually, to be agile visually, and to also not
make the ultimate mistake of becoming ultimately skilled in only one thing. SCI-Arc students are skilled in a
generalist fashion with the focus on designing architectural space. We don’t have standard professors here, we
have eccentric people who have the right spirit to teach here.

What are the challenges of teaching at SCI-Arc?

It’s a combination of tremendous patience and great rewards. The conviviality of our studio allows the teacher to
feel more fulfilled. Anyone who does teach at SCI-Arc understands that fat salaries and cushy perks are not here. It
is so clear that anyone who chooses to teach at SCI-Arc is here because they are interested in advancing the
discourse of architecture. Everyone at the school is qualified, in theory, to go and make more money — to maybe
have more power and responsibility — somewhere else. But people chose to stay or come to the school because
of the atmosphere and students. In that sense it’s an unconscious feeling that we have about the place, and yet we
don’t feel that we’re doing charity work. It’s a challenging school to enter into.

How has SCI-Arc contributed to the profession of architecture?

I think it has contributed more locally, certainly in Los Angeles. It has influenced the way in which certain people run
offices as studios. It has influenced a more experimental attitude toward the use of materials. I think SCI-Arc has
reinforced an important sense of craft. Its graduates have gone on to fabricating new types of materials, including
concrete and steel work, and other artisan ventures that are related to building.

I think in the next phase, SCI-Arc is going to have a profound influence in the area of digital work. Through our
computer laboratory and research, we are going to offer new ideas in terms of visualizing, modeling, and
developing techniques of design. This will cause people in practice to learn about us, and perhaps operate in
similar ways. I think the design process is going to change, and SCI-Arc is going to lead the way.

What have SCI-Arc’s accomplishments been in relationship to the City of Los Angeles and its
community?

We try to think about it and exploit the fact that we are here in Los Angeles, and not in New York, San Francisco, or
Paris. We think of the city as a laboratory. In the past six or seven years, the school has done a lot more work with
the community. When SCI-Arc began, it was preoccupied with building its own community. Then in the 1980s, the
school had other research projects that did not connect immediately with the local culture. But in the past seven
years, through outreach programs, our students and graduates have been going out into the community with the
spirit that “if you can think it, then you can do it.” While the school has been an amazing frontier for new ideas that
do not yet have any application, it has always had a desire to interact with the culture in the city and to try to deal
with reasonable ways of doing things. We want to continue to do this, but at the same time continue to make our
projects very critical and useful. SCI-Arc is here to be a good big brother, but we are first in the business of
educating people, and therefore we must be didactic and get something educational out of every project. As long
as this educational process goes on, we’ll keep doing all we can in the community.

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