Christopher Alexander as Teacher

I once had the privilege to observe Christopher Alexander teaching first-year students at the Prince of Wales Institute of Architecture in London. Like any wise teacher, he spent more time listening than speaking. It was the end of the first term of the foundation year, and he asked them what they'd learned so far. They had apparently been exposed to an eclectic mixture of ideas and techniques. Many of them seemed unable to understand how it all fitted together, or where it might be leading, and a tone of dissatisfaction crept into the discussion. He encouraged them to speak. They answered his questions thoughtfully, although they may have wondered when the lecture was going to start. 

During a coffee break, some of the students apologized to him for the facilities. The room in which the seminar was held was a fine 18th century drawing room overlooking Regent's Park, but it was not ideal for holding a seminar. The seating was awkward and uncomfortable, you had to trip over people to get to the board, the lighting and ventilation were poor, there was traffic noise outside, and so on. Perhaps some of the negative feelings about the course were now being attached to the building. Perhaps some of them felt bad that the Institute couldn't provide better accommodation for such an eminent visitor. 

Alexander decided to set them a task: to design a new lecture room for the Institute, one in which they would be proud to entertain guest lecturers such as himself. They protested: they hadn't been taught to do proper design yet. In fact, that was one of their main complaints about the course so far, hadn't he been listening? 

Of course he had been listening. Patiently he pointed out to them how they could use the ideas and techniques they had been taught, and apply them to this design task. Observation, analysis, drawing, simple model-building, and so on. He integrated these components for the students, or better still, gave them the opportunity to integrate them for themselves, not through abstract theory but by embodying them in a practical task. 

Now that's what I call Education. 

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originally posted at http://www.veryard.com/books/alexander.htm

Christopher Alexander 1936-2022 (March 2022)

Further posts on ChristopherAlexander on my Architecture blog.