One of the best ways to receive post-design evaluation for an architectural desing project is through participation in architectural competitions. This however is very difficult for students, as professional competitions are often open only to registered architects. In case an instructor is registered in a particular country that promotes such competitions, as is for instance in Finland, where the architectural competitions represent an institution, regularly producing publications with the competition results, the participation of students as collaborators to their "professional instructors" represent a good means to substantial exposure and learning from them. This however, is mostly done in places where architectural instructors are permitted to have substantial professional practice parallel to their university job requirements. In countries where the  architectural instructor is forced to limited professional practice, as is for instance the case in State  Universities in the United States the participation and training of students through competitions,  such endeavors are rather difficult; they require special arrangements with the administration to give permit to participate in an actual competition, and it may actually become futile, since many times, the results of competitions are never built, or take very much time to be built , as was for instance the case with the competition for the New Museum of the Acropolis, which took thirty years , and four competitions, to realize the building.  I had repeated occasions with competition projects, but two are significant ; The first, was the  Panhellenic competition for the Museum of the Acropolis in 1978 (photo below); I had given it as a special "honors" project to a group of three students, who , with special permit of the Dean were permitted to act as my collaborators, me being the registered architect in Greece, under whose name the entry would be submitted. I have discussed  this case elsewhere and followed its evolution to the end through many critical articles ; it is a most  unique case to avoid participating, particularly for  post-design evaluation purposes , as the complexities and the time span for the realization of   buildings in places where political expediency and other futile conditions prevail, may cheat and exploit idealistic desingners' working time and labor repeatedly, while they may over-span the life of the initial designers, some of which may never be alive to see , visit and learn from the building when built . The second, and by all means significant, competition triggered  Post-design evaluation  project, was  the Pieksämäki Cultural Center in Finland. project I gave to my class in Spring 1985 falls in this  category. This was an individual project, open to all the  students in the class, based on  a program I developed out of the competition brief.  There was no intend whatsoever to submit a competition proposal, as after all this was only for Finnish architects. Nor had I told the students the competition had already been conducted and the results had been published. The program bried and documents I gave them were very specific and clear, while the slides and lectures I gave them on Finland, Aalto and Finnish architecture were  enough, I believe , to make it an attractive "multi-culturally didactic" , meritorious project.

I had given this Post-design evaluation exercise following at least two earlier trips to Finland, the semester  prior to my participation in the Alvar Aalto conference in 1985 in Jyväskylä. All these visits and conference activities were part of my  on-going efforts to infuse the lessons of the very significant architecture of Finland to my students in Texas. My article "Architectural Road to the Deep; North"  and the scores of personally takes slides  came handy for introduction (see; A.C.Antoniades "Architectural Road to the Deep North" in "A+U", (Architecture and Urbanism).  Sept. 1981.  p. 87-112 ). I was  hoping that exercises such as this  might trigger the desire to some of the  students to visit and personally experience the architecture of this country in the years to come, while, hopefully, see realized the projects for which they had  tested their design abilities,  and draw definitive post-occupancy lessons.                                                                                                                 We must not forget that Texas had already singnificant exposure to issues of Scandinavian Design, particularly to the Architecture of Alvar Aalto;  Architects such a O'Neal Ford had been definitely influenced by Aalto, while a younger generation of Architects, such as Pat Spillman ,  Martin Price and  William Odum, the first two,  early employees of Harry Weese , who had been the primary supporter and actually representative of the Aalto line of Furniture in the United States, while Odum, a former student of Louis Kahn, had been through the office of Alvar Aalto, studying and copying Aalto drawings and tracings. Some of the O'Neal Ford  buildings, especially several in San Antonio,  exhibited undeniable influence by Aalto , in texture as well as in detailing. As for me  I had experiences of almost any Aalto building throughout finland,  yet furthermore I had my personal association with Göran Schildt, the original Biographer of Aalto-author of the most complete 20th century biography ever written; Schildt was a constant inspiration and support for me, always considering him, besides a cordial personal friend, an influential intellectual  mentor , key to inner Aalto information as well as introducer to the best of Aalto kai early meta-Aalto architectural elite of his years following Aalto's death in 1973. Of course , as I have written elsewhere, I met Göran Schildt in Texas . There was therefore more than enough "Finnish" and "Aalto making architecture" in my personal  make-up, as evidenced by my  condominium in Saronis project in Athens Greece, for which I was  influenced not so much by "Elpenor" as was the case with the stairs and the parapetless terraces of my house in Hydra, but by Alvar Aalto's interior stair of the Chemistry Building at the University of Jyväskylä.

When I became aware of the Pieksämäki competition, and studied the competition results , I was greately impressed by the simplicity and yet richness of the winning entry by Kristian Gullichsen. His proposal had reminded me of the architectonic language he had already applied in his Kauniainen church and community center outside of Helsinki, which I had visited and had been greately impressed (see three photos below) . It demonstrated a Mediterranean influence , white stucco, massing and treat of natural lighting, with "mass" overpowering the "void". This church was apparently a "departure" from his earlier projects, especially another church I had seen a few days earlier, which was havily indebted to Alvar Aalto "texture" and "nature" precedents, with some touches of "Kahn" at the lintels . The Kauniainen church came to mean to me what I understood as clearly "Gullichsen" eversince; that is the desire of North to intermarry with South, and in my Greek vanity, Finland to intermarry with the Greek-islands.  It took me no time to decide to make a Post-design evaluation project for my third year design studio, as a means to tackle simultaneously many problems, in an "inclusivist" way. Although I has some concerns, as I'd have prefered a fourth year level for the project, the forthcoming Alvar Aalto conference made me try it on the third year crowd. And I never regreted it, nor did the students that participated. Kristian Gullichsen , the Aalto disciple who had actually grown up in the villa Mairea, yet with his summers sailing in the Mediterannean and the Greek islands,  son of one of the greatest and repeat clients of Alvar Aalto, had been extremely kind to me, ever since we met and told him about the project I had given and that I was hoping some of my students would visit Finland in the Future and actually see the building built.    I spoke to him about the project during the conference , we talked about Greece, Texas and America,  and when I returned to the states I sent him photocopies of all the drawings my students had produced. But as I said, the project had not yet been built and the architect was not apparently ready to offer written criticism as Kazuhiro Ishii had done earlier. I , as well as those of the students I could contact, had to wait five years for Kristian's responce. He finally sent me the plans of his building and the booklet of the publication results, which I had already given to the students five years earlier during the final  jury with invited guests. However, I  gothered few  students that were still in the area; I  read them the Gullichsen  letter,  a treasure for me personally, and we cheered a lot of beer to his health...!

As you see, not everything can go planned  in the effort to perform a succesfull "Post-Design evaluation", although it may revamp old friendships and refresh collegiality ; The problem is  the difference of time scale between an academic and a real project. A conscientious professional architect can not claim he knows everything about a building he has designed, unless the building has been built, actually used for several years. This was , I believe, the case with Kristian Gullichsen and my own class project. Not   everybody is as eager or able to offer feedback as Kazuhiro Ishii had done, whle many "professional architects" are actually "scared" to put something in writing, whila some others consider "criticism" a thing they don't want to touch, something which some of them claim belongs to those who do not built. I don't subscribe to this nonsense, although I do not believe teachers of  architectural desing should abstain from professional practice. Even those who work in public universities in the Unites States, ought to strive to take permit to desing "meritorious" buildings whenever such opportunity arizes, at least participate in as many architectural competitions they can,on their own, or as part of a school project, under special permission. 

"Post-Design evaluation" exercise, succesfull or not, requires extra effort  work and personal expensed from the part of the instructor; And in case you feel obliged for the slightest perhaps support, as I had felt when I invited Kristian to offer his help, you devote further  energy and time, for the "cause of architecture", beyond the very personal. So, I recall, it was under these circumstances that  I  put together the piece on the architecture of Kristian Gullichsen, which I had been lucky to  to have it accepted and published in "A+U", the internatioally respected Japanese-English magazine, edited by the great Japanese editor and architectural critic Toshio Nakamura. You  can see the Gullichsen  letter at the end of this essay...

Correspondence with the Architect whose Project was used for the Post-Design Evaluation exercise and preparat-                             ory activities by the instructor in preparation for the exercise ; much preliminary work is necessary, such as research visitation of project , study of competition results, participation in conferences, etc.

Below: Publication of the Instructor reporting on the  3rd International Alvar Aalto Conference in Jyväskylä,"Modernism and popular culture", 12-14 August 1985, to the magazine of the Greek Society of Architects, one of the facilitators and "by-products" of the post-design evaluation excercise: A means to make contacts, invite for help in feedback, set the ground for futures similar exercises, etc.

Pictures above by the author , from left to right: Arno Ruusuvuori, Elissa Aalto, Kristian Gullichsen, Daniel Libeskind, others, in the courtyard of the Aalto Summer house/studio, in "Muuratsalo" (Aalto Symposium, Summer 1985).

Program given to the Students (prepared by A.C.Antoniades)

Projects upon completion :

1. Project by Laura Yowell (Arch.3553-001, UTA Spring 1985)

Notice the special concern of this particular entry by student designer Laura Yowell , in which it is evident her concern for music and her opportunity to express and approach the building as a musical compostion  in which  the rythmic resolution of the parts contribute to the symphonic whole (i.e "beats" of Skylights, fenestration etc.).This project generated much discussion among the jurors concerning aspects of music and architecture, particularly on issues of music as related to Finland and Sibelius, as well as bringing to discussion other significant Finnish architects whose work has been  influenced by music and music as a metaphor for  Architecture (i.e Architects mentioned were Juha Leiviskä for his Myirmaki church,  Timo and Tuomo Suomalinen for their  Taivallahti Church in Helsinki , and of course,  Alvar Aalto and his Finlandia Hall in Helsinki and other buildings where the influence of music is undeniably evident).  It is also very  important to underline that this student, was an interior design major, who as I recall specializes in Interior Design and subsequently, worked for one of the biggest Texas firms with diverse large scale projects , many all over the  world.

2. Project by Javier Lucio (Arch.3553, Spring 1985)

3. Project by   (Arch.3553, Spring 1985)

4. Project by Karen Decker (Arch.3553, Spring 1985)

5. Project by  Myrna Block (Arch.3553, Spring 1985)

6. Project by Besgrove James  (Arch.3553, Spring 1985)

7. Project by Jose Llano (Arch.3553,Spring1985)

no

drawings

available

THE JURY / INVITATIONS TO CRITICS :

Six Letters along with the program were forwarded to the jurors ; they were followed by several phone calls for  further clarifications on the  project details . All the invited guests were Texas architects, two academic colleagues, Martin Price and William Odum, both admirers of   Aalto and Finnish architecture, three were former students ,by then registered architects, Aaron Farmer, David Browning and Hasan Tariq, one was an up-comming Houston Architect, Yem Levy, whose office I had visited prior to the jury, and two, who finally didn't make it. These last two, were Gabriel Alatriste, a former student of mine  practicing in Mexico, and  the architectural Historian Udo Kulterman with whom I had many discussions while at Washington University in St. Louis. Udo had assured me he would come , but some changes in his schedule didn't make this possible. The letter to Yem Levy below, while letters with minor changes as per my familiarity with the invitees, were sent to each and everyone of all the others ( all in the ACA archive). 

The jury, as usually, lasted a whole afternoon. The comments were very constructive, and some suggested some of these projects, even though at the third year level could have submitted as entries to the competition . Upon conclusion of the comments of the juror's, I passed around the handouts I had made of the competition entries, all of which had been published in the special little publication that regularly published the results of the Architectural Competitions in Finland (see document below-also see: Arkkitehtuurrikilpauiluja, Pieksämäen kulttuurikeskuksen arkkitehtuurikilpailu,Pieksämäki Cultural Centre 8/83).                 All the jurors in my class praised the winning competition entry by Gullichsen , and started making suggestions on similarities between the various projects in the class; some even hinted that some of the students might have perhaps been aware of what had been alreardy published, especially because of the similarity and simplicity of the presentation drawings to those in the Finnish competition, something which it was me I had been trying to pass to the class as a whole, while others arguing that  some of the class projects had somehow furniture arrangements and the  open plan spirit of the Gullichsen winning entry....

Following my trip to Finland three months following the Jury,  I spoke to Gullichsen on this experience, both at the Aalto house in Muuratsalo, as well as at the hotel in Jyväskylä  in the afternoon , in both occasions with beer at hand(photo below) . He was very interested to receive copies of samples of the students projects for his own study and reference. When I returned to Texas I  send him photocopies of all the projects I could collect from those students still around; all of them were very anxious to receive some  feedback from the wolf's mouth. He sent us a set of prints of  his Pieksämäki plans below...!!

.....Five years later, the Pieksämäki Cultural Center was eventually finished and the much awaited letter by Kristian Gullichsen arrived...; Enjoy it :  

I showed and read this letter only to the very few students I could find in the area, telling them "you see, the  architect didn't want to risk feedback before he was sure himself  what went well or wrong with  his own building; Now that it is finished, he probably suggests to all of us, to there and see it  for  ourselves .... it is only the on-site visitation and the personal experience of the building that can give  the most responsible Post-Design evaluation feedback....!!!

Anthony C.Antoniades, AIA                                                                                                                                                   19 Oct. 2011

For other essays and projects on Post-Design evaluation                                                                                                           in the Design Studio press HERE

© Anthony C. Antoniades 

BACK