To the Editor:
Terminating the Architecture Concentration is a grave mistake in my eyes – it is a significant loss for the Department of History of Art and Architecture and for Brown University. The program has been all around successful (there are long waitlists for the intro studio, high-level work produced, students getting into top grad schools afterwards). In addition, the concentration has secured much external funding, top notch faculty, and a state-of-the-art studio space on campus. It has brought a large, creative and diverse cohort of additional concentrators to the Department. It is also a uniquely successful experiment in higher education, as it combines training in architecture with the humanities through careful examination of historical precedent.
There are two ways forward: Let’s find a new home for this vibrant and visionary program elsewhere on campus, or retool it in such a way that everyone in our Department can embrace it (and this time let’s involve former and current students as well as all relevant faculty in the process and win the support from the senior administration). After all, architecture is the art of building up - not tearing down.
Dietrich Neumann (Professor of the History of Modern Architecture and Urban Studies)
