My creative work, research and writing are all closely linked to my university teaching. Many aspects of design practice are generic to all disciplines, and as a result I have remained untroubled by shifting focus over time from graphic design to architecture to landscape architecture, from practice to research and writing. Each possesses its own inherent fascinations; each its own lessons and rewards. For many years, my principal design work has been in graphic design. But almost always, the particular medium—book and exhibition design, posters, signing and colors—had architecture as its subject. The particularities vary, but a common thread connects them. This breadth of experience and subjects also informs my work at the university. Professional practice keeps the mind going, leads to directions not always obvious, and keeps me in a position parallel to that of my students working in the studio. Teaching, on the other hand, allows me to think more abstractly and to ask questions and come to conclusions that I may not have thought of on my own.

I am not sure if anyone has ever come up with a way to truly teach design, except through unduly prescriptive and restrictive methods. In the university, we can never give students, even in an analogical form, everything they need to know in practice. On the other hand, I do think we can stimulate a sense of thinking in students, helping develop ways to approach a design task with purpose and confidence, if not mastery.

Another important aspect of my teaching is helping students improve self-critical faculties. Beginning designers tend to think that everything they produce is good. It takes some experience—and in some cases, criticism that appears severe at the time—to understand that other people may read and interpret their work in very different terms. In the beginning studio we have a little class proverb that addresses this disparity between transmission and reception: "The difference between the intended perception and the perceived intention."

In my studio classes I prefer to assign projects that have neither a given precedent nor acknowledged prototype. While a knowledge of history is important for understanding culture, there are times when it is best to test the limits of what has gone before. Each graduate seminar I organize examines a new subject, with a new premise, with new readings. To me, the most interesting projects I have designed were based on the students' truly personal investigations rather than a falling back on common models. When we first taught the so-called Cardboard City project in the introductory design studio (the finale of which was a full-size construction in corrugated cardboard of a village-like conglomerate), no one, least of all myself, knew what a cardboard city was supposed to look like. After I assigned the project several times, however, a cardboard aesthetic developed, although the rule systems and particular configurations changed with each iteration. At that point, too much was known in advance, and I abandoned that project for another.

Meaning in architecture is not transferred through borrowing; it must be created in context. When we teach the Japanese architecture and gardens history course, we are not intending to give the students tools for building a Japanese house. Instead, by looking at a tradition that is so wondrously different from the western one—particularly in a relation to nature and in the definition of space—we can see other ways to approach our own design projects. We are also forced to question the normalcy of American culture at the close of the twentieth century.

I teach also because by teaching one is constantly learning. You can't be a teacher without being a student; it's trite but it's true. We could also say that if you can help educate any two students to become your equal or better, you have made a contribution to architecture. Perhaps that's really why I do it.

Revised: 1993