We wanted the students every year to be engaged with a locality that London is a world city. You can do anything you'd like here. But as an educational model, we think it's really important that you can really get to know a place and understand the people there and what might be interesting for it. Welcome to Archimetic Sessions 1-1.
I'm Amelia Taylor-Hockberg, and this week, December 14, 2015, I speak with Will Hunter, founder and director of the newly established London School of Architecture. The LSA is the realization of Hunter's profound dissatisfaction with the brutal financial and pragmatic realities of architecture education. After finishing his training as an architect at University College of London and the Royal College of Art, Hunter became deputy editor for the architectural review, and in 2012 wrote the piece that would eventually lead to the LSA's founding, entitled Alternative Roots for Architecture. Having experienced first-hand the rift between academia and practice grow ever wider, while students accrue debt into the hundreds of thousands of pounds, Hunter laments the institutional failures of a long, expensive, and questionably worthwhile educational structure.
The crux of the piece turned into a think tank, alternative roots for architecture education, and from research done there, Hunter began forming the structure of the London School of Architecture's postgraduate program. The school opened its doors in London this past fall, operating under a cost neutral model where students would study while also working for pay in firms that have partnered with the school. I spoke with Hunter in August a few weeks before session was officially underway about what it takes and what's at stake in founding an entirely new institution of architectural education. I hope you enjoy our one-to-one with Will Hunter.
So now let's see, October 2015, that is the nominal start time for the first inaugural class of the London School of Architecture, and right now you're in the process of pairing the applicants or the now accepted applicants with the firms that they'll be working with. Can you tell us a little bit about that process? Yeah, exactly. So 12 weeks ago until we opened, so first week of October, and we had about 140 applications from students, we have 35 students who paid up their deposits who are now organizing to pair with practices.
So there's about 50 practices involved, and we're trying to do it by research interests. So we've made five think tanks, and we've asked the students in the practice to pick which things that they want to be in. So that's made kind of greeppings of them, and then I've made a suggestion to each student, and then that's the basis for conversation, and then we're trying to send each student for two interviews, and each practice to students to interview, and then three that, everyone will get a placement. So this is kind of like almost a dating process where you're trying to pair mutually beneficial partners together based on interests, but also on what type of educational goals do you imagine these students?
You know, they're dating, but like we've learned in lots of, you know, three in a marriage is not great, so I'm hoping that we can put them together and then they stay married and we can leave the picture. But they have to be happy really. So both the student and the practice has to be happy. So I'm trying to make sure that it works for both parties really.
So there could be some surprises in there that actually one of the practices I saw today said it isn't a student that we would have thought of interviewing if we had their CV, but we think they could bring something really interesting to the practice that will make us question what we're doing. So I think it's quite interesting, I think what the outcomes might be. So are you kind of the main person making these partnerships? And as the role of the director of the school, it seems like at this point you're also kind of running all the administrative faculties as well.
Can you describe kind of how you've been situated now that the school has been founded by before it's officially kind of begun? So I do have people helping with, there's lots of spreadsheets going on in terms of trying to make sure that they're accurate and keeping a picture of where that's up to, they're quite organic. But I think actually trying to find the one person that has been to meet all the students and all the practices. So in terms of making those parents, it's important for me to be able to do that because I met everybody.
So maybe let's back up a little bit and describe the difference between the first and second year in this two year program because as it stands, London School of Architecture will have, at this point, is only open to London and EU students, is that correct? Yes, well, 20 students, any European student or EAA student, which is a series of different countries that can come and study here. So is that the case that they also all necessarily have architecture backgrounds or that they're just ready to pursue second-tier architecture education? So in the UK, you need to have an architecture background to study for all the parts you cause?
Right. Okay. So at this point, could you describe a little bit about how you decided to split this two-year program down because it's very specific that the first year is devoted to a certain type of cost-neutral work with firms that involves pairing the student with a particular firm and having them work part-time with that firm while also studying to a point where they're able to support the cost of their studies through the part-time work that they're doing and then the transition into the second year work, the kind of proto-practice year where things get a little bit more real, so to speak, where the field work might be a little bit more involved. So can you describe briefly what the major distinction is between year one and year two in the program?
Yeah, sure. So I mean, the original idea for the school was to, because the fees are going up in the UK to nine grand a year from about three grand a year, we students from next year will leave with about 18,000 pounds of debt from most architecture courses. So we wanted to make a model where the fees and the salary they've been on in a placement balance out. So we've set off these at six grand a year which are a third cheaper, so in total they'll pay 12 grand to the school nutrition fees and they'll be paid in the first year, 12,000 pounds minimum by the practice.
So that's the kind of cost-neutral model across both years. And what we're looking for is two really very different educational environments where the first year is much more collaborative and much more urban so that three days a week can practice two days a week working on school projects. And for a lot of that it's exploring the city and that'll be the basis for the second year of thesis projects. And then the big kind of distinction I think for the courses that the practices and the students are performing think-text, so they're producing design research for publication.
So we want to make a very nimble, relevant architectural research culture that is how to engage with the real world and engage with how the power of the architect and how the world's changing and what the spatial opportunities are in them. And how does the thesis program and the final thesis product, how does that process differ from a more traditional architecture education? Yeah, so in second year they move into the LSA studio so they're out of practice, they're full-time at the school and we've asked them to get into the second year that they need to come with a really clear critical trajectory and want to come and say that they want to test in terms of their architecture. So a lot of the English schools, I don't know what it's like in the States, but in the UK it's why a unit-based system where you might have say a dozen students taught by a particular practitioner.
So we've tried to move away from that in that the students are second year gender more and that they come with the agenda and will pair them in terms of their cheat by with what they want to get out of the second year. So it's a kind of more challenging environment, but I mean kind of supportive but we're pushing them and then catching them. And you've successfully roped up a partnership with the London Metropolitan University so that when the students graduate from LSA they will effectively get a certificate of completion from LMU with a specification that it came from the LSA, is that correct? So London Metropolitan's are academic partner, they've got a very strong successful architecture school which in terms of when we were looking for a partner they were the closest, in terms of values, I think they're the closest, really, they're just brilliant.
Programs in the city is what amazing practices teach you that. So I think the fifth rise culture was great, but they're kind of a bigger scale. And so the students will ask you to leave with an undermet professional diploma. So they could, it's how it's, I think it's, well we're still debating what it's called.
So it's an LSA program but an undermet professional diploma. So they could go on and do a PhD somewhere or if they're replying to a different country and they thought, they've always had the London Metropolitan they can use on a CV that is their sort of benchmark around the world. Because I imagine that kind of becoming the calling card of the LSA's reputation, right? Because in the US at least there's so much attached to institutional reputation about what school you go to and where your degree is certified from.
So I'm kind of wondering what you imagine being the ideal or the like the dream reputation of the LSA once it's kind of already established itself. Is there an idea that you have of what kind of role in the overall world of architecture education it might kind of show? I mean I sort of think, you know, degrees are great in their pieces of paper and they have value because they're from institutions but what we're really looking for is students who produce amazing work and they have to go to a room and put four pieces of paper up on a wall with a proposal and win people over in terms of their ideas that these are, actually if you're a great architect you're not going to rely on what you studied. It's about how much you can formulate a vision and bring people along with you and leave.
So I think what we're looking for is that kind of leadership quality and therefore FOLIO is a kind of true reflection of what they want that architecture to be about that it's set up and should be actually for their career going forwards for 10 or 20 years. And aside from that, that's like that in and of itself is something of a quite purposely obviously and the goal of founding the LSA is quite a revolutionary idea to found the school on and in addition to the fact that you're starting out with this cost neutral model which I think is incredibly ambitious and incredibly interesting to kind of model not only the school's ideology off of but it's kind of social mission to be able to offer that to aspiring architects. I want to kind of discuss that a little bit more like why was it so important to launch the school with this cost neutral model where instead of kind of maybe working incrementally to move students towards a more cost sustainable model but instead just get off the ground with this completely kind of net zero cost balance? How difficult was that and why was that so important to kind of start from the get go with the cost neutral model?
Well I think there's a head of schools conference and the chair of that produced this graph that showed average salary over a 25 year, no 30 year career and the interest on a debt when you are paying nine grand a year and the interest always rose over the salary for your whole career. So it's a kind of statement about architecture and the profession and a way to recruit the blend of the profession. It is so off putting to anyone entering that, entering architecture that I felt it was really important to make sure that we could really attract the architecture, the profession, the really attract the best minds and the best talents into it because the world is facing so many challenges right now. But you want the best people working on it not just the richest.
So I think we were looking at a way to really ensure that there were these alternative reasons in the profession. So going back to the institutional backing for the program and the eventual certification, what was the process like coordinating with Reba and other accreditation bodies to kind of get the program legitimized in that way? So we've been talking to the RBA and was ARB which is the architects registration board which gives you the part two. So they are credit the documentation.
So we've been talking to them for a couple of years. We make a final submission to them once we've done the signed the contract on the London Met validation over the coming couple of weeks. And then the RBA can any validate you once you've got work in. So we're talking to them now.
And actually one of our directors in the school is the chair of the Reba new courses committee. So we're kind of very familiar with all that. The process, obviously, you won't be able to chair the committee when we put ourselves forward. So what's been open for a year, the RBA would come and look at the work and then we put the re-evaluation in place for hopefully when the first cohort graduates.
Okay. And so when working with the firms to kind of broker this partnership between the firms and the students, were the qualifications for accreditation kind of a specific concern in deciding which firms would be partnered with? Not really. I mean, we were looking for architecture practices that were interested in what we were doing and were interested in being engaged with a school that wanted to engage with our agenda.
And they brought something in terms of critical research interest and wanted to help foster and nurture talent. So I think we were kind of pushing an open door. I mean, a lot of the practices, emails, I was going to ask them in the architecture review and then they got in touch with us and I went around and met and then maybe 50 or 60 practices. So there was a huge commitment shown by the London practices in terms of actually when it's getting involved.
It hasn't been, my fear of some of the started was that the practice wouldn't really want to collaborate and maybe work ready for this type of model. But it actually feels like there's this extreme hunger from the practices and also from the students really in terms of the number of applicants we've had. If this whole story of the LSA kind of began when you wrote the initial review or the initial article about what your issues with architecture education as it stands were, which I believe was only in 2012, that for all of this to kind of come together in such a short amount of time and to in that amount of time drum up enough interest from all these different firms, I think it's a very resounding success almost immediately because it is clearly hitting a nerve. People are clearly interested in trying out this new model and being associated with it and growing from it as well.
There's part of the second year, I believe, of the program involves the opportunity for students who have already been working with a certain firm to kind of continue working with that firm and say if they're new students, even if they're working with a firm that isn't part of the collaborating network of firms that the LSA is involved with, that that offers an opportunity for the student to then kind of recruit that firm into the LSA's network. I found that really interesting because it seemed like it maybe it could create this organic kind of self-perpetuating model of student and faculty and practitioners network that constantly grows outside of the LSA and then feeds back into the LSA. So can you tell me a little bit and just talk a little bit about what the kind of thought process was behind allowing that particular kind of clause to the collaborative firm model? I mean, my thought was, and I'm sorry, I thought was that we assumed in the first year we may end up with actually a lot of students already in placements in London who the practice really like and they then go part-time and join the program and that might be a kind of really big recruiting ground for us.
But actually it's turned out really that 95% of students have applied to the school and want to be placed in a practice. So it's actually not being that big a root. Two or three or four people in placements? No, maybe fewer.
Two people who want to stay where they are. Maybe over that, sorry, never even that. There's maybe one student who wants to stay where they are and then there's maybe four students who want to bring in new practices. Let's maybe talk about a little bit about the student population more generally because we know they're all architects or they are already trained as architects.
But what do you think? Of course, you're not going to divulge any confidential student information. But what do you imagine being the thought process behind a student that is attracted to such a type of school that doesn't have any proof of practice yet? It hasn't gotten off the ground yet.
They get to be this Vanguard class and go forward in this new thing. What do you imagine or what do you glean from that new population? What are their major concerns and what brought them to the LSA? I mean, actually, I think they're pioneers.
That's why they've come. So what's great is that they've come all over the place in lots of different schools and they have a huge level of enthusiasm for the program. So in terms of the doubts that they've expressed, that hasn't really been that many. I mean, they've been, what's great is that these are a whole bunch of people who've come from all over the place who really want to try a new model of education and are totally up for it.
And that level of enthusiasm, I think, is bound to produce something interesting. And I think what is slightly different about the student cohort from other schools that have been aware of is that I think they're much more collaborative as a group of students, particularly in the book photos we've seen, they've often done group projects. And I don't think we're getting the kind of lone genius model of student. That sort of book photo that's sort of supremely interested in developing its own kind of graphic language, let's say.
And that's the kind of thing that's really important to us, and that's the kind of thing that we're seeing in the students who are more engaged with each other and highly engaged with the world. And I think that's probably one commonality I've seen. And that certainly meshes with the idea of the LSA in general, that it's not so much concerned with spitting out that signature aesthetic style or so. It's more about a truly collaborative practice that is heavily based within the locality of London, which is another thing that is so fascinating about the school.
The work that plays the students in, I believe the first year working with specific boroughs in London and working on active projects. Can you describe what kind of projects the students might be working on and what is it about the focus on a certain borough or a certain neighborhood in London that you thought was being so home, which is like the centre of town where Crossrail will be coming through, which is a big piece of infrastructure that five million people will be using a day. So it's astronomically busy in terms of a piece of metropolitan London, but also has this tight network of streets. So the way the two things collide together, we thought, was really interesting.
And we wanted the students every year to be engaged with a locality that London is a world city. You can do anything you'd like here. But as an educational model, we think it's really important that you can really get to know a place and understand the people there and what might be interesting for it. So there are other schools that do the kind of unique trip where you might go to Japan for a week and you might visit your site for three hours.
But that's quite difficult really then to get a sense of designing a project for someone that you've met for a whole year that you may only see for three hours, which I think is quite difficult. So the level that we're looking to operate at masters level, we really want them to be able to engage with a place over a long period of time and test their ideas there. And what kind of projects are they? Are they explicitly architectural or?
Just these spatial. I don't think they have to be. I think the students go off the course and become politicians or planners or musicians or anything really. But we do want spatial proposition.
So we're looking at how architects can make spatial proposals about a place and about the world. So I think it has to be something that is complex and looks at the way that we can reconcile really complex pieces of information as spatial proposal. And does the LSA then have a headquarters of sorts or like a core neighborhood in London that operates out of? We have a headquarters area in Bloomsbury, which is sort of where the AA is and UCL, the Bartlett and a lot of the big schools are.
So we've got a small outpost there which we're working on at the moment. Oh, that's handy. So was that a conscious decision to kind of situate with all those other schools? No, not really.
It was we've moved in with Nigel Coates, who's the chair of our academic court. So we're in his office as well at the moment. Okay. So we've got a lot of time to kind of the long term or is there a plan to maybe have satellite locations around London?
So the design museums are main spatial partners. So all our crits and lectures and seminars are at the design museum. And then I think this whole kind of network of practices that also have meeting rooms and cantines and spaces that we might use for different events as well. But we don't want to get I think we need to have central core office for the team of two or three or four people.
But then in the second year, there's a studio for the students. So they're all based in a studio together. But really they want to be able to keep the infrastructure relatively flexible for the first few years. I think at least from an American perspective, the stuff we see coming out of the urbanism thought in London, London specifically is a little bit dire at this point.
Like the way people are writing and thinking about London seems to be kind of an anticipatory apocalyptic scenario where people are kind of thinking of how the city is developing and kind of becoming more corporatized as signs of the it's inevitable like just collapse or something that is like very dramatic. And I'm sure I'm sure that a lot of that is just like is the translation overseas and a lot of it gets overblown. But maybe you could talk a little bit about how you feel the climate is in London right now, which is explicitly influenced by the architectural framework of the city and what is being built and how people are responding to it. What is the atmosphere right now in London?
Any been your opinion? I think just generally London does a lot of money. So I mean, it is the centre of wealth and the real problems are the disparity in how it is distributed. So the access opportunity is not even and that's a big problem both urbanistically and architecturally but just generally in terms of life really.
That's what we're seeing in a very late capitalist metropolitan city. It's a very complex urban framework. I think actually in terms of the way the city is developing, it's getting so big now. So how we actually connect up a city that has been developing over a period of over many hundreds of years to the scale it is at and making new cities and new neighbourhoods is a very complex challenge.
And do you imagine that the certain model in London could eventually, for the LSA, kind of become another city essay as in a school of architecture that takes the same model of LSA as educational ideology and then puts it into another major metropolitan city? Is that something that you kind of imagine maybe years and years down the line eventually having? Year three, we're sort of thinking New York would be fun. That would be a nice place to come or Tokyo.
I think you need a really big city to have enough practices and enough critical mass and a critical mess to be able to do stuff and make it interesting. Just to go back a little bit to what you were referring to in the economic disparity present in London, that's another thing that seems to be an obvious reaction that the cost neutral model for the school is responding to. To say that in this incredibly rich city to have an educational model that is able to offer this kind of cost neutral opportunity is incredibly valuable. But then there's always other things to take in mind that I'm sure the LSA has been grappling with having to do with other financial costs.
So simply having a cost neutral institution doesn't necessarily guarantee you a flat in London, right? So what other financial aid models or financial support models is the school considering? So ultimately, from year three, if you want access to the student loans company, maintenance loans and maintenance grants, but that's quite a long process at the moment. So you have to go through the quality assurance agency to get a review from them, which is the education agency, which is the education agency, which is the education agency.
So the government is seeking to make a market in social education and there's still a couple of barriers left in place. So we're hoping that those might be lifted soon so that the students can access that funding from the state sooner to support new models of education. What we're doing in the meantime is we're fundraising for bursaries. We're offering some bursaries already to students, but we're fundraising and we're about to start massively from next week.
We've got the fundraising task force to try and raise a lot more money over the next 12 weeks to give financial support. So obviously we realize that there's a kind of funding gap between the state funding coming online in two years and the philanthropic funding that we'll need to support these students in the next two years. So what's interesting is that the students we've got now are real trailblazers because they are timing to us knowing that it's a difficult situation, that they haven't got full cushioning as if they've gone to a university where there's all the state funding in place. So they're kind of super keen to be with us.
And we're hoping to connect that in enthusiasm with the wealth that we've been talking about in London to try and help support these students on their, you know, to transform their lives through education. I imagine that as soon as like the institutional other support systems kind of fall into place and the school has a proven model that it can point to that things will become a little easier to organize. It's very circular. Like all these things, it's circular.
It's so much easier once you've got students signed up and you've been validated to get to look credible. Well, there we have raised already 200,000 pounds from a range of practices and benefactors and patrons who have kind of been extremely supportive from kind of Satori Lehi and Nadia Swarovski to AHM and Orms and Greenshaw and other people I'm forgetting. I think that kind of has been a huge support from the world of, well, not just from the arts, but from finance and from business that people see the need to support this education, really. So yeah, could you describe a little bit who those other non architectural players are who have kind of seen the LSA as a necessary movement and are supportive of its cause?
Yeah, sure. So Nadia Swarovski, you probably know, she's a founding patron. She is from the Swarovski family, which is Swarovski crystals. There's Sir Terry Lee who was the former CEO of Tesco, which is a big supermarket.
There's Sir Peter Mason, who used to run a company called AMEC, which is a very big construction company. He's now a chairman of Thameswater. There's Martin Halusa, who's the chairman of APACS, which is a very large private equity fund. And then there's quite a lot of my trustees.
So Chris Ben Kelly, Divina Malink-Druck, Neil Hophouse, who was a trustees at the school. I think that might be it. And did they, how were those relationships? How did they come to be?
Did you reach out to them? And then they were through, yeah, it's been one of those organic things where it's been initially this kind of friends and family thing where we've gone to the people closest to us and then that sort of moved out to the next level of contact. Gotcha. Okay.
Maybe we could return a little bit then to how students will be interacting with firms and the kind of work that they'll be doing both inside the LSA umbrella and then just within the firm umbrella. Could you just maybe pick a few specific firms that are in this collaborative network and describe the kind of work they do and the way that their practice meshes with the LSA? And it can be any firms like that you just think are, you can just pull it out of the hat and we understand you just don't have time to go through all 50 more firms to describe that they can just be like a few illustrative ones. I mean, I think one of the firms that was the first on board was two firms that came on board really early was AH&M of which were Monahan Morris and Orms, which are their two big firms.
They work across lots of different sectors. They work internationally, but through the RBA, they've both been involved in trying to transform education. So I think together they've made this in teaching practices, which they would try to make, which is very similar to what the LSA is in a way. So there's this movement from the RBA and from AH&M and Orms to deal with different types of education.
So I think students there will be working across a range of sectors and a range of, you know, different kind of big projects, but obviously in environments where the practices see a supporting role for what they're doing, but we have kind of smaller practices like Assemble, who are on the shortest list for the Turner Prize this year, which is the sort of big arts prize in the UK. AOC, who are, it's difficult to write their work. So, you know, quite small, more arts-based practices. We've got practices that are more like developers, so they're finding their own land and developing their own projects and operating in different ways.
I think there's like you expect of London as every type of practice you could imagine involved. I mean, through to, you know, sort of Cullinan studio and Roger Sturke, Harbour and Partners, who are kind of reverb gold medalists and have built. I mean, if you look at the amount of work that has built around the world, it's astonishing. So, is there like a key or set evaluation metric for how students progress through the program?
Will the firms be issuing some type of report or like graded point system to kind of attract the progress or is that not something that the LSA is concerned with? No, so we're mostly, we're not marking their working practice. We're marking their critical understanding of it. So, obviously everyone's going to be having completely different experiences, but what we really want to do is kind of make a platform where they can debate those, that they can form their own critical judgment of it.
And to make a reflection of the practice they're currently in, to in a way to project forward about the practice that they would like to be in in future. So, I think like an MBA might do that you make a scrap to be about where you want to be, you know, you design your career, not just learn how to design buildings. At this point, nearly a few months before the school opens, how does it feel? How does it feel to have come to this point in just a few years?
Well, this is the exciting bit until, let's say two weeks ago, there was a lot of doing, a lot of paperwork, contracts, producing reports. Now, there's the real fun bit because there's 35 students, 50 practices, it's about making the culture now. So, it's like, it's very real. When you get rooms with people and they're excited to meet each other and they want to produce work, this is the kind of thing.
And we're putting the lecture program and inviting people to that. This is the exciting bit. So, in our understanding and our kind of charting of the LSA, we've seen the beginning of the origin point as rooted in this architectural review piece that you wrote in 2012, articulating grievances and the issues that you had with the architectural education model that currently stands. And from 2012 to now to fall 2015, admitting a first round of students in a brand new school with accreditation and associated firms and just at a cost neutral school at that, it seems to us like a pretty amazing trajectory, pretty accelerated one as well to have accomplished what seems like a very short amount of time.
When you first wrote the article and when I believe you began kind of a think tank and the response to that to kind of develop ideas for new directions that architectural education could head, did you ever imagine that this all could actually come together in three years? What were your expectations when you first started? I was hoping for two years, but I'm going behind schedule really. In the first conversation I had with Robert Mollie who's the Dean of London Met, I was saying, you know, can't say that long, he was saying it would take you three years.
So, he was right and I was wrong. So, I'm actually looking back three years is about right. I think there's a graph I've seen produced where you start out as an uninformed optimist and then you become an informed pessimist and then you come out the other side and informed optimist. So, I think we're at that stage now where we've found out we need to find out and we're kind of with 99% of the way there.
And what else is kind of the, what's that last percent, just getting the students in? Yeah, going through the interview process, getting the contract signed in terms of the students in the right placement, inviting people to the public lecture series. I mean, nothing major really, 99% done. After the school begins, do you have certain events kind of planned for more interfacing with the public to kind of, you know, perform and present the LSA's work to the greater London architectural scene?
Well, I think we've got a public lecture series and I think we really want to think about the, so there's interesting things looking at very different areas of study. And I think we part of the challenge of them is to think about what audience they want to connect with and what's the best platform to do that. So, if it's about housing policy, then it's how do you not be government to change housing policy or if it's about new forms of public spaces that might be about how you communicate with the public or whatever. So, I think we're looking at, I think that's part of the question we're asking them to do.
And in the long term focus of kind of imagining that the LSA has an incredibly florid and successful first couple of years and is able to expand to New York City, that's kind of, you know, in the US, that would be, for us, a kind of, that would be the perfect place to go, that makes perfect sense. But it's also even perhaps more so than London, an incredibly rough place to try to just try to set up, you know, it's economically also very divided and a difficult place to live and also a very competitive architecture market. So, I can't tell LA instead. Yes.
And you'll help me. You've got to help. You would immediately punish me. Absolutely.
And we have a very strong student following of people who are, I think, maybe one of the most commonly debated subjects in our connect is how crazily bad architecture education is and needing of a very strong reboot and that ever, and a lot of the debates just boiled down to what you were taught in school and whether or not, because you had to suffer through it, the next generation should as well just to continue the cycle of abuse instead of trying to adopt a new model. But then you brought up Los Angeles is actually interesting because, of course, we have the SIRC model of kind of a new architecture school beginning in a very different cultural climate in Los Angeles than today, but still one that is reverentially referred to and still quite admired. Did you take any inspiration from other schools like SIRC or other like new avant-garde schools that might have come about earlier in the 20th century, but still nonetheless have applications to today's practice? Not particularly SIRC.
I mean, I think we looked at in the issue we did in the AR, but it was called a meaner piece about lots of different educational models that sort of set up, I think, probably all in Italy in the 50s or 60s, I can't remember now. I mean, I think we looked at, you know, Albin Boyarski, I think he's been quite big inspiration. I think a lot of the people involved in the school are from the AAA, which I think we're trying to schools and maybe a bit of the criticism is to shoot because that was quite interesting and it was independent. So Prince Charles had this architect's school for a bit.
We have been inspired by other people, but I think we also were inspired by kind of the idea of taking a blank sheet of paper and seeing what we came out of it from first principles. And so as the school is on the cost of its beginning, we're very excited to see what comes out of it. Yeah, it's a surprise for everyone. No one knows exactly what will happen.
What do you imagine your role changing as soon as a school becomes an established institution? Right now, obviously, you're the director and that role may not nominally change, but do you imagine in the near future kind of having different responsibilities and roles within the school just to kind of keep it running? I do. No.
I was saying, well, I weighed my parents and my step, I was saying, what is your succession plan? I was thinking about it starting to get up. What's something of the succession plan? So I've been so confused with getting all this stuff done to open.
I think once it's once it opens, I think it will be that really fun bit of actually engaging with quite a small cohort of like a family of students really and getting to know all of them and making that kind of human social organism that becomes the kind of culture that will be the fun bit that will be the school. I mean, I think that's the thing I'm really looking forward to. Wonderful. The conversation to be heard and what comes down to it because I think what we have really has when we brought the practice together and the students is there's no real agreement on what we're doing.
It's not a school where there'll be a single way of doing things. I think even within the design think-text there'll be disagreements and debates, some of which may be more lively than others. I think actually having a really genuine debate and having it publicly is really exciting. We're so excited to finally get a chance to talk to you and discuss the school and on the cusp of its kind of realization.
So thank you so much for joining us and we hope to stay in touch. Thank you very much. Speak soon to care. Bye.
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