More applications, lower acceptance rate
The number of applications to the School of Architecture for the 2009-2010 academic year jumped by 23 percent over last year's figures. Dean Robert A. M. Stern ’65MArch attributes the surge to three factors: the increased attention the school has garnered from the restoration of Paul Rudolph Hall; the school's good reputation; and the poor state of the economy. "Students who may have tried to get a job between college and graduate school, or those who are working and thinking of coming back for advanced training but were about to be laid off, may have accelerated their [education] plans," Stern said, adding with a smile, "I'd like to take full credit for it, but I think this is a trend, not just at Yale." The school has admitted just 141 of the 989 applicants, or 14 percent, the lowest admission rate in the school's history.
Symposium focuses on eclectic architect
A symposium held at the school May 9-10 examined the work of James Stirling, an influential architect and winner of the 1981 Pritzker Prize, who taught at Yale in 1959 and from 1966 to 1984. Stirling had a reputation as an eclectic practitioner who reinterpreted Modernism and other previous theories to become one of the most influential architects of the later twentieth century. Some critics insisted that Stirling "didn't have a coherent theory, but was a master of manipulating forms," said Professor Emmanuel Petit, one of the symposium organizers. "His non-insistence on theory may be one of the reasons we have to look at Stirling again; he felt free to mingle theories whenever they were useful to what he was doing at the moment." An exhibition of Stirling's work will be on view this fall at the Yale Center for British Art.
Roman holiday
Thirty students midway through their training spent four weeks in Rome from May 12 to June 12 for the school's annual intensive workshop, "Rome: Continuity and Change," in which they studied examples from the entire history of architecture, from antiquity to the present. Archeologists and historians of Rome presented in-depth lectures and on-site guided tours. "The seminar examines historical continuity and change as well as the ways in which and the reasons why some elements and approaches were maintained over time and others abandoned," wrote Professor Emeritus Alexander Purves ’58, ’65MArch, in a summary of the workshop experience. Purves and lecturer Stephen Harby led the trip.
The students' experience during the workshop has been described as "draw, draw, draw," as they focus on buildings, landscapes, and gardens, both within and outside the city. "The course is guided by the conviction that an essential part of an architect's formation is the first-hand experience of a broad range of buildings and places of all periods and styles," Purves wrote. But they also took time to enjoy lectures, concerts, and urban life in general in Rome.
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