5 Great art cannot be taught, but more run-of-the-mill art can. There are elements of architectural education that retain some mystery for both students and tutors. The essential problem is, how can you teach someone to generate ‘great’ architecture and how do you teach someone to find ‘inspiration’? To read them, substitute the word ‘architecture’ for the word ‘art’:
1 Art can be taught, but nobody knows quite how. In his book Why Art Cannot Be Taught, James Elkins defines six different answers to this question. 4 Art cannot be taught or even nourished, but it is possible to teach right up to the beginnings of art, so that students are ready to make art the moment they graduate. 3 Art cannot be taught, but it can be fostered or helped along. The design studio, the role of the design-studio tutor and crits, also known as reviews — all are ubiquitous and carefully protected despite the fact that, although they seem to work, nobody appears to agree on why or how, or whether they could be replaced by something better. Like art, architecture is always searching for greatness among its ranks and can never satisfactorily define the reasons for, or moment behind, inspiration. In fact, this struggle fuels the constant reinvention of both architectural education and practice.