Interview - Prof de projet à Zagreb.

So the first question is about the way you are teaching, the originality of the way you are teaching?

I'm trying to teach by abolishing any difference between student and teachher. Because I think that if you deals with some things, with some discipline you have no difference betwin youngsters and people who are already experienced in a discipline. Because they deal with the same questions, the same procedures, what am trying to teach is a kind of eagerness, to focuss them in architectural themes, to make them curious, that's the way I teach. And to connect architecture with everyday life, with art especially and other disciplines. And I always try to ask them what they do beyond archittecture, because I think the reality is the origin for architecture, archictecture is not origin for architecture in itself.

What is the place of interdisciplinarity in your way of teaching? For example are you inviting teachers of other discipines in your studios?

Very really, I do not do such things. But I amphasize this connections between disciplines I use very often Bruce Mau interpretation over disciplines, and what is their role in architectural decision's making process. And especially I give an amphasis on art. But I do not call artists to speack about their art, because I usually found that artists can not speack bout their art, it's much more interesting what we can find in it, what messages we can discover.


What are the things you want improve in your way of teaching, the things that doesn't work, that finally students don't manage to deal with?

I found the inverse problem. It's more a question about how to change a student, than improve your way of teaching there, to change a professor or so on. It's much more a question about how the students make a generation profile. I found huge lack of that generation profile. They can not understand why they are together on the same five years on the faculty. They have no group identity. And I find it as a basic problem in teaching, especially architecture. You can not deal with architecture without very severe and clear profile, cultural profile, philosophical profile.


Don't you think that our cultural profile is that mess of profile, that every one, especially in europe, feel the same... globalisation? Do you think it's a problem?

Yes of course. That's why I'm talking about group idendity. Find your own generation identity. What is your generation identity? I don't know. What are your aims, what do you think about the world around you? I think you, young students you do not have a group identity, you have no ideals anymore. why? That's the right question.


What do you think the Bologna process changes in your way of teaching?

In the school it's making better conditions I think. Because we are suddenly in a new situation, we have to react on it, and I find it interresting in this way. Every thing I do, being teaching, being in the bologna process, I think that s the same situation that whan you design something, you have to connect facts, to change their rlationships, and finally to find your solution, and we are all in that situation and we are trying to find new solutions. That's good for every teacher. I found a lot of interestng things in that kind of networkorking with other professors, to find people who think similar, with whom you can devellop some kind of dialog.


To go further in the problem of a lack of cultural identity, I think ther's a link here with the multiplication of knowledges, and the means of being in connection with it. How do you deal with that phenomen? Do you use it or are you surviving it?

Do I use what? wikipedia for example? I hate wikipedia because it's a synonym for something wich is without any base. It's not democraty, it's some of lack of cultural base. Once apon a time you had an ideology, you had religion, you had very clear points of view of what is going on around you. Right now, because we have at the same time multiplicity of walls, we have to invent the better one, and so it's a very good basis for research in architecture. And so by doing those researches we can find wich will be the philosophical conditions of our future, and I find it very intersting. To use architectural process as a process of accumulating knowledge, as new words.


What are the links you have with your administration?

We have here like a free situation, you are free to do whatever you think it's good to do, the only limit is the financial one.


Last quetion... What would a dreamed shool of architecture look like?

It will be a small school, with few students, some kind of very pathetic school. Wich not limited on a building but is every where. that's the way I see it. And I see the school without divisions between what is students' work and professors' work. I see it as rue de se vra de le corbusier, ar the factory of andy warohl... That's the scool I would like to work in. Because you have to... What I'm trying as a teacher is to see the world for flesh and blood of these young people. Because they are excellent example of what is going on around us. You know andy wahrol has not to have to paint a canvas, because the other people were the canvas, you know. So he had video, he registered the thinking, the sentences, and that's the way I would lik to do.


(Off)

What are you learning from students as a teacher?

I think when you teach you have to constat some siuations, wich are not only interesting for professors but for student to. You know I gave a lecture four years ago in Graz, and I gave it the title learning from students, not for students like you could hear thirty or fourty yars ago, but from students. Because it's a mutual relation.