Tom Frantzen Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, Amsterdam, the Netherlands 429a substantial component, and he steers clear of teaching about the symbolic language
of architecture (bildlehren). He introduces the term dilettantism (Dilettantismus)^8
— which goes back to Goethe’s era — as a playful strategy that still arrives at the
desired result independently of the conventional professional approach.^9 He handles
the same concepts as the Bauhaus tradition, but avoids the professional, standard
techniques in order to study these phenomena for the purpose of unconventional
techniques. For instance, an assignment on the phenomenon of the line may be
packaged in the assignment to make a machine that produces linear tracks, before
producing an inventory of the tracks produced in this way and (re)presenting them.
[fig. 5] He forces students to develop an unprejudiced sensitivity to the way in which
forms speak and can best be visualised. But above all, his teaching expresses the
pleasure of doing without complications, learning as you play. Just do it.Back to Amsterdam. What about Morphology at the Academy now? Is Morphology
about learning technical skills of visualisation (a frequently heard complaint is that
students are no longer ‘capable’), or are these techniques ways of studying the phe-
nomenon of form and learning to master it?
When seen realistically, the time available for Morphology in the present curricu-
lum is completely inadequate to learn to master a technique properly. Compared, for
instance, with the intensive way in which attention was paid to model drawing in
traditional art education at the Art Academy in the last century, I consider it virtu-
ally impossible to expect students to master a technique in, say, eight afternoons
sufficiently to be able to do their own thing with it. Besides, the number of visual
skills that are required of an architect today has grown so explosively that you cannot
expect more than that a student has applied several techniques for a while to learnfig 5