by Michael Monti, Executive Director

Clockwise from top left: closing reception at the Mies van der Rohe Pavillion, reception at the CCCB; participants at 2012 ACSA International Conference; keynote lecture with Martha Thorne, Mohsen Mostafavi, and Xavier Costa. (visit flickr.com/acsa-arch for more photos from the event)

Take these notes from Barcelona, print them or rewrite them on paper. Cut them up and, thinking of nothing about order, mix and layer the pieces—spread them around on the table until a picture forms.

  • Colin Ripley performed his presentation on new demands and outcomes from architectural education. He said the paper was a lob, a defensive move to get your feet under you. There were no images of a tennis court or the straining muscles of player’s lunging volley save. His text, however, has some drama. We are efforting a web version of this performance, so you can see and hear for yourself.
  • People from Cape Town, Auckland, Tokyo, Brazil, Denmark, Egypt,the Philippines, and Catalonia came. Also someone from Normal, Illinois.
  • The live Q&A with Harvard’s Mohsen Mostafavi redeemed that format for me. The session achieved a sustained intellectual discussion about how and why to educate architects. The featured speaker’s ideas and expertise were always understood, so that helped give the discussion a head start. More helpful, though, was having a day’s worth of paper sessions and audience discussions to create the right mood.
  • I expected more presentations about Barcelona on the program. We received many more submissions from people wanting to talk about pedagogy, and many of the presentations were less about the city’s setting and more about cross-cutting issues in architecture schools.  
  • No matter the graffiti, the urban grime that is in every large urban area, Barcelona is an elegant city with a refined design culture. I hope the conference in some measure kept up both of these descriptors of the city. If anything did, it was the sight of so many of our people at the closing reception at the MVDR Pavilion. 
  • Where do you want to go in summer of 2014?