THE HISTORY AND EVOLUTION OF ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION IN THE DEVELOPED WORLD AND ITS
4.1. The Beaux-Arts System (France)
Cret (1941) outlines the establishment and historical development of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts during the 17th century at which time the national government of France considered architecture as part of the fine arts disciplines, leading to architecture being accommodated in the schools that the French government supported for the advancement of art education. During this period the ‘arts’ shared the workshops for the training and apprenticeship of other trades that were provided by the corporations or guilds, under the supervision of master craftsmen (Cret 1941).
Cret (1941) also confirms that there were private institutions such as schools and studios for the training of painters as well as an Academy of Architecture in Milan during the Renaissance in Italy. It is noted that the Italian Renaissance had a major influence on the Beaux-Arts. The academisation of architectural education during this period led to a disconnection of the art of architectural practice from society and culture.
(Cret 1941) attributes the disconnection of art (and architecture) from society primarily to the Renaissance, which separated art from craft. The consequence of Renaissance ideologies was that the guilds and architectural practise henceforth developed as a single profession following the ideals of the court and the aristocracy. The close relation of architectural practise to construction and the master-builder was lost. The guilds were powerful, having the support of government and strongly resisted the shift from apprenticeship to the formal academies. The painters on the other hand united, under high patronage, against the monopoly held by the guilds and hence realised the recognition of the French government. In 1648 the secretary of state, Colbert, formed an Act which established the Academie Royale de Pointuroet de Sculpture. The academy was formed along the structure of the academies in Rome. The academy eventually took over one of the guilds’ principle functions – educating the artists of the future (Cret 1941). In 1671, Colbert further authorised the founding of the Royal Academy of Architecture. Academicians of the Academy met weekly in order to establish the rules of their art. They were granted the privileged status of Architectes du Roi enabling them to advise government on national projects (Cret 1941). The academicians would appoint one of their
80 | P a g e own members as a professor for life in order to lecture subjects comprising construction, geometry, mechanics and military architecture amongst others. The curriculum spanned three years; members administered admissions and assessed students’ drawings and designs.
During this period, the French Academy was established in Rome, where the most accomplished students spent a further five years studying the art of antiquity. These students were selected for admission to competition, the famous Prix de Rome, which was established in 1720 (Cret 1941). The second half of the 17th century saw the growth in academies, each independent, however under the strict control of the king of France (Cret 1941:5). The academies were accommodated at the Louvre and remained fairly resolute in their methods of operation. In 1793, however, the National Convention reorganised the academies, on the ground of their monarchical tendencies, and established its National Institute, the Institu de France, with five classes. The fourth class of the Institu de France was the fine arts class of forty members consisting of painters, sculptors, music composers and architects, which evolved and developed into the Academie des Beaux-Arts (Cret 1941). Fricker (2010) confirms that the Academie des Beaux-Arts was founded by Cardinal Mazarin under the patronage of Louis XIV, in 1648. The Academie des Beaux-Arts promoted scholarly debate on theory of architecture and thereby raised the status of architects from master artisans to that of philosophers (Fricker 2010). The Academie remained under the administration of the French government through the period of the French Revolution and beyond. In 1863 Emperor Napoleon III ordered that the Academie des Beaux-Arts become independent of the French government, hence the birth of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
While apprenticeship as training continued to exist, the formal system of the academies grew at a significant rate, which prompted a demand for a formal schooling system. However, it was not until the mid-18th century that the Ecole des Beaux-Arts started to flourish and grow; a progress that was accompanied by a corresponding decline in the apprentice system. The Ecole des Beaux-Arts separated from the Instituto in 1807 and continued to appoint academicians and winners of the Prix de Rome as its teachers (Cret 1941). This period of growth of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts was soon followed by an era of critical reaction against the ideologies and methods of the academies and academism.
The growing criticism of academism and the academy stemmed, firstly, from the dissatisfaction towards the protection of Architectes du Roi who enjoyed court patronage and the perceived monopolisation of government work commissions, thereby placing themselves in a position of
81 | P a g e social privilege. Secondly, there were serious complaints against the academy’s non-critical admiration of antiquity during the 17th and early 18th century Neo-Classical period in which Roman art was held as the highest and final expression of architectural truth (Cret 1941). The second half of the 18th century saw two very different traditions evolving in parallel. While the architects of the French tradition strayed away from imitation and developed architecture and education that were in constant evolution, the neo-classical reformers perpetuated a heavy reliance on antiquity and Romanticism and thereby ignored the needs of contemporary civilisation.
Students, however, would be inclined to follow the innovators (Cret 1941). The Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Academy in Rome, despite their traditions, graduated a large number of talented architects who, together with the academicians, often critically challenged the Ecole’s routine teaching of architecture (Cret 1941). Le Duc, Gilbert, Duban and Labrouste were part of that group; they were referred to later as modernists as they utilised new technologies and materials such as steel, and would thereby break away from the precedents of the neo-classicists who employed traditional systems. Their efforts to transform the Academy and the Ecole were partially successful as these institutions were slow to transform. This resulted in a crisis in 1863 when Viollet le Duc obtained the support of Napoleon III in an attempt to break the hold of the Institute on the Ecole. Le Duc was, however, too closely allied to the neo-gothicists and therefore did not win the favour of students who protested against the attempt to enforce any official creed, but rather fought for the school’s liberal traditions. During that time, Liberalism had become the main tradition of the Ecole. This mode of the Ecole afforded the student the freedom to select his teacher and to pursue his training with the same independence outside as inside the school (Cret 1941).
Admission to the Ecole was by competitive examinations. Students who were admitted were considered mature enough to manage their own time and schedules and the only requirement was that the student passed his examinations. There was no time limit for completion of the Diploma; however, no student over the age of thirty was allowed to remain at the Ecole. The students had the freedom to choose any professor from either the three ateliers of the Ecole or freely from the ten ateliers of the academies. The student even had the freedom of rejecting the advice of his professor if he so chose (Cret 1941). Students and graduate practitioners were supported by Patrons, who were usually from the aristocracy. For any Patron to serve on a jury, however, he would have been required to have a fixed minimum number of students, of his atelier, pass the entrance examination to the Ecole.
82 | P a g e The Ecole avoided education by dictation and regimentation and opted rather for a ‘cases’
system. Competitions were perceived as cases conducted by the students for submission to a jury, who would pass judgement (Cret 1941). While in principle, the system gave the students the freedom to explore and experience design, the major pitfall was that students tended to produce what was most likely to please the judges rather than the best architectural solution.
Furthermore, much emphasis was placed on the awe of the image and presentation which took precedence over good quality architecture. Competitions and examinations, judged by the jury, were the principal forms of assessment of the Ecole until almost two centuries later. Fricker (2010) highlights the fact that students were driven by punishing workloads, focusing on renderings that would amaze, consisting of rich detail in difficult media such as water colour.
Projects comprised dozens of architectural drawings that were produced in a short space of time for critique by elevated faculty or studio masters (Fricker 2010). Fierce competitions showcasing the awe of architectural production defined the highest level of assessment. The Grand Prix de Rome prize was the greatest of the competitions, in which the honoured received scholarships to study in Rome, then the fountainhead of classicism (Fricker 2010). The Ecole regarded the robust imperial classicism as one of the eternal truths of architecture (Fricker 2010). This tradition continued until the late 19th century when the impact of modernism in Europe when the ideologies and philosophies of the Ecole system would be critically challenged as students and academics questioned the relevance of the system in contemporary societies.
On 19 April 1966, the architecture professors of the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux- Arts in Paris went on strike against the Beaux-Arts system of teaching architecture. They were joined by students in the demand for educational transformation at the Ecole, as they were starting to question the Beaux-Arts system’s relevance to contemporary society. The sustained intensity of the criticism resulted in the Grand Prix de Rome prize, that had existed since 1717, being suspended (Weismehl 1967). The Ecole would hence be in urgent need of transformation.
The 1966 uprising was of such intensity that it resulted in the transformation and restructuring of the Ecole, which changed its identity and pedagogic approaches as evident from the late twentieth century to the present day. According to Gulgonen and Laisney (1982), the Ecole was separated into semi-autonomous pedagogical units, each with its own ideological position.
Although the atelier pedagogy continued, the former hierarchical structure and formality was abolished. Contemporary architectural production, in the new system, was defined by solid theoretical positions on urban form and structure with particular sensitivity to heritage and
83 | P a g e historical urban centres. The Ecole would thereby evolve from a rigid system of strictly defined outcomes, to one that promulgated diversity through a system of pedagogic units.