Fernanco Domeyko is an architect and has also taught architecture around the world, at several universities including MIT, where he served as a professor for several years.

AJ: There is this general mentality in academia that the architect must be a renaissance man and have a generalist education. Why is that? Why is it necessary for the architect to have this broad education?

F. Domeyko: The Renaissance man was a generalist man, a broad man as a human being. The Renaissance men are examples of completeness of men as humans. They touch on poetry, on the sense of infinity and on techniques. They are complete men both from the physical and intellectual perspective. That was the idea of old times men. I think that education is exactly that. Education is a process of thinking, a way to understand and be responsible to society. It is a way to be responsible to other human beings who inhabit our planet which is constantly changing, because of technology, disasters, and tragedies. That is why architects in this super-dynamic constant movement have to be prepared to think always in an innovative way. I believe that a school has to communicate the sense of excellence, the sense of ethics and the sense of aesthetics. These three things have to be part of our education which would then allow us to integrate technologies and other things which are associated with resolving problems.

AJ: You are saying that technique that the architect uses is not necessarily a technique that the architect completely understands? Is it a technique that he uses while trying to achieve something that he has thought of as a generalist?

F. Domeyko: I think we use techniques for many different reasons, certainly not for a linear thinking. To solve problem X I will use technique Y, is a mechanistic approach. Our mind is very free. It can't be forced to think linearly. We operate in an environment, and for that the school has to be a good place to receive information, learn about new issues and discoveries, explore your interests and prepare your mind to be open. Every time that we face new techniques we have to be able to operate and open our minds to that. That should be a part of our educational and technical preparation.

AJ:Today schools advertise their specialized programs. Do you think that we are currently witnessing a fragmentation of the profession of architecture? The option to get a generalized education is there but students themselves choose not to, because of the needs of the market that requires specialized education?

F. Domeyko: I think that the role of the school is not to advertise new techniques but rather incorporate them with the contemporary thinking. I believe that it is not possible to separate history from ethics, from scientific discoveries, and from philosophical achievements. It is true that techniques open new ways to think, such as this latest parametric way of thinking. Even though today software programs can do open parametric possibilities, that way to think is nothing new since it was investigated by others a long time ago. So, it's not possible to separate techniques from the way of thinking. They go in parallel but in different speeds. Thinking is in general by far more advanced than available techniques. The problems we constantly discover are by far more dynamic and strong than the extremely primitive techniques we have.
I think the good schools don't advertise about techniques that much but they advertise about problems and attitudes towards life. If schools produce people who are purely technical and don't think at all, they are producing technicians and that is the least we want. Schools have to produce professionals, artists or intellectuals. Schools should prepare students intellectually to deal with the physical environment.

AJ: Isn't a form of dangerous specialization when a student comes into the school lacking basic techniques of the profession that have been there forever and he/she ends up substituting them with new specialized techniques which eventually end up defining student's thought? In other words, if I can't draw and I can use a software which contrary to the human mind has some limitations, wouldn't my thought process be limited by it and wouldn't that limit myself to a very specialized end product?

F. Domeyko: Yes, what you are saying is absolutely true. Machines in general are serving only certain aspects of the scientific investigation and particularly in architecture they are serving only certain aspects of our process of design while others are not touched. For example, our attitude toward nature, toward human life, toward our own existence as human beings is an important part of the design process which is not taken into account from the machines.
Since this super-rationalistic time doesn't provide us with answers to the big questions, people start to hesitate about the rationalistic thinking and about process. This certainly does not mean that we deny process, but that other issues such as intuition and the fact of discovery became very important.

People who use software believe that they can generate through it a certain process and they can find and discovery things that they never expected. But the same happens if you start to understand things that you never understood before. Just making things, for example, is another way to produce discoveries. By making certain things you find other things that you never thought that you would find.

In any case, when you enter the discovery process you have to act with intuition and without intention; you have to try to liberate your mind from the intention. I don't deny the possibility of the software to get there but whatever is the way you took it is an act of consciousness that you understand anything different and new. The mechanism in itself doesn't resolve the problem, but it eventually can open certain aspects that we never thought of before.

AJ:Do you think that what drives students to be more specialists is the professional market, since with a specialized degree you have more chances of getting a better job?

F. Domeyko: I know exactly what you are talking about and I think this is completely personal. I believe it is a mistake to think that way. People who believe in that are preparing for the next three years and then after three years they will be replaced by a new generation. I think you should always be critical and distant to techniques or just love them as they are. Do not try to surpass the machine. You cannot ask a software to do more than what it can produce.

AJ: How important do you think experience is for an architect? Does that limit the horizon of young professionals who just stepped out of school?

F. Domeyko: I think that experience does not exist in itself but what exists is the capacity of reaction. The capacity to react in a relative right way to new problems is something very important. There is no achievement in the architectural profession as in any profession. We constantly prove things. I think life is everyday completely new and challenging. We can't argue that a certain architect is better from somebody else because he/she has experience. What counts is the capacity of reaction to a specific problem. In this case, a young and inexperienced architect might have a better reaction than an experienced architect.

AJ:What you are saying is extremely important, but do you think that the professional market has realized that?

F. Domeyko: I think yes. Architecture is very complicated because you cannot take the risk of millions of dollars with somebody who hasn't built anything, even if he/she is someone with a good idea. But little by little if that person is able to think correctly and react correctly he/she will achieve something.

AJ: This brings us to another question in terms of legalizing specialization. The market prefers specialized architects, i.e., SOM that might have a department that specifically works on hospitals or labs. If some powerful firms like that end up controlling the AIA wouldn't there be some sort of federal legislation that would require that person who wants to build a hospital should go to a certified firm? Which means that the younger generalist would not even have the opportunity to react?

F. Domeyko: That is purely a political, bureaucratic and economical problem. It has nothing to do with education or the way to think. Of course, when those big firms achieve certain stability they want to preserve their privileges. The architectural thinking or the architectural attitude is to read and renovate society and not invent it. In that sense, if, for example, SOM has a vision for society today and another architect does not, they are the winner. In recent years I am doing installations with students around the campus. Believe that in fact you can do architecture in the most modest way. You don't need to make a hospital to make architecture. The majority of hospitals don't contain any architectural quality. They are completely empty monsters, constructions and not buildings.

I think that today a new way of working is emerging because of the extent of the work, its complexity, because of the possibilities and of the techniques that we have. We can now achieve better results in a much more complementary way. I see collaborations happening between big professional offices, which didn't exist before.

People say that research has been done on software or in building technology but never in architecture. This is not true. We have been doing research in architecture that we don't classify as such. I feel that we have to orient school towards interdisciplinary research. Schools are where this can really happen. In their environment there is a very actual and interesting debate between the idea of software as a tool of the architectural thought process and the logic of understanding through senses derived from the bringing concepts to the direct confrontation of the architecture facts, tectonics and phenomenology.

Something else very important is that schools doesn't finish when you graduate. After graduation you continue to be part of the school which has to extend to your professional life.

AJ: It feels that the architect is not anymore what Frank Lloyd Wright was, a utopian thinker, but the architect nowadays is more of a coordinator.

F. Domeyko: I believe that vision always comes from one person. He/she is the one who will take the pencil and do the job. It is not a common agreement because vision is not a common agreement. In the architectural office people do not vote. Architects just make arguments and find reasons, forms and designs which convince.

AJ: Do you feel that in the corporate architecture the role of someone as the project manager is the replacement of the generalist architect or a necessity for the firm to work?

F. Domeyko: I think that in good firms project managers achieve their positions because they are able to think correctly and make the right decisions.
My advice to students would be to have more faith. Believe me, this is a beautiful profession and it's always possible to do something successful. You are always in confrontation of problems and must have the desire to discover, think, and challenge new things. There are people who believe that machines will resolve everything, even make the human brain survive. For thirty years, I have been hearing the same discourse: In the future this and that will happen…I don't believe in looking at the future because it is definitely going to be different that what we predict. So I would put everything in the present. I don't care if in the future some software will be able to produce my project instead of me. I think what matters will always be humans, ourselves, not the machines, not the techniques!