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Walking the Walk

Talking the Talk

Reading the Talk:

As my fellow classmate and historian of the immediate future Phil Fossen once told me...
We are gathered here today to talk about tomorrow.
Yesterday is gone and tomorrow will soon be today.
I guess I’m really here to talk about the past and the future.
And as our esteemed professor of Gothic and Renaissance Architecture
Leon Satkowski has said, “history is where it’s at, or at least where it was� so I’ll start there.

Three years ago I was corralled onto a bus with a bunch of strangers and a few random acquaintances.
We were off on an orientation weekend to all get to know each other.
I’m sure you’ve all been there in one form or another.
Is a mandatory weekend retreat really going to bring us all together?
Is this any way to start a dynasty?

Now, I'm sure that many of my classmates in the Masters of Architecture program were thinking the same thing that I did when we got there...

Weekend away at a University we don't attend
Sleeping in dormitories
Going on nature walks in the forest looking at trees and plants
Making natural art using twigs and berries
No rip and tear modeling supplies in sight.

I think they sent us on the Landscape Architecture retreat.

But somewhere amongst the bikes in trees,
discussions of diets with faculty,
delicious cafeteria food,
crazy potters,
and Andy Goldsworthy-esque Exquisite Corpse exercises scattered throughout the woods of St. Johns
it happened. We had formed our family.

Now I'm sure a lot of you might be thinking that this is another
"what a wonderful family speech" and in a way it is.
But it isn't without its share of adventure and bickering just like any other real family.

Since the inception of our Masters of Architecture quest,
we've designed the most beautiful house in the world,
one of which looked suspiciously like Ryan Grunklee.
We've gone Behind the Architecture with the perfect strangers Arthur and Bernard.
We’ve learned that phenomenology is more than just a rose.
We've tried to work the most preposterous words imaginable into presentations. *point for phenomenology*.
We’ve exchanged the contents of the R-Factor’s desks by the cover of darkness.
We've engaged in graphing almost any activity you can imagine.
We've travelled to Chicago and learned the power of a handshake.
We've made decisions on how much to cut off of a site model,
which perhaps could have been handled more delicately.
We’ve contemplated the brickness of the brick.
We learned the importance of Horos, Topos, Kratos, and Manos.
We were witness to the death of tectonics and had classical revivals WITH victory laps around the balcony.
We've played all manner of ball sports indoors and have only broken a couch.
We've been treated to the finer things in life by our own French ambassador and his luxurious loft.
We've studied in Port Cities both foreign and domestic.
We have had delicious pot lucks and eaten more meatballs and ice cream dessert that you can fathom.
And most recently and importantly,
finished what we are gathered here today to celebrate with all of you...
the completion of our degrees.

I am proud to say that despite the difference in study and school
all of the graduates assembled here today are a far cry from the people we were when we showed up here three, four, five or more years ago.
For those who are outside of our program
I’m sure you have just as many stories and jokes you could tell to, with, and about one another.
We’ve all shared so much with our classmates
and that’s why this speech may sound so familiar.

We've lost a few classmates and gained a few classmates.
We have grown together and apart and together again,
but we have all grown.
We have made the decisions to steer our educations and our careers in trajectories that have been influenced by faculty and lectures and one another.

Our colleges have bonded together forming the new College of Design and are presented with the opportunity to push collaborative efforts between the many disciplines which it encompasses.
Just like the strangers who show up on the first day of orientation
I hope that this new College can continue to evolve and have its schools challenge one another in promoting a commitment to a sustainable framework for not only designing and building but for living.
Most importantly, I urge the college to share this framework and what it produces with the amazing communities outside the doors of academia here in the Twin Cities and beyond.

Finally, I’d like to leave you with a quote from Robert Terwilliger who said:

“Committing yourself is a way of finding out who you are.
A man finds his identity by identifying.
A man's identity is not best thought of as the way in which he is separated from his fellows
but the way in which he is united with them.�

Let's not all get so caught up with trying so hard to define ourselves as the next great individual.
Let's not sit in front of that desk for the next four or five years of our lives and think that that is what defines us. Let's allow ourselves to interact with the communities in which we design, and build, and live.
But let’s not only be designers.
Let's be artists and musicians.
Let's be advocates and teachers.
Let's be mothers and fathers.
Let's be friends and most importantly let's be family.

Thank you and good luck.