B.Arch. 1960
Boston, MA
November 11, 1997
Interview by Jim Donaldson
Well, I did come to Canada in 1951 and worked after I arrived as a lumberjack in Northern Ontario and then as a tool and dye maker at Bell Telephone and then as an inspector at Pratt and Whitney. And it was really the Korean War that made it possible for me to put enough money together to get back to my old love of architecture. And if I decided to- when I decided to become an architect was back home in Prague, because of Prague being a beautiful architectural city and so on. But because of the war and because of the immigration it got delayed. And I decided to go to McGill because my family lived in Montreal. And when I applied to McGill, I had no papers, because we escaped from Czechoslovakia without papers at that time and McGill would not accept me without any papers, even though I wrote affidavits. So I had to go to Toronto for the first year of Architecture, which was a big sacrifice, because I could not live at home. But after the first year, when I made it through Toronto the first year of Architecture, then I got accepted into third year of McGill. And that’s how I made it to McGill. And I stayed there and finished the professional-
[1:35:26]
Of course, third year, I’m only interjecting, third year then, you only had three years at McGill, I guess. You had third, fourth and fifth.
Yes, three, four and five. Yes, three years at McGill.
So then you joined McGill and you were in third year, and do you remember in those three years some of the interesting things that happened, and the influences and professors and classmates that you can recall?
Yeah, at that time- I think I will say some things that went through my mind when you sent me the letter, which was that we talk a lot about today about multiculturalism and people mixing at universities and diversity and so on, and I find it interesting that in my class, actually, if I look at the yearbook, out of the sixteen, there were about four, I think, or five real Canadians. The rest was all women and foreigners and hippies and Jewish boys, and I remember them all. And, in fact, I stayed in touch with Henry Golba, for instance, in Montreal, with Enrique Silhy, who was in El Salvador. In fact, we traveled there after we graduated. And I remember Pollowy from the class behind, Anne-Marie Balazs, I remember Irene Droste, I remember Audrey Ewan, I remember Steve Mezes, I remember Akos Frick, I remember them all. And Akos, for instance, is a big architect in Sudbury. And we still write each other postcards and promise to visit each other. I see Golba. He comes here quite often. And the others, Anne-Marie is somewhere in the United States being a professor. Sarina, I understand, is- became a great- big architect, was very good, from Israel and so on. So that the class was really at that time, already what we today call diversity was existing in the sixties, so I don’t see that much of a difference really, you know!
[3:47:04]
Do you remember any of the professors that-?
Yeah. I mean, my favourite professor, and I have still his written papers here, was Stuart Wilson. And he was also the greatest character, I think, in the school. He was somewhat different from the normal professor, and we liked that, of course, as students, because, well, he drank for one thing and he was jolly…
Smoked.
… and he was also very personable, because he was the only one who took interest in me as a person and would sit down and have a beer or a coffee and we would go right from McGill down to one of the snack bars or bars. And we would sit for hours and he would talk to me, and not only about architecture. He was a deep human being. I loved him very much. And Gordon Webber, of course, who was, again, was somewhat different, I suppose, and who awakened a lot of creative urge in us with him phonograms and his experiments with space and materials. Then, of course, Peter Collins, who was the best professor, I think, academically, who was a fantastic lecturer in History. I loved his History Courses. And among the others, Schreiber I remember a little bit. Bland was, what his name says! But I actually, I had him as a thesis advisor, and as a Miesian, he helped me very much. And I think he was a very solid and a very beneficial influence throughout it. I remember Lebensold in the end a little bit. In fact, he invited me to Vancouver. I didn’t make it, but that’s another story. And of the other design teachers, I have absolutely a blur.
[5:42:12]
Do you remember Harold Spence-Sales at all? Was he teaching there at the time?
Yes, having studied Urban Planning and Urban Design at Cornell, later I was not so impressed, I must say, you know so that- He was the typical English New Town planner and he indoctrinated us in the Garden City and the New Towns, which I don’t think are the answer to urban planning. But that came later.
[6:13:02]
I’m just trying to remember whether any incidents at university that you remember that probably influenced your career. You mentioned Stuart Wilson, Peter Collins. Was there anything- also any hilarious times that you recall other than probably some drinking parties that we all experienced.
Yes, our Christmas celebrations in the basement of the school. And that’s the only time- this was when we were not so puritanical and we were still allowed to have whisky and beer in- on celebrations. And I do remember that Enrique Silhy, my friend, would take every one of the professors on his lap as Santa Claus and then we would write little sketches and make fun of them. And that’ s the only time, I think, during the semester when we were permitted and where it was not taken as lesse majeste to tell the professors the truth. And it happened that everybody went along with it. Schreiber didn’t like it, Bland was very uneasy about it, and Wilson went and punched Enrique in the nose! So that’ s probably the most vivid memory I have, but Enrique punched back and Wilson didn’t take it. They both had a little bit- probably drank too much. But they made up afterwards and this was- these were the evenings- this happened only once. But for about two or three years, this was the nicest time we had. And then, of course, Sketching School, which you mention here in the paper.
[7:48:02]
There was a course that was taught when I was there, and it was called Professional Practice. Do you recall that at all?
Yes, in fact, that I must acknowledge, that McGill gave me the most solid foundation that one could imagine in terms of becoming a professional architect. I emphasize the word professional. It was a good and I think first-class professional school. And in that sense is that I absorbed enough technology to carry me through my further studies, through my career. And to some extent, I’m still feeding on it. I pulled out the manual that Stuart Wilson wrote on workshops and technology, and in fact, I use that in my teaching as a starting point. So- Surveying, Foundations, Concrete, Steel. I remember very well, I remember Foundations, there was a Chinese professor who gave me a lot of trouble with Calculus and I had to take it three times. But the connection with the Engineering School, actually, is very much like we have here at MIT. And I think it was very beneficial. We didn’ t see it at that time, because we, architects, engineers, always have this little, sort of, what would you call it, differences.
[9:14:22]
Your last year at McGill, what do you remember about that? You were starting to talk about an incident.
Yeah, there were two things. One that- I think the last year really made us feel that we were becoming professionals. I think the thesis year was excellent in the sense that in many ways, I regret that the schools have gone to the four plus two programme. And that the McGill Programme carried you from year one ‘till year six through- in terms of a very, I think, deep and solid architectural education. What you have now is four years of preparation and two quick years of design. And as a professor of Architecture, I’m quite aware of that. And McGill was- the last year was really a combination where you could put all the things that you had learned in the previous years together in a solid way, which did not include only design, but included the knowledge of technology. You had to- actually, we were locked up for one day and almost did a professional exam. I remember that. I remember Avrum Regenstreif, for instance, who came late for this, and we all hissed, but he made it through. And you had to do it in eight hours. You were locked up and in eight hours, you had to submit your proposal. And that was it. This doesn’ t exist today. We’re much too lenient, I suppose. It was a tough school but I think a very good school. In terms of visitors, I remember we had Rafael Soriano from California. He was a pupil of Neutra. Very interesting personality and I was elected at that time to be his student liaison for the lecture. And I still remember that he was very lively and gave a lecture on architecture and simplicity. And this impressed me very deeply. And when I went to Berkeley later on, in fact, I did some work with him and found him in Tiburon and became his sort of younger assistant-colleague-helper. He didn’t pay me but we did projects together. And I find it very sad that nobody has really written him up, because he is one of the better American second echelon modernists.
[11:47:15]
But I wanted to ask you, you already inadvertently- but I mean, after you left McGill, you worked for a while in Montreal and then you went to where, to Cornell?
Yeah. This was nice, because at that time, there were sixteen of us who graduated and each one of us was guaranteed a job. It doesn’t happen today, because I think they graduated only as many as they could employ, I suppose. And Sarina and I, we got the Otis Elevator Prize for final design and Arcop at that time picked, I suppose the winners. That may be a little bit of self-aggrandizement, but I started working for Arcop and spent not too long, I think, about almost a year, but not long. And after that, we decided, Henry Golba and Enrique Silhy and myself to- we saved a little money and I saved five hundred dollars at that time, and Enrique bought a big American car and we drove right across Canada, down through the United States, through Guatemala to his home in El Salvador. And this was probably the trip of our lives. You know, we camped. At that time it was perfectly safe. And it was the first time I got out of Canada. After that, I returned and decided to work for a smaller firm. I found that working for a large firm like Arcop, you simply became part of a big machine, of a team, which isn’t bad, but I wanted a job where I would be in control of many of the phases of the process. And I started working for Arnold Shrier. And he was an architect who did speculative stuff. And to some extent, somewhat sneezed upon by the establishment, but you learned a lot. I learned to do warehouses, apartment buildings, and do jobs that had to be on budget, in time and constructed in such a way they were the most simple ones. And then I worked a little while for Elwood Aimers and that was another big firm, and I really- my old desire to get back into teaching, because my father was a professor too, took hold of me, and I then met Kati, my wife, and she said, “well, why don’t you do it?” And having a wonderful wife, she helped me to apply for graduate studies at Cornell and also helped me to get through in the sense that she has been always at my side. And I went to Cornell into Urban Design, and this was under Colin Rowe, which is again fortunate. He’s one of the best teachers that ever, I think taught this subject. This is really when my intellectual life started. So that McGill gave me the professional, the solid foundation for my career and Cornell awakened in me the scholarly and more intellectual part. And after that- should I continue?
[15:07:29]
Yeah, after Cornell what did you do? Did you go then to California after?
No, no, no, no. Cornell was wonderful, because it’s a sort of world of its own. It’s not like Montreal, which is an urban campus and has its wonderful advantages that you rub shoulders with city people. Cornell is, you know, a sort of Athens on a hill. And I spent, actually, I did it in one and a half years, the Master of Architecture Urban Design and then I applied to a number of universities and got picked up by Ohio University and started as a lowly Assistant-Professor there. And spent two years at Ohio University. But then the university decided to close down the School of Architecture! And so I had to move on. And the next place where- again, I applied to many schools, was in San Luis Obispo, Cal Poly, California Polytechnic, now University. It used to be California Polytechnic College and that was the largest school of architecture in the United States with-
[16:22:00]
Is it still the largest, do you think? I mean it’s still very large.
Yeah, it still has nine hundred, one thousand students. And there my McGill education came in very handy because it was a hands-on school, very much professionally oriented. And students came mostly from the blue collar, where students were sons of contractors, of engineers and so on. And I had to teach everything there, from Building Construction to Urban Design to Studio. And intellectually it was, again, it was not- it was a professional school, so being ambitious at the time and wanting to get out of San Luis Obispo, I met at that time some people at Berkeley California, University of Berkeley, and particularly Ezra [Enkratz]. And they were, again, they were a consolation. Somehow, I was lucky in my life of magnificent teachers, which was [Horstedl], Ezra Enkratz, Bender, Christopher Alexander, all in one place at Berkeley. And we had some money at that time. And I applied for a scholarship, and I got from the grant foundation ten thousand dollars and went into their PhD programme. And did my PhD in Building Technology and Building Systems, to be specific. And did that in two years and then stayed for another year teaching there. But Berkeley has a policy that they do not, on principle, employ their own doctors. So, again, looking for a job, and Cornell at that time was looking for a Technology professor, so I went back to Cornell. Instead of being a student, I became a faculty there. And stayed two years at Cornell teaching Building Technology, essentially, and a special Studio, which was a Design Technology Studio with some of the professors I’ve forgotten now.
[18:40:11]
Would that’ve been, Eric, the early seventies, around ’70, ’72?
Cornell was- ’72, yeah, so ’73 and ’74. Then I met in Europe, because Alvin Boyarsky, who actually was a graduate of McGill, and is very important, yes, he was a very important person. Became the director of the AA in London. And Alvin invited me to his summer events. They were sort of seven-week seminars. And I went to one of his seminars, and there I met Habraken, John Habraken and at that time Stirling and the Archigram people, and this was all gravitating towards California, because I was in California in the sixties, in the late sixties when the student revolution, right through the- unbelievable time! And the interesting thing at that time was that, while the streets were full of teargas and hippies and what have you, that in fact, the programme went on as if nothing had happened. And it was probably the best times at Berkeley. And in London, I met Habraken who was into housing and also prefabrication systems and we had some very interesting conversations. And he became head of the School of Architecture at MIT. And MIT was advertising for somebody who knew his methodology. And having been to London for two years, I knew his methodologies. So I shifted from Cornell to MIT. I actually applied to both Harvard and MIT and then landed at MIT and I didn’t get a faculty job, I got a research job. And for the first four, five years, I was actually a Research Associate for- in MIT, which meant that I could generate half my salary out of research. And that taught me how to hustle! You know, we got enough research to pay for half of my salary and pay for a couple of students, so that’s been my career as a consultant started, actually. And MIT then with Habraken, we had what we called the sort of housing circles, where we had a group, just like at McGill, the Minimum Housing Group, a low-cost housing, or minimum housing cost group. And we were at that time getting research from all over the world. I spent eight years in Egypt consulting, going five, six times a year to Egypt; spent three years in Brazil, I mean, three years of the career working in Brazil, not being there; about two years in Mexico, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, name it, Argentina. And we gave seminars and courses in these countries, which were packaged and were paid for that by either the International Aid to Developing Countries and brought conferences to MIT. And on the basis of that work, then I got appointed professor. I mean, started, obviously, with Assistant and Associate, got tenure, and finally full Professor, and at this moment, I’m Emeritus.
[22:17:21]
Could you talk a little bit about the way you see education has changed and what the changes are and will continue to be?
Well, yes, it has changed a lot! In the mechanical sense, of course, it’s the big change from the five or six year Undergraduate Professional Degree to the four plus two. And having gone through the system here, I’m not sure that the four plus two is the best solution. And we know that today, and that’s for two reasons: One is that the first four years, very often like at MIT here, are not strictly speaking Undergraduate Architecture programmes, so that students take a major in Architecture and then take Art courses and other courses, and then have only two years of truly professional education. And the other aspect is that with the introduction of computers and very sophisticated construction technology that two years become, actually, inadequate to push out students that are either generalists or specialists. And we see this at MIT, is that you could probably spend two years in environmental problems, you could spend two years in construction. The students don’t get really the basic courses in technology. So not only that, but shifting from a four-year Undergraduate programme to a two-year Graduate programme from one school to the other, we have tremendous problems in matching our requirements to their requirements. So I think the whole system has become somewhat anarchistic almost. The other part of it is that the profession itself has not taken over, at least in the United States, I think, the training of architects in terms of their professional practice, so that we have constant complaints from the profession that we are pushing out academics rather than architects. That’s exaggerated, but the students come out with a sense of, what do we call, creative urge towards doing things in the studio that very often are not either realistic or feasible or even reasonable in the professional world. Underlying that is also the difficulty of hiring people that are professionals. For instance, we cannot here afford anymore to hire top architects in the Boston area because we can’t pay them.
[25:07:13]
You say we, are you talking about MIT?
MIT, I’m talking about MIT, yeah. And I understand it’s in other schools, too. So what you have is very often recent graduates from Doctoral programmes teaching students who have never been in practice. And so I think one of the dangers is that we’ve become to quote-unquote academic, that it’s too theoretical, it’s too unrelated to the constraints of the real world. Both our real worlds, the university and the outside. And that two years is really not enough to crank out or to extrude a professional. In that sense, McGill was very good.
[25:5513]
I gather you would not graduate anyone from MIT- they all become computer-literate. I guess they can do all the drawings on CAD systems and so forth.
Well, there’s a radical change that happened two years ago with Dean Mitchell. And he has dragged us, sometimes struggling, sometimes screaming into the computer age. And in fact, they’ve, I think, too many computers now! It is necessary and the students are very enthusiastic and knowledgeable about it. The danger is that you sit in front of a computer and you become a, almost say, a computer couch potato in the sense that the students manipulate images on the computer and, I’m not saying exclusively but very often forget that they’re real materials, real weight, real resistance of materials outside that they cannot be manipulated and interfered as easily as you do in the computer. So we have students who will offer designs that require tremendous technical skill on the outside and become very expensive and very often impossible because it’s possible to do on the computer and you know, they assume that if it’s possible to do it on the computer, you can do it in the field. I think that’s one danger. And the other danger is that it is a medium that again dictates it’s own expression. Beyond that, I think it’s inevitable so that we had to go into it, and if you want, I’ll show it to you this afternoon, and the thing is to sort out where you stop sitting in front of your screen and go out in the field and really do something. We’re trying to do that, but-
I wanted to ask you a question. I think I already know the answer, so it’ s a bit rhetorical. If you had to do it all over again, I guess you would.
Absolutely, it was worth every second, every minute of my life.
You’re saying it with a big smile too.
Yes, yes!
Thanks very much.
You’re welcome.
[28:05:21]