All,
I am writing this announcement to congratulate all of your hard work and dedication to this new unit. In the context of the School, your work has contributed to some important aspects of the architecture community and the culture of the School of Design. As a School, we have been very good at promoting your design work through exhibitions and the like. This unit’s primary goal was to disseminate your thinking about architecture and design as a group of young innovators rather than students. For clarity sake more than anything else, I would like to qualify precisely that Nick, Daniel and I (the editors of localcode.org) collectively enjoyed working with you all this semester. The Local Code Journal has received 18000+ hits during its first edition. You have all contributed to this fantastic result. From a collaborative and collective point of view, the unit has far outperformed my expectations.
To contextualise further my thinking about the education of architects I wish to make something entirely clear; this unit was derived to enable talented students to direct their knowledge gain and research. Writing is not something you can teach. It is something you need to practice, every day, every week. In your professional life, you will be required to write thousands of words a day in a professional manner. I have seen the performance of my tutorial group shine as the semester progressed. It has been a great educational experience for my teaching because I am usually relegated to computer-based education even though I have a pretty distinguished publishing profile.
My collaborators in this unit are two fantastic Architects in their own right, with accomplished professional and academic backgrounds. Thier input was also very supportive and crucial to the outcome. Next semester will see the unit finally find its trajectory beyond my own involvement. As intended this Journal was always to be an entity way beyond a staff member, it was to be a voice of the Master of Architecture students and the Master of Landscape students. I enjoy your interests and research more than most. Your insights and research will start to define the future of our profession rather than be lead by our institution.
Lastly, but not in the very least, this unit was primarily implemented to facilitate ESL students in a fair carefully articulated writing unit. I have been working closely with Romesh in China and Indonesia. Shan He is a close personal friend. You have now completed a “critical unit” in the Masters which is a requirement. We identify students who need extra tuition through the first six weeks to ensure they have a meaningful educational outcome. This has been, for me, as an educator the best outcome for teaching in a pretty complex tertiary environment.
A final note, your work was fantastic. The Dean, Simon was blown away. The Editors enjoyed the experience. The work is in the public domain and will impact. Well Done!
A Rene Unit…………..