Wilkins, G. (2023), Hive of Education Reflections On A Model of Architectural Education. Archit. Design, 93 6-13

Cranbrook Architecture is the product of an ambitious the link between Cranbrook Architecture as a place and a
educational experiment conceived in the 1920s and pedagogical model, and the pioneering practices it has and
built on rolling farmland some 20 miles (30 kilometres) continues to engender. As a post-professional programme, this
north of Detroit. It began with newspaper publishers and is its explicit goal: to convert nascent ideas and experiments
philanthropists George and Ellen Booth who bought the into inventive and productive practices. But there is no set
land, and Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen whom they hired curriculum to guide that process, nor institutionalised metrics
to transform it. The Booths’ ambition was to build not just a through which to measure it. On the contrary: its principal
campus but a ‘hive of education’, where every person ‘from imperative has always been about ensuring the widest possible
the cook to the well-digger’ was a teacher, and every space latitude for thought, experimentation and improvisational,
no matter how peripheral a ‘point of interest’ that should cross-disciplinary work. So, what is it about this expansive
inspire curiosity, imagination and opportunistic learning.1 approach that has proven to be so wildly generative?
Towards that end, architecture became a central protagonist In this issue, Cranbrook alumni, current and former
in the vision, creating spaces for experience-based education department heads, contributing architects, curators and
from kindergarten through to postgraduate level. Eliel invited scholars reflect on this question and Cranbrook’s
Saarinen oversaw the design of the campus and became the model of open, practice-based pedagogy. These reflections
founding President of the Academy of Art and Head of the consider architecture through various lenses: as a physical
Architecture Department, which launched in 1932. Although environment, as a form of practice, as an educational
it has evolved considerably over the nine decades since then, framework, as a cultural construct, as an experience and as a
the Architecture programme remains fundamentally rooted in way of thinking. Ultimately the issue attempts to demonstrate
Cranbrook’s founding principles, with experimental practice the agency of Cranbrook’s exceptionally wide latitude for
as the core pedagogy. expanding the definition of architectural work.
Since its founding, the Department has graduated 451
students – fewer people than are enrolled in many single
programmes of architecture today. It has always been Steven Holl,
a small programme (10 to 15 students total), but that Addition to the Cranbrook Institute of Science,
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan,
number feels especially low in comparison to the impact 1998
of its alumni, and the wider Academy’s reputation as the
View of the new entrance hall (visible in the foreground),
‘epicenter of the Modernist experiment’ in America.2 This designed by Steven Holl, against the original Institute building
issue of 2 endeavours to address that subject, exploring designed by Eliel Saarinen, and the Acheson Planetarium.
6
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7
INTRODUCTION
GRETCHEN WILKINS
Building a Campus for Self-education
For Saarinen, the opportunity to design the Cranbrook
campus was itself an open-ended experiment, lasting 25 years
and weaving between practices of architecture and landscape
design, craft-based production, pedagogical design and
academic administration. His famous advice to always design
in consideration of the next larger scale is distinctly evident
at Cranbrook, where he designed everything from the lighting
to the landscapes to the academic model for the Academy he
then directed. The first article, by curator Kevin Adkisson, is a
rich visual introduction to the physical qualities of Saarinen’s
Cranbrook campus, as well as his artistic, material and
academic preoccupations as they developed over these years.
Saarinen’s own home was an integral part of that
programme, located at the centre of Academy Way, the spine
of the Academy campus. It adjoins the home he designed
for resident sculptor Carl Milles, and across the street from
Artist-in-Residence/Head of Department housing. (The
dual title reflects their dual role: mentoring through their
own practice, and managing the academic programme as
Department Head.) Academy Way also includes Artist-
in-Residence studios, the department/student studios and Eliel Saarinen,
Proposed plan of Cranbrook Academy of Art,
student housing. The result is a highly unique residential- 1925
academic model in which students, faculty and administration
The original, unfinished plan for the Academy of Art.
live and work along the same street, sharing space in their The Williams Natatorium responds to early ideas about
professional and personal lives. campus organisation and axes.
Eliel Saarinen,
Saarinen House on Academy Way,
Cranbrook Academy of Art,
1920s
Saarinen House and Milles House are

physically connected to each other and
integrated with student housing,
Artist-in-Residence housing and studios,
student halls of residence and administrative
offices. This is the academic, cultural and
logistical spine of the Academy.
8
Elysia Vandenbussche,
Natatorium Installation,
Williams Natatorium,
2021
Vandenbussche’s installation in the Williams Natatorium

studied relationships between art and architecture through
11 objects and a video projection. The piece was activated
by the aeration mechanisms of the pool, visualising
interactions between water, air, space and sound.
Saarinen was deeply invested in this live-work model,

believing that the production of art and the production of ‘an
atmosphere of art in which to live’ were equally important.3
Indeed, the model of a live-work community is something
Saarinen experimented with before his arrival at Cranbrook,
as architect alumnus Hani Rashid notes in his discussion of
Hvitträsk, the home and studio compound designed by and
for Saarinen, his business partners and their families outside
Helsinki. The impact of this model on the Academy culture
and pedagogy is significant, especially for how it untethers
teaching from solely academic spaces. Critiques, strolling
discussions or even project-based work can quite easily move
outside of the department to the wider campus grounds.
Architecture for Education

The inseparability of living and learning is a palpable quality
of Cranbrook’s campus and a point that recurs in reflections
throughout this issue. Architect Tod Williams describes the
enchanted experiences he had growing up on the campus,
not as part of the postgraduate Cranbrook Academy of Art
but as a pupil at Cranbrook School for Boys. He returned
many years later as an architect practising with Billie Tsien
to design the Williams Natatorium (1999) on a site that
completes an original, unfinished axis connecting the Boys’
School, the Academy of Art and Art Museum, and the Booth
family residence.
The Natatorium was one of several projects that continued
to evolve the campus from the original Saarinen plan into
the 21st century. Other additions include Rafael Moneo’s
New Studios Building (2002), which houses the Academy’s
Ceramics, Fiber and Metalsmithing departments; Steven
Holl’s addition to the Institute of Science (1998); Juhani
Pallasmaa’s Arrival Feature (1994); Peter Rose’s addition to
the Brookside School (1996); and a new Middle School for
Girls by Lake|Flato Architects (2011). There are countless
other architectural, experimental and curatorial projects
installed throughout Cranbrook’s more than 300 acres
(120 hectares) each year, including temporary projects by
Academy students, permanent campus artworks and curated
exhibitions or events. A recent example is a collaboration
between curator Kevin Adkisson at the Center for Collections
and Research and Artist-in-Residence Iris Eichenberg, Head
of the Metalsmithing Department. Each year, the project
invites students and artists-in-residence to produce new
work that interacts with an existing space or object in one
of Cranbrook’s three historic houses: Cranbrook House
(designed by Albert Kahn, 1908), Saarinen House (designed by
Eliel Saarinen, 1930) and the Smith House (designed by Frank
Lloyd Wright in 1950, and gifted to Cranbrook in 2017).
9
Rafael Moneo,
New Studios Building,
2002
Intersection of the Eliel Saarinen-designed

Art Museum (left) and Rafael Moneo’s new
studio spaces for the departments of Fiber,
Ceramics and Metalsmithing, and student-
run Forum Gallery (right).
In lieu of a set curriculum

or common project
brief, the culture of the
Architecture Department
is the programme’s
primary generative force
Juhani Pallasmaa,
Arrival Feature,
Cranbrook Educational Community,
1994
Intersection of Faculty Way and Institute Way on the

Cranbrook campus. The columns are made from six
different types of granite that originate in Canada,
pushed south to this site by glacial drift. They also
form a sundial.
10
Ed Ryan, Ben Cook,
‘Speculative Histories’ exhibition, DSS/SSD,
Cranbrook Academy of Art, Cranbrook Academy of Art,
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan,
2021 2021
above: Ed Ryan is a graduate of the 2D Design Department at Cranbrook below left: This installation on Cranbrook’s campus used woven microfilm
Academy of Art. The piece is a window graphic and installation in the Frank Lloyd to span Lake Jonah (named for an adjacent fountain by Carl Milles), and
Wright-designed Smith House, as part of the ‘Speculative Histories’ exhibition, was gradually un-woven and distributed across the lake’s surface via
curated by Kevin Adkisson at the Center for Collections and Research, and Iris periods of rapid freezing and unfreezing. Ben Cook is a 2020 graduate of
Eichenberg, Head of Metalsmithing at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. the Architecture programme at Cranbrook Academy of Art.
These projects realise in contemporary ways Booth’s desire

for the campus to remain an active participant in the educational
experiences of the Academy and Schools, not just a backdrop
to them. He imagined it as a place where students and scholars
could ‘meet together in their artwork’, an aspiration bolstered by
the residential nature of the community. In her piece in this issue,
Pia Ednie-Brown, Professor of Architecture at the University
of Newcastle, considers the ways in which Cranbrook’s
integrated architectural and pedagogical model functions as a
‘living pedagogical ecology’, and how that ecology might offer
fresh perspectives on the conventional models of architectural
education still so prevalent today.
Navigating Latitude
In lieu of a set curriculum or common project brief, the culture
of the Architecture Department is the programme’s primary
generative force. As a function of the people in the department
each year and their individual research interests, this culture is
never static. A consistent presence year to year is the Department
Head who, as the sole department ‘faculty’, and whose practice
is an integral part of their position, leaves an undeniable imprint
without directly scripting students’ work.
11
In his contribution to this issue, former Department Head
William E Massie (2005–16) reflects on the programme’s
unique ‘proto context’ and how he leverages the act of
making for subsequent acts of design. Architect Emily Baker,
an alumna from Massie’s tenure, discusses her interests in
the ‘choreography of construction’ and how this enables
a rethinking of conventional design processes from details
through construction. Alumnus Yu-Chih Hsiao discusses how
his experience with unscripted and collaborative acts of making
Architecture Building,
and exchange evolved into a lifelong practice of working
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, across disciplines, within communities, for non-governmental
2018
organisations and in teaching.
View of the interior of the Architecture Department, Former Department Head Dan Hoffman (1986–96) relays
which is located in the former Cranbrook Garage, an
8,000-square-foot (740-square-metre) facility with student
the very particular context in Detroit during his time at
studios, workshops, crit spaces, kitchen and lounge. Cranbrook, and how the material complexities of Detroit’s
12
urban ‘unbuilding’ provoked sensibilities about making and craft Cultures of Work
that resonated through the work in the department in various A consistent quality of the Architecture Department throughout
ways. Architect Ronit Eisenbach, an alumna from Hoffman’s different eras is its permissive culture of open experimentation,
tenure, describes her interests in the embedded histories that making and student-directed work. Architect Jesse Reiser, an
materials can reveal – ideas that permeate her current practices alumnus of the programme from Daniel Libeskind’s tenure as
in performance, teaching and collaborative art. Department Head (1978–85), recalls his experiences at Buck’s
In his piece, former Department Head Peter Lynch (1996– Rock Work Camp in Connecticut where, as at Cranbrook, he was
2005) offers a deeper historical context for Cranbrook’s allowed free rein to experiment in arts, crafts and performance.
pedagogical approach and how he curated prompts to There was no prescribed programme – only the directive that
‘cultivate practices of inspiration’ in lieu of a set curricular you ‘not be idle, that you must work’. Cranbrook’s culture of
model. Professor Lois Weinthal, an alumna from Lynch’s immersive studio production in the department acts both as a
tenure, recalls finding inspiration from her studies of the catalyst for ideas and a refuge from prescribed conventions, a
‘tactile proximity’ of spaces ‘within hand’s reach’ and how this generative space that allows the author and their practice to
influenced her continued practice today, investigating spaces of continually inform one another. This is a topic that Yale University
the body and the interior. Professor Emerita Peggy Deamer discusses in this issue: how ‘the
object and the artist get illuminated together’. Deamer raises this
idea in the context of architectural work, or more precisely of
architectural labour – a subject in which she is deeply invested
through her work with the Architecture Lobby.
The topic of architectural work and the precarious labour
practices it supports is quite relevant to the department, where
students arrive in search of broader ways to engage architecture,
often out of frustration with those very labour practices.
Recognising that these systems are designed, and therefore are
not a de facto or compulsory part of architectural practice, yields
productive conversations about other potential models, as well as
important questions about what and whom architecture serves.
I arrived at Cranbrook as Head of Department in the autumn
of 2018 and enjoyed a year and a half before the global pandemic
hit, changing both everything and nothing about architectural
education and practice. As we tentatively emerge from that
particular global crisis, we remain surrounded by many others,
with architecture being implicated throughout. This burden for
change falls equally on the shoulders of architectural practice and
education, or perhaps new models that can bridge them. This is a
topic I consider in my concluding piece in this issue.
Notes Choosing just a handful of people from among Cranbrook’s
1. George Booth, ‘Memoranda for
the consideration of the Board of
distinguished history for this issue was a challenge. My goal in
Trustees provided for in my Will selecting the contributors was to reflect on the uniquely practice-
for the administration of the Estate
of Cranbrook as an Educational
focused academic model and the diversity of practices that have
Centre’, 15 January 1927 (first evolved from Cranbrook Architecture over many years. This
written December 1926), George
G Booth Papers, Cranbrook Archives,
survey offers some specific examples of that work, but equally
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, p 7. interesting are the questions it raises, such as how we best
2. MH Miller, ‘How Michigan Became
the Epicentre of the Modernist
learn architecture, and to what end? Is architecture a body of
Experiment’, The New York Times, knowledge, a way of thinking, a potent collaborative model? How
6 September 2018: www.nytimes.
com/2018/09/06/t-magazine/michigan-
is culture a form of curriculum? What other experimental models
modernist-architecture.html. can we enact to broaden the culture of architectural education
3. Nancy Rivard, ‘Eliel Saarinen in
America’, Master’s thesis, Wayne State
and practice, especially as we confront radical changes to the way
University, Detroit, 1973, p 9. we live, work and learn? 1
Text © 2023 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: p 7 © Balthazar Korab/Cranbrook Educational
Community (S.19.867); p 8(t) Courtesy of Cranbrook Art Museum (CAM1928.39); p
8(b) Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
(POL4.81.1); p 9 © Elysia Vandenbussche; p 10(t) © Balthazar Korab/Cranbrook Educational
Community (S.11.1169); p 10(b) © Christina Capetillo/Cranbrook Educational Community
(S.22.132); p 11(t) Photo Eric Perry. Courtesy of Cranbrook Center for Collections and
Research (SpecHist_SM_Ed_Ryan2D); p 11(b) © Ben Cook; pp 12–13 © Gretchen Wilkins
13

Wilkins, G. (2023), Hive of Education Reflections On A Model of Architectural Education. Archit. Design, 93 6-13

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Wilkins, G. (2023), Hive of Education Reflections On A Model of Architectural Education. Archit. Design, 93 6-13

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Cranbrook Architecture is the product of an ambitious the link between Cranbrook Architecture as a place and a

Saarinen House and Milles House are

Vandenbussche’s installation in the Williams Natatorium

Saarinen was deeply invested in this live-work model,

Architecture for Education

Intersection of the Eliel Saarinen-designed

In lieu of a set curriculum

Intersection of Faculty Way and Institute Way on the

These projects realise in contemporary ways Booth’s desire

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