Christopher Diehl has resigned from the directorship of the Kent State University Urban Design Collaborative. He’ll take up full-time teaching duties in the university’s architecture school on Friday, Jan. 15.
Asked why he would step down after a relatively brief two-and-a-half years, Diehl said Tuesday that the academic and research program has been “top-heavy,” and that he wanted more time to teach, chase grants and pursue research.
“It’s really about that,” he said… (go to article)
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October 8, 2009 at 8:42 am
Seemingly without a single ripple in the vast pool that is Cleveland’s architectural prowess the removal of a director leadership position from the local school of architecture and the arguably a major link in the main bridging of theoretical study and application occurs completely without fanfare.
Not a single comment to the PD article. Nary a notice online. A once respected school becomes further mired in a tangle of its own making as it passes rudderless for nearly a decade now, discarding yet another director without worry that “someday they will be replaced, we have other leader position to also eventually fill though”.
Yet all the local firms who harvest employees from the school say nothing. Not a bang, not even a whimper. You could say the economy has made it difficult to plan on ever hiring anyone again or that in Cleveland practicing “architecture” isn’t really an art/skill as much as the filling of forms and spreadsheets. YOU could say that, but it would be short sighted, self defeating and doesn’t really help anyone.
I honestly can’t say what is more discouraging. That Kent State constantly works to discredit itself as an educational institution or that local architects couldn’t care less.