National Collegiate Honors Council
Date of this Version
2016
Citation
Honors in Practice 12 (2016), pp. 3-6
Abstract
We have always concentrated on how it is that people transform space into place. We have always asked people to look at the surface, then look beneath the surface, to ask “What is it like to live here? For whom? What makes you think so?” If you have time, go to the Art Institute of Chicago, and visit the exhibit “Making Place: The Architecture of David Adjaye.” He uses a version of City as Text to read a culture and environment before he even begins to design a building, in his case because he hopes to reshape “place” by addressing the social implications of buildings. As some of you know, a mantra of mine has always been a sentence from Kafka’s story “A Country Doctor” when the doctor thinks, “To write prescriptions is easy, but to come to an understanding with people is hard.” City as Text is a way of seeing and thinking that becomes a way of doing— and so a way of being in the world. The process itself is democratizing. To see oneself contextualized: that is deep learning, isn’t it? So tonight’s Founder’s Award is about me and my work. It’s about you and your work. And it’s about NCHC and our work. Congratulations on our 50th anniversary.
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