From the Back Cover
Guest-edited by Gretchen Wilkins
The renowned Cranbrook Academy of Art near Detroit, Michigan, has been described as the epicentre of American Modernism. When it opened in 1932 it combined a stunning Eliel Saarinen-designed campus with a radically open educational philosophy to attract and produce some of the most influential artists, designers and architects in US history, including Charles and Ray Eames, Fumihiko Maki, Florence Knoll and Edmund Bacon. Often compared to other experimental schools such as the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College and Taliesin, Cranbrook's sustained purpose has been advancing a wide, interdisciplinary latitude and self-directed design research to expand and diversify its approaches to architectural practice. There is a deep and persistent idea that open and experimental acts of making should define pedagogy, and by extension that education should shape practice, not the other way around. Cranbrook's rigorous defiance of dogma and loose grip on the disciplines enables an educational model that combines the practices of art, design, making and urbanism. In this issue, alumni, faculty and scholars reflect on Cranbrook's model in light of contemporary and challenging questions in architectural education, practice and the profession.
Contributors Kevin Adkisson, Emily Baker, Peggy Deamer, Pia Ednie-Brown, Ronit Eisenbach, Dan Hoffman, Yu-Chih Hsiao, Peter Lynch, Bill Massie, Hani Rashid, Jesse Reiser, Lois Weinthal, and Tod Williams.
Featured architects: Asymptote Architecture, Building Culture PLA, Reiser+Umemoto (RUR), Studio Libeskind, and Tod Williams Billie Tsien.
Gretchen Wilkins is the Head of Architecture / Architect-in-Residence at Cranbrook Academy of Art. She has been practicing and teaching architecture for nearly twenty years based in Michigan, Australia and Vietnam. Previously, she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan and Associate Professor at RMIT University Melbourne & Ho Chi Minh City. At RMIT she served as Head of Department for Design, overseeing programs in Architecture, Fashion, Digital Media and Design Studies at the Vietnam campus, and was Program Director for the Master of Urban Design program based in Melbourne, Barcelona and Ho Chi Minh City. Her practice is interested in the making and unmaking of cities through design, manufacturing and mobility. This work has been supported by the Japan Foundation, Australia-China Council, James L. Knight Foundation and the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction. She is the editor of Distributed Urbanism, Cities after Google Earth (Routledge), and has contributed to Architectural Design (AD), Princeton Architectural Press, the Storefront for Art & Architecture, Architecture Australia, the University College London and Architecture and Culture. Wilkins received her Master of Architecture from the University of Michigan and PhD in Architecture from RMIT University, Melbourne.
