Professor Braga da Cruz,

I am writing to express my great sorrow over the destruction of the
traditional architecture program at Viseu, my outrage over the shameful
treachery by which it was carried out, and my rage about the hurt done
to its wonderful students and professors.

Last April, I traveled halfway around the world to Viseuhaving heard--
here on the Pacific Coast of The United States-- word of the profound
work being done there, and due to my great respect for Professor Lucien
Steil. I'd never before considered journeying to Portugal, let alone to
what I now know as the lovely town of Viseu.

I was deeply impressed by both the spirit and the work of the
students-- and of the faculty. I employ architects, both traditional
and less so, and am from time to time called upon to evaluate the work
of architecture classes here in the United States. The work of the
students in Viseu was exceptional.

Further, I was enthralled by the passion of the faculty, the joy of the
students and the mutual affection and respect between faculty and
students. Such an achievement by a school is extraordinarily rare, and
extraordinarily important.

I'd like to make four comments, limited to my areas of competence:

1) With very few exceptions the architecture graduates I've known have
learned little about how to build in the physical and economic worlds
nor of the rich and varied knowledge of space and form that has been
wrested, through excruciatingly hard work, contemplation and meditation
by generation after generation of men and women in all cultures. More
commonly, they have been indoctrinated in what is in final resolution a
faith in the superiority of ignorance, a practice of projecting ego,
and a language providing attendant pomposity, incoherence and
obfuscation.

On a more practical level-- I've found the graduates of such systems to
be almost unemployable. Yes, they have learned how to create buildings
that communicate the desires of governments and corporations to project
ego and power, or to facilitate their masking of the same. But, as to
creating the sort of buildings in which people want to to spend their
everyday lives the typical such graduates are incompetent. Yet, these
are 99% of all buildings built. But since we have preciously few
architects capable of building such places we see blight, all over the
globe. Again and again the fashionable but historically illiterate
designers, when they venture beyond the governmental and corporate
spheres create miserable apartment blocks and soul-destroying towns,
based on yet another all-new theory, when the many varied, and catholic
crafts and arts of making places that lift and support the spirit have
been known for ages, in many cultures. It is a strange course of study
that is based on a faith that holds that most of what has been learned
must be shunned. Such a faith also leaves little material to teach.

2) These observations are not an attack on innovation, just on lazy
neglect of competence. The work of the early modernist architects is
much stronger than that being produced by modernists now. Much of that
early work is wonderful and brilliant. The difference is that those
Architects had been rigorously trained in such things as proportion and
scale and so could be innovative in a way that was informed by
learning, while today the innovation is informed by little that is
enduring or coherent and so is inchoate and childish.

3) Viseu, as one of three schools in the western world that are
attempting to transmit, preserve and recover the knowledge hard won by
our ancestors, is of great and international importance. I suspect that
if it continues its role in the preservation of our heritage might
someday be seen to be similar in importance to the role of Irish monks
in another dark age. The alternative Viseu is very close to
meaningless. Can anyone seriously believe that any person would come
from Spain, let alone travel half-way around the world to view the work
done at the new Viseu, when we can see similar unoriginal stuff in
every technical school in the world.?

4) Students

As The students I met were among the most skilled and enthusiastic
young architects I've met. So much so that I planned to monitor their
progress, with an eye to hiring some to work on this side of the
world. I suspect that as holders of the rarest of knowledge they would
have eventually had international impact. Such impact from a student of
yet another generic program would be a rare thing.


William Robert Buchanan