Professor Fowler’s Design Studio Environment, rolling up his sleeves to assist students with their evolving architecture projects @ Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, CA
“… have (ing) a strong sense of your destination (with) some flexibility as to what the path might be to achieve this goal. Ultimately, stay agile in your ability to modify your future goals as they relate to experiences acquired on your path of learning.”
– Thomas Fowler IV, FAIA, DPACSA
he (Paul Revere Williams,?FAIA) perfected the skill of rendering drawings “upside down.” This skill was developed because, in the 1920s, many of his white clients felt uncomfortable sitting directly next to a Black man. He learned to draft upside down so that he could sit across the desk from his clients, who would see his drafts right-side-up.
-Paul R. Williams
Paul Revere Williams, FAIA, was a Black Architect who practiced architecture in the 1920s in Hollywood. He was awarded the highest honor for his architecture projects by the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the Gold Medal in 2017, and this accomplished two firsts:
1. No architect has been recognized with this honor posthumously (he passed January 23, 1980)
2. While only 2% of the architects in the US are black, he is the first Black Architecture to receive this honor
There are a number of challenges that Professor Fowler sees as opportunities for strengthening the profession of architecture overall. Like Paul R. Williams, the adaptability and agility of architects in practice is important. We do not hear enough about the hidden stories of what people like Paul Williams had to endure to survive the adversity that he was exposed to on a daily basis.
Professor Fowler’s responses to a series of questions below, with many of these excerpts, are from his essay “ A Teacher’s View” in Waldrep, Lee, Editor, Becoming an Architect: A Guide to Careers in Design.
Professor Fowler is Thomas Fowler IV, a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA), Distinguished Professor of the Association of the Collegiate Schools of Architecture (DPACSA) NCARB, an active member of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) and currently a Professor and Director of Graduate Architecture Program at Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo and directs the Design Collaboratory and is a licensed architect in New York State.
Here are the highlighted excerpts of Professor Fowler’s responses to questions about his career path to becoming an architect:
Why and how did Fowler become an architect?
Fowler’s primary motivation for pursuing architecture began with an interest at a very young age and a desire to understand how everything worked by taking things apart and sometimes getting them back together (not always). He did not know of another profession at the time that would give me a global sense of how things worked and how to document discoveries of what he found through drawings and model making. He had very naïve but romantic notions of what architects supposedly did—but this was just the vehicle that propelled him into going to school to learn more about architecture.
Why and how did Fowler decide on which school to attend for an architecture degree? What degree(s) does he possess?
He has a Bachelor of Architecture from the New York Institute of Technology/Old Westbury and a Master of Architecture from Cornell University. His decision to select the undergraduate institution was based on what he could afford to pay, the location, and which schools would admit him. Selecting the graduate program because of the opportunity to work as an administrator and do graduate work at the same time. The reason for pursuing graduate work was to obtain additional design theory and to explore the possibilities of teaching.
What is the greatest challenge encountered in the architectural profession?
The greatest challenge Fowler encountered was the lack of accessible and visible role models in the profession and in the academic environments for aspiring ethnic minority and women students interested in pursuing this field. Black architects are slightly more visible today, even though the 2% percentage has not moved up in 5 decades.
From Fowler’s experience, he was fortunate to have a cousin that practiced architecture in New York City, Garrison McNeil, who was also an Architecture Professor at City College, NYC, and became chair of the department. His connection to his older cousin allowed him to work in the office from high school through undergraduate studies. This was the component of education that actually kept him in school since his challenge was to see the relevance of my schooling to the eventual practice of architecture. For many students (including him), linkages to role models are helpful when things do get tough to sort out while in school and in practice. Through his cousin, he did enjoy meeting and working with Jeh V. Johnson, who worked for Paul Robinson for a number of years in Hollywood. Unfortunately, I did not know this at the time and only found out many years after Jeh Johnson passed.
From his undergraduate education and beyond, he has always been very fortunate to find role models to keep him on track and expose him to opportunities that he would not have known about otherwise. He thinks it is important to have a strong sense of your destination but have some flexibility as to what the path might be to achieve this goal. Ultimately, stay agile in your ability to modify your future goals as they relate to experiences acquired on your path of learning.
How does Fowler’s work as a faculty member inform about his architectural practice and vice versa?
Being constantly surrounded by the same age group of bright minds, always made up of a diverse range of thinkers who are able to generate a collective range of other ways of seeing a problem, is a valuable learning experience for the teacher. Teachers learn at an accelerated rate from their students. Students will always challenge the conventions of how things go together.
Fowler, as an academic whose practice of architecture is embedded in working with students in the design and construction of a range of full-scaled building mockups, prototypical structures, temporary structures, and a range of community design projects, has developed a form of practice that has been helpful in acquiring examples to show students regarding the intimate process of how design and the construction process works at a smaller scale. The academic involved in practice always has a voice in the back of his/her mind asking the question, “How can I capture this process in such a way as to explain it to students so they will be able to learn from it.” There is always the assumption that the academic side of an architect’s training is kind of a throw-away aspect of proper training for practice – which I completely degree with. A range of comments from former students acknowledge to foundational importance of academic training. Selected highlights include:
“Professor Fowler is able to tiptoe the fine line between constructive candor and grasping reality as an educator, preparing his students for the evolving tug-of-war of the design process. His ability to approach students as future professionals has resulted in AEC colleagues I’m happy to collaborate with.”
- Jonas Houston, PE, Senior Engineer, Holmes Structures, San Franciso, CA, and MSARCE 2011
“With Tom’s guidance, I was able to develop a unique industry 5th-year thesis which built on my previous professional experience (from Tom’s SOM program), that led directly to the career I have today.”
—Sarah Jester, AIA, Senior Architect, SOM, Shanghai, and BARCH 2011
“Fifteen years later, I remember Tom’s words of encouragement and mentorship clearly – “Suspend your disbelief!” – and I find myself continually passing them along to the team of designers I now lead. I was fortunate to be taught architecture by Tom, but more importantly, he showed me how to mentor.”
— Frank E. Mahan, AIA, Associate Director, and Senior Designer. SOM/New York, and BARCH 2003
“Thomas Fowler’s personal integrity and commitment to excellence in educating future generations of architects is an asset to our profession and discipline.”
—Dominic Leong Founding Partner Leong Leong, Manhattan, New York, and BARCH 2001
What are Fowler’s primary responsibilities and duties as an architect and as a faculty member?
I think some practitioners want to see faculty as practicing architects first and as academicians second—since it seems to be a logical way to ensure that students will be learning the skills that they need to become architects. From his experience being a practitioner first does not ensure this linkage to practice, but this depends more on what teaching strategies are developed to provide students with the tools for understanding these connections.
Practitioners play a vital role in the education of architects. There is also talk about needing students to deal with more of a complexity of design issues while in school, but I would argue issues have to be simplified so students can develop ideas beyond the planning stages of a project into constructible architectural vocabularies. Acceptable levels of design development are lacking in many studios since too much time is spent thinking about the complexities.
How does teaching differ from practicing architecture?
What a teacher does is very much a mystery to those who do not teach, which Fowler thinks is more of a problem for universities to solve regarding how to decode the process of what academics do as opposed to non-academics. He often hears that the role of an architecture professor is to teach students the skills to build buildings. He would argue the role of an architecture professor is far greater than just this. Teaching is more of a modeling of future citizens who will make great contributions to society as upstanding citizens in addition to also having the knowledge to create architecture. Good teaching is where both the student and teacher learn from the interaction. This is why most are attracted to teaching—since this role provides a continuous mechanism to learn.
During your career, you have been a member of more than one of the national boards of collateral organizations. What has that involvement meant for Fowler’s career?
It is often the perception that individuals who become involved as volunteers with associations have limited interest in the broader issues that affect the profession (i.e., design, etc.). I actually have the opposite view that active involvement with the collateral organizations has given me a broader view and appreciation for the profession. Navigating association work is the ultimate design problem for consensus building as you move through this kind of bureaucracy. He served as national president of the AIAS (1984–1985), served as Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) faculty advisor (2001–2003), served as secretary for the ACSA (2004–2006), and board member for National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB) (2006–2008) and secretary (2007–2008). Involvement in association work allows one to establish a macro view of the profession through a variety of networks that, over time disperse and expand as people move on to different things.
