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It’s been a very, very busy spring….and it’s only half over! The UC campus—and downtown Cincinnati—has been entertaining visitors from all around the world who are deeply involved in creating and thinking about the built environment. Architects, historians, builders, designers and manufacturers have come to Cincinnati to SEE what all the fuss is about and to LEARN what they can from our successes (and presumably, our failures). They are surprised to discover the depth and breadth of design talent and creativity in this otherwise typically Midwestern city, one that is rumored to be quite conservative. In fact, I’d wager that architecture and design are increasingly responsible for a great deal of travel to Cincinnati!

The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) came to Cincinnati in late April to hold their annual, international conference. The conference was originally to be held in Montreal, but the sale and demolition of the designated conference hotel left the organizers scrambling for a new venue. I don’t know how they came to chose Cincinnati, but I think they’re glad they did. We (the faculty of the UC School of Architecture and Interior Design) learned about it from the hotel management from whom the SAH had requested price quotes. One thing led to another and, ultimately, a team of a dozen or so UC faculty formed to shape the conference experience, designing tours, social events and special speakers to provide a local context for the conventional series of paper sessions and keynote lectures.

After the opening reception, Mayor Mallory welcomed the group of over 400 architectural scholars who came to Cincinnati, along with local faculty, students, practitioners and boosters. The local tours were popular and included guided views of Columbus, Indiana, the Serpent Mounds of Central Ohio, and walks through Over the Rhine. There were multiple tours of the UC Campus, which has been transformed over the past 15 years from an hodgepodge of nondescript (some even ugly), primarily brick buildings to a curated collection of contemporary architecture, designed with some of the most important architects practicing at the turn of the 21st century. Our visitors were surprised….and pleased.

In our own backyard, they saw one of the country’s largest concentrations of late Victorian architecture (OTR), a well-known collection of late Modern architecture (Columbus, IN) and an important collection of contemporary architecture (UC). You may be as surprised as they to learn that Cincinnati also generated a significant number of mid-century modern architectural gems, many designed right here in Cincinnati, by Cincinnatians. Fifty of these buildings (both still standing and long-gone) were documented in a cataloged in a brochure-cum-book titled 50 from the 50’s.

Two weeks after the DFC and just one week after the historians left town, a select group of educators representing 16 schools came to Cincinnati to discuss the present and future opportunities for collaborative education between architecture and interior design programs. Graced with sunny weather, our one-hour campus tour stretched to two hours, before we returned to the Vernon Manor for a BBQ on the rooftop deck and a fabulous view of the region from Cincinnati’s highest viewing spot. We then spent a full day discussing curriculum and brainstorming about the future of environmental design education. I’m still getting emails from participants remarking on their experience here.

Surprised and impressed, too, were twenty industry giants from the Board of the Design Futures Council (DFC), who came to Cincinnati for their semi-annual, think-tank style meeting just days before SAH conferees arrived. They spent their first hours in Cincinnati on the UC campus. On a spectacular spring afternoon, we gave them a quick tour of the campus, focusing on MainStreet, and then went inside DAAP to discuss emerging trends in the design fields, with an emphasis on collaborative, interdisciplinary research and practice.

We were nervous about this visit; the Design Futures Council publishes the journal Design Intelligence, which conducts the annual survey that, for the past nine years, has ranked UC in the top 10 among schools of architecture, interior design, and industrial design. This ranking relies on one central survey question, “of those graduates you’ve seen, which school(s) best prepare students for the present and future practice of architecture/interior design/industrial design?” How is it that this Midwestern, public institution has managed to produce graduates that so impress employers in practice, all across North America?

Many believe it is simply due to our 102-year old cooperative education system that delivers graduates with a year and a half of work experience completed while they’re still students. That’s a compelling argument, but it does not explain why employers are also quite impressed with students that come to work in their offices as sophomores and juniors, with little or no prior experience. It does not explain comments that I hear from practitioners, such as “UC students are able to fit right into our firm’s culture; they quickly contribute to our work.” I believe that there are, and would have to be, a number of factors that contribute to UC’s rankings in this survey.

One may be a Midwestern ethos of hard work. When Herman Schneider first conceived cooperative education at UC in 1906, he sought a practical solution to local industry and educational needs that also built upon the history of apprenticeship in many applied trades. The result is a particular culture of education and practice that students choose conscientiously, knowing they will begin working at the age of 19 or 20 and that they may be moving four times a year, as they alternate between work and school. 

The co-op lifestyle makes one nimble and encourages students to integrate theory and practice. Wide-eyed freshmen become scruffy, sometimes scrappy, sophomores, but they transform as they approach their first co-op assignment in the spring of their second year. They return to school with new haircuts, new clothes, and a new, more mature attitude. Each cycle in and out of school brings new perspective to their studies and to their work. Co-op is more than mere work experience. It offers students amazing opportunities and choices, in great contrast to our demanding curriculum and their (most likely) suburban lives. Students stretch themselves (and their parents), taking jobs in “tough places” like New York City and as far away as India. Our students become entrepreneurs, seeking and shaping their own experiences. It’s no surprise to me, therefore, that UC alumni are launching and leading companies of all sorts.

Michael Graves, B Arch class of 1958, is a dramatic example of this entrepreneurial spirit. He went on to graduate school at Yale after leaving UC, and then went on to create a successful practice that reaches well beyond architecture, to the design of furniture and household products. Many people have seen his buildings (e.g., the Engineering Research Center on the UC campus), but many, many more have seen (and bought) the small appliances and bathroom accessories he’s designed for Target stores.

This spirit is evident in our students, both on campus and off. The DFC’s tour was highlighted by UC’s entry into the Solar Decathlon competition, sponsored by the US Department of Energy. The competition has three main phases. First, universities around the world respond to an open call for proposals. From hundreds of submissions, twenty are selected for competition and awarded a $100,000 seed grant from the DOE. The selected schools then have two years to develop designs and build a 900 square foot house that will support typical domestic life “off the grid.” Finally, the houses are all transported and installed along the National Mall in Washington, D.C., for a series of competitive tests over a period of two weeks.

A remarkable fact is that the UC entry was entirely initiated by students, who wrote the proposal and solicited faculty and university support. We never dreamed the proposal would make it to the second round! However, we followed the students’ lead (how could we not?) and reorganized ourselves to pull this off. In the end, students, faculty and staff from the colleges of Engineering, Arts and Sciences, Business and DAAP spent countless hours (for credit and not) designing, fundraising, scavenging material and building the house, in the middle of campus.

Ultimately, our house finished 15th among the twenty entries. We find this a remarkable accomplishment, especially given our late start and (sometimes desperate) lack of experience and resources in nearly every aspect of the competition. We can be proud of the fact that, at about $300k, ours was one of (if not the) least expensive of the entries, which topped $2 million at the high end (the winner, in fact). Built on trailer bases, it was one of few that did not require a crane for installation on the Mall. In addition to the requisite photovoltaic cell technology, the UC house deploys other innovative systems that, among other things, use heat to cool the interior.

UC students, faculty and staff work hard at the enterprise of teaching and learning, along with our partners in practice, many of whom are also alumni. A Midwestern culture of hard work, dedication to practice, and entrepreneurship distinguish UC from the cultures and expectations of the coasts. Collectively, we have much to be proud of, and much to offer.