Tom Talks: An Interview with Thomas Ogorzalek
Thomas Ogorzalek & Austin ChenThomas Ogorzalek, Senior University Lecturer at NJIT and coordinator of the first-year architecture curriculum speaks to Austin Chen, who recently completed the first-year sequence, about his pedagogical approach and goals for first-year students. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Austin Chen: How did you originally get interested in architecture and then in teaching?
Thomas Ogorzalek: When I was a child, I always liked designing and making things–physical models, writing stories, making drawings, making books. I would buy model kits and put them together and I saw that there was an opportunity to be able to tell a story. In high school, I got a little more serious about it. I was able to create my own course which allowed me to design a solar home. As for teaching, I always wanted to be able to pass along knowledge to others. I find it gratifying to help students and provide them the information I wish I would have had when I was in architecture school.
AC: What are some of the influences on your teaching?
TO: I had two mentors at school. One was the director of the program, a gentleman by the name of Don Wall, whom I still keep in touch with, and the other one was Michael Mostoller, who unfortunately passed away. I had the chance to teach with them both so I would say they are my educational mentors. They were quite different when it came to teaching, but they shared a passion and curiosity about architecture. They both helped me understand that there was no difference between my professional work and teaching and that each informed the other.
Philosophically, I’ve always followed John Dewey, who was a philosopher-educator. I share a lot of his beliefs. He argued that curriculums really should be relevant to the students. It’s not about, these are my words, teaching canons or things like that, it’s about trying to meet the students where they are, seeing what’s relevant to them, and finding things that are interesting to them. At the same time, learning by doing was a big part of Dewey’s philosophy. The methods that I use involve students being engaged as much as possible doing hands-on as much as they can, depending on what the learning objectives are for the year or the course content. I consider architecture an opportunity for investigation and discovery. Being curious is a necessity and engaging students in a search for new knowledge ultimately allows them to learn on their own–to observe, evaluate, and make arguments for their designs.
AC: You’ve been coordinating the first year curriculum for some time now. What continues to interest you about it?
TO: The creativity. You’re always learning new things from your students. They’ve got so many different perspectives on what architecture is or what they would like to do with architecture, or what they are excited about. I also feel like students are much more open-minded to try things or take a risk in their first year than they would be if it was their fifth year studio or their third year. That is exciting to see and be a part of. More importantly, it is gratifying helping them figure out who they are as a person and designer.
I think in first year we need to develop the student’s ability to think for themselves. That doesn’t mean they just have an opinion, that means they start to embark on this journey of developing critical thinking skills, of having the ability to ask questions and then find the methods and tools to evaluate those questions. Then, ultimately, being able to step back and make an argument for why they’re approaching something the way they are. And being passionate about it! All those things are challenging for someone to do but I think those things are ultimately important because in that process, students have to create their own methods, their own criteria, their own guidelines and way of focusing their thinking. That’s the challenge–for everybody, not just first years–providing students the means to explore different interests and different forms of architecture in an informed and substantive manner.
AC: You introduce computer programs pretty early on in the first year curriculum, in the first month of the Fall semester. What advantages does this give students at such an early point in their education?
TO: One reason is to meet students where they are. It’s the world they grew up in, interacting with these tools, whether it's an iPad or a computer. This is the world they’ve already accustomed to learning through, so introducing the computer, especially certain types of software like Rhinoceros 3D early, is important because it's where they’re more comfortable.
The second reason we introduce digital tools early is to do so in a way that encourages curiosity and discovery. We want students to be comfortable using these tools in ways that don’t always give the outcomes they want, where they can be used as exploratory devices. It’s like sketching was for my generation. We would start to draw lines and then, all of a sudden, it would form the possibility of a space or an experience. It’s hard to do because many people don’t want to draw a line when they don’t know what it is or what it means. But it’s very easy to do with software. Exploring what these programs could be might give you a whole different way of conceptualizing things in the future.
There are challenges, too. Each software has its own limitations and, at times, isn’t helpful for the specific idea you are trying to understand. You may need a different software or you need to hybridize your representation tools in that effort. You may need to use hand drawing skills instead, or writing skills. Setting yourself up to use tools as creative devices that give you unexpected results can be an exciting thing. That doesn’t mean it’s a final design–it’s just a sketch, it’s just an idea; one of many thousands of possibilities. I think that’s where the excitement is with the use of digital tools, especially for first year students, not just using them to visualize and do what they need to communicate or to document a finished project.
AC: You’ve spoken about making some changes to the curriculum in the upcoming year. What prompted that?
TO: I think that COVID-19 impacted the 2022-23 freshman class in ways that were unlike the years before. For example, current third-year students, whose first-year experience was all online, found a way to create a culture in the digital world, but they knew that was going to be the case ahead of time, so they were very open-minded and receptive to it. There was excitement about it, they were up to the challenge, and the results were quite impressive. They weren’t tired of using the digital tools yet.
For last year’s freshmen, they spent a significant portion of high school online. To me, I couldn’t have imagined doing that, spending so much time away from people physically. There’s a significant impact on students' ability to learn, but also their ability to build social relationships that begin to develop and mature as they move through high school. That made the year really challenging because we didn’t see students engaging with each other until near the end of the semester, barely starting to rebuild social connections. It was easier for students to disappear into their own world, into their work, or be on their phone because that’s the way they learned to cope with the world during critical educational moments in high school. I didn’t fully anticipate that in a way that I probably should have.
So for me, it’s not just a learning thing, it’s very much a social-collaborative thing. Architecture is very much a collaborative act. So I’m thinking about curriculum changes because I’m trying to address those issues. How do I create opportunities to build those relationships and social skills through learning exercises that aren’t always siloed in individual work?
I believe that skill is not specific to education, but it is integral to our profession as well. If we accept that architecture is a cultural practice, if we’re designing for people, we need to understand what it’s like to be around all kinds of people and be able to understand their interests and where they are coming from, especially if we’re meant to be able to make that spatial in some way.
AC: What role does architectural education, and architecture more generally, have to play in the broader world?
TO: The world we’re living in has changed dramatically, even since the 90’s. We are now a global community. We see that in our economic structures, we see it in our political structures, and we see that in our social structures. It’s not about where we are regionally anymore, it’s about where we are as a global condition, as a species. I think the global community thinks differently now about the time we’re in, the age of the Anthropocene. Everything we do as a species impacts the physical characteristics of the planet. Given the challenges of climate change, I think architects or architecture can play a significant role moving into the future
The way in which we have to teach design principles, or the way in which we could deliver them, using new technology or pedagogical structures, need to fundamentally change because we’re trying to prepare this generation for something that we were never prepared for. The challenges are much more daunting today but they have always been there for us, we just weren’t aware of it or we weren’t at that “tipping point” where it started impacting so many people’s lives.
A perfect example is that architects need to have a lot of empathy and have the capacity to listen very closely to their clients to understand how to meet them where they’re at. That’s why so much of the first year curriculum does its best to meet students where they’re at. Why not apply that principle to teaching as well? I don’t know how exactly to articulate what an empathetic architecture or curriculum is or what it looks like but I think people, culture, and society are much more receptive to that notion of empathy today than in the past.
I would say the biggest challenge right now is that too many people in architectural education and the profession see education, the profession, and society as unique, distinct conditions. I don’t see a difference between my practice, my teaching, and what I do in the community. They’re all interconnected and I treat them all, philosophically, the same. Depending on the forum that I’m in, or the level of discourse, I may communicate differently, but all those things are interconnected.
They’re linked by design thinking–if there’s good thinking all those things come together. The deliverables for each may be different, but the thing that links them together is the thinking behind this thing we call architecture. That’s the same. It should be the same. Did my design thinking magically change when I graduated and got into the profession? No, it continued to develop, I learned more obviously, but the foundation for my thinking processes was already there, it was a part of who I was as a person. That’s the beauty of our education and profession, you just keep learning and it’s important for students to develop that during their academic experience.
Every location is different, every client is different, every project is different. There’s an opportunity for learning in each project. That’s the beauty of design. We build on our knowledge and our experiences as well as others who have come before us. That’s the beauty of history, theory, and criticism. That’s why the first year curriculum is structured through the discipline and our history: they are our guides. How do we make it better? I don’t know if better is the right word, but that’s what we have. History and theory gives us a lens through which we can learn and critique our own work.
I think there’s a shared belief among architects that the things we do matter, that the things we do have the opportunity to make a difference in other’s lives. Others, I would argue, means the environment, too. And now because of where architecture is and the moment we’re in, we’ve got, it’s got the capacity to do that. The technologies available to us today allow buildings to be more than static objects in the environment and instead give back to it or actually be an integral part of the ecological systems they may be situated in. Architecture has the capacity to do that, even if we don’t know exactly how to go about it. Buildings do not just have to serve people, but they can serve the environment as well, these two things are not mutually exclusive.
I saw that in so many of the projects from the Spring 2023 semester and I always get excited about that. If I’m excited about it and I get passionate about their work, my hope is that they’ll be excited and believe that they are onto something. I don’t have to use the words “this is good” or “this is bad” or “this is great.” Hopefully my passion inspires them to keep searching and striving to achieve their goals in each project that they do.
That shared ethos that what they do matters is really important. They need to understand that what they do matters. Even if it is not clear to them in the moment they are working on a specific project. You’ll have to trust that what you’re doing is going to work out, maybe in ways you didn’t even expect. As architects, we leave cultural artifacts in the form of buildings that become part of our history. There is something that seems to be persisting through time that’s generated by this shared ethos that what we’re doing matters and it matters for who we’re doing it for. We do it in the hope of leaving the world a better place. There is a certain amount of humanity embedded in everything we do and I think that is sometimes more explicit than others, but I think everybody does it, just a little bit differently.
Hopefully at the end of first year, students come away with a new found awareness and sense of wonder about the possibilities architecture holds for them. There are no exact answers, that’s for sure, but there are things they are excited about pursuing in the future despite feeling like they don’t always have enough time, and that’s the beauty of it. There is never going to be enough time to figure it all out. That’s why I’m always telling students to follow the things that most excite them because that passion and desire will drive them to persevere. It will keep you busy for a lifetime.
Austin Chen is pursuing a Bachelor of Architecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
Thomas Ogorzalek is a Senior University Lecturer and a Principal in Continuum Design LLC, a firm he founded with his partner Cecilia de Leon, RA. As an Educator he strives to develop innovative teaching strategies and to refine the professional architectural curriculum to meet the challenges of contemporary practice.
This interview was published as part of Transect Volume 5: Pedagogy (2024), Jacob Swanson, Daniel Girgis, Dhruvi Rajpopat, Fatima Fardos, Jimenna Alcantar, Elizabeth Kowalchuk, eds.