Archinect connected with Troy Schaum, Associate Professor at the Rice University School of Architecture, to discuss his Totalization studio and his recently published book titled, TOTALIZATION: Speculative Practice in Architectural Education from the University of Chicago Press. Together we unpack the studio's beginnings, the ideas that prompted the book, and the choices students have to make when pursuing a career in architecture.
For those who aren't familiar with your work at Rice, can you talk about the Totalization design studio program?
It is a program where students are in conversation with a diverse range of specialists to support the conception of their individual studio work. The intensity and diversity of the collaborations break down the traditional concept/design/demonstrate/present sequence of a design studio. Instead, students are working in environments that are simultaneously inventive and technically rigorous.
What motivated you to work on editorializing the work coming out of the Totalization Studios and were there any new insights gained during the writing process?
More and more the practice of architecture involves situations where an architect is enmeshed in a team of experts. The complexity of the technical and human choreography involved in that process seemed to demand a new way to think about the terms for innovation and speculation in design schools.
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