Alberto Campo Baeza

CAMPO BAEZA PROFESSOR AT THE NYIT, NEW YORK

The prestigious NYIT School of Architecture on Broadway in NY engaged the architect Alberto Campo Baeza as Project Professor for this Spring Semester.

The classes took place online via ZOOM, on Tuesdays and Fridays at 5pm Spanish time, from January to May 2021.

NYIT
Introduction
May 2021

Thank to Maria R. Perbellini, Dean and Professor at the School of Architecture and Design in the NYIT for her generous invitation to me to give classes on projects subject this spring semester 2021.

I also want to thank to Bradley Engelsman as assistant professor in New York and Alejandro Cervilla and David Vera as assistant professors in Madrid. Without them this adventure would not have been possible.

My special thanks to professor Ignacio Vicens who honored us with a magnificent critique sesion and to professor Mª Concepción Pérez Gutiérrez for her master class about structures on high buildings, truly magisterial.

LEARNING TO LEARN

After more than 50 years as professor at the Madrid Polytechnic University, the UPM, at the School of Architecture of Madrid, the ETSAM, and having taught at many of the most prestigious Schools of Architecture in the world, I have been honored to be invited to teach Projects at the prestigious NYIT in New York.

For me, besides being an undeserved honor, it has been the opportunity to put all my knowledge at the service of American students, and all my enthusiasm and my resistance.

I have always maintained that when you teach, you actually learn more than you teach. I have been teaching for so many years that I have never stopped learning. There is a beautiful pencil drawing by Goya, in the Prado Museum in Madrid, with the image of an old man with long white hair and a white beard, in which Goya, at 74 years old, writes I’M STILL LEARNING. Well, this year I have come to NYIT to learn, having done so via ZOOM because of the pandemic.

I decided to give practical Project classes to my students, complemented with some theory classes. Every Tuesday and Friday, three hours each day, from January until May.

We started out, just as I did as a student at the ETSAM in Madrid, with Alejandro de la Sota. So our first exercise was the Dream House, in the early weeks of this spring semester, which began on 26 January.

We continued with the tower exercise: a skyscraper in Manhattan, where Mies Van der Rohe’s Seagram is located. Designing a skyscraper, every architect’s dream! The tower exercise took us through to the end of the course, covering each part in detail: the idea, its implementation, structure, materials, construction, etc.

On a regular basis, I have given theory classes on subjects that I consider fundamental for an architect: Beauty, Light, Gravity, Time, Wisdom, Intellectual Enjoyment, and others.

I think we enjoyed the experience as only one can do through study. My father, who was an eminent surgeon and died at the age of 104, was always studying. As his children, we always saw him studying. That is how I would like to be, and that is how I would like you, the students of NYIT, to be. How I would like to be a student now! This is my attempt at it.

I would like to thank specially to Maria Perbellini, the Dean, for her generosity inviting me. And I would like to extend my special thanks to Brad Engelsman as assistant professor in NY and to Alejandro Cervilla and Daniel Vera as assistant professors in Madrid. Without them this adventure would not have been possible.

And I would like to extend my special thanks to Professor Ignacio Vicens who did us the honor of delivering a wonderful presentation and to Professor Mª Concepción Pérez Gutierrez for her master class on high-rise building structures, which was truly magnificent.

It has been a wonderful experience.

THANK YOU