Design Education Talks Ep. 71 - Prof. Taha Duri

Prof Duri is a published author, translator, artist, and educator, having taught in Architecture, Interior Design, Health Sciences and the Built Environment and History and Theory of Art and Architecture for twenty years.

Prof. Duri practiced architecture and interior design for a decate in New York City with specialization in the design and construction of health facilities and hospitals before being appointed overseas (UAE) to start up programs in Architectural Engineering and Interior Design (University of Sharjah and the New York Institute of Technology). His appointment at NYIT was as Associate Professor and Assistant Dean at the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) in Abu Dhabi, and Strategic Advisor for the Middle East, while also teaching conducting administrative duties, and pursuing his research interests. As of 2016, Duri is at the academic rank of Full Professor.

Many of his articles were published in architecture and design journals through international conferences on architecture, humanities, and the arts. Professor Duri also provided editorial contributions to several newspapers and periodicals such as the New York Times, Herald Tribune, Architectural Digest, and the National in the UAE.

As an artist, Professor Duri had his own art exhibitions and participated in others in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, New York City, and London, in addition to the acquisition of some of his paintings in the permanent collection of the Fischer Fine Arts Library at the University of Pennsylvania. Private collections acquiring his paintings include the Ruling Family of the United Arab Emirates.

Prof. Duri has received several academic awards on consecutive years by the International Institute for Advanced Studies in Systems Research and Cybernetics (IIAS) in Germany and is Member of the Board of Directors. Presently, Professor Duri is the Dean of the College of Design at the American University in the Emirates in addition to his honorary appointment as Visiting Research Professor at the IIAS working on several research projects and works of art.

Transcript

Lefteris Heretakis: 0:04

Hello and welcome to design education talks from the new art school. Our guest today is Taha Dury, welcome Taha!

Taha Duri: 0:13

Thank you Lefteris, glad to be here!

Lefteris Heretakis: 0:16

It's fantastic to have you here. So tell us about you and your work.

Taha Duri: 0:21

Well, by training I am I worked with architecture for years. But you cannot legally say that I'm an architect because I did not choose to go the professional way. I've studied at the University of Pennsylvania where I have my PhD in architecture. Usually it's done through a historic perspective, because that's what it's believed to be the way to evidential theoretical argument to historic evidence. By the time that I was finishing off my PhD, I was I moved to New York City at the same time, and was working in practice. How did that for about a decade about 10 years working in practice, and after that, which is takes us to almost 2005, that's when I chose to go into academia. So it's I've tried to do a healthy combination between practice and academia in order to give myself some some diverse experience and also have a level of credibility in the work. But we can talk about later as someone asked me.

Lefteris Heretakis: 1:27

Fantastic. So tell us about the work and research you're doing right now.

Taha Duri: 1:33

The Well, this is quite a lapse from from the starting of my career, because my PhD dissertation was about leaving around the consecration ceremony of King Charles the 10th of France, which was a religious ceremony. And you may ask what got you to even investigate that or look into it? The reason is my interest in architectural expression, and times of political instability, that seems to be a subject that continues to be relevant to date, and if not actually is gaining added relevance as we go forward. So this is one of the reason why I wanted to examine that now ever since I've published numerous articles that discussed the relationship between better eternal ideas like God, government identity, nationalism, patriotism, and how they get expressed in aesthetic terms. Ever since I've been publishing almost regularly on the subject. Currently, I'm doing something that's still an offshoot of that, which was a paper I recently finished on the relationship between art and war. Now art and more subject that has been discussed before, so this is not new in itself. But as oni ins had said in his unity of philosophical experience, the questions remain, but the answers mutates, meaning we will always be asking the same questions, but they will acquire new answers as time progresses. And as circumstances change. The perspective I chose for my current research paper was a reading of John Ruskin's lecture on war that he published in his later on in his book, The crown of wild all this, and that is the subject by itself. But that's what's currently I've been working on. I've just finished it recently.

Lefteris Heretakis: 3:36

Perfect, fantastic. So what is it that made you get into into teaching?

Taha Duri: 3:42

Well, actually, my initial intent has be has been to become a university professor, because there is this misconception that people who talk about something are unable to practice it or unable to do it. That's why they speak of it. And in order to dispel that notion on the most intimate and personal level of my own life, I started by actually practising architecture. But ultimately, what got me into teaching is a question that was with me from the first beginning of my architectural education from the day one freshman year. I thought that the way they're teaching us architecture hinges primarily on how to do things. It's a question of how the technicality the know how the assemblage, the articulation, the materials, the dimensions, and things of that nature, when I was more interested in learning why things are done, and I think the question of why is far more complex and also quite mutant. It's a question that mutates people will continue to have different reasons, often driven by circumstances and abilities limitations, but at the same time, you can never really pinpoint the reasoning for any kind of creative act, why things were done a certain way. And also the question of why tends to be also the most interpretive. Any critic, any observer, any layperson will always have their own answers as to why things are done a certain way and not another. And from my roots in art, because I've been almost like an instinctive artists I've always painted for as long as I can remember. And I wanted to regulate that tendency, if you will, by studying architecture. While I never studied art, I always had the notion that if you study art, your natural talents will be contaminated. How conceited is that, but I still wanted things to be a little bit more instinctive than but but then architecture I have to study because there is definitely a scientific aspect to it. Point is to be able to move forward with a creative act without worrying about addressing an audience, while at the same time taking into account a certain functionality was not an easy question to answer for me, I wanted to be able to do something that works in a design sense, but at the same time, be able to, if you will pass my own private secret reasons for doing things without having to explain them. One of the most common answers that I get to somebody who asks me about my paintings, what is this? What is this painting about is it is what you see, the painting is about what you see. And I do believe that the observer, whoever they are, and no matter what level of of relevance or education or anything else they have in the field, including none at all, they are part of the work. And what they see is just as valid as the artists initial intents, it is really not my business to apply my intent to the observer. And the observers viewpoint is as informative as my initial viewpoint was one day. So it's a it's an interactive reality that continues to be so for as long as a work of art or artefacts or architecture can say to live.

Lefteris Heretakis: 7:21

This is this is really interesting. This is really interesting. So what are what are the current challenges you're facing?

Taha Duri: 7:29

Um, one of the main challenges I'm facing is some kind of, I don't know if there is such a word, but I will explain it. It's a uniform isolation, of education, education is being made uniform. All disciplines. And I know that even legally, you're not supposed to say the word all or any because you could open yourself up to liability. But I'm actually very audaciously saying all disciplines are being to treat it like they are tooth teeth of a comb. That works for the School of Business and the School of Law and the School of Dentistry and the School of general medicine will have to work for School of Design, when actually doesn't. And the way they're approaching education is that you have to fill in slots in standardised spreadsheets, where whether it applies or doesn't apply, you must fill that slot spreadsheets for the approval of the powers that be. My problem is not the approval of the powers that be is that most of the time the powers that be are not in the field, and they don't understand how irrelevant their slots are to what we do. And I think that's quite damaging, indeed, to a designer's education. Not only is it something that is forced upon them, and we know that everything wants sports about human beings becomes apparent, but also it is something that subjugates the freedom of thoughts and limits the essential instinct of freedom, which should be the starting point for any creative act. Friedrich Schiller, the French playwright says a man may never must. What that means is that once will has been put under any kind of external force, the very humanity of a human has been compromised. And I think that kind of compromise is something I'm dealing with every day. And it's a bit schism between the creator and the decision maker, and that is damaging that is very damaging. I always like to cite my favourite example of the unity between the decision maker and the creator. One Alexander the Great, picked his architect to be his Prime Minister. That's the brightest and most shining moment. And the history of design industries united, because that was there's there was no distance it was actually the shortest fuse between decision making and creativity. And I think that that is very quite far indeed from where we are right now. And that's the biggest challenge. And I face this day in and day out. It's an actual living breathing reality with

Lefteris Heretakis: 10:26

me. Absolutely. This is this is an international international challenge. So what, what can we do to bridge this gap?

Taha Duri: 10:36

The solution has to come from a point of paradigm rarely, we cannot bridge the gap on a procedural or regulatory level. This is not something that some I don't know, university decision maker, President, Vice President Provost who has affinities for design, who's gonna give us some more licence. That's not how it's supposed to work. I think it has to come from a much more overarching approach to colleges of design. There are bodies like the association of the Collegiate Schools of architecture, and things like that. But besides helping people find jobs and publishing articles that only dedicate and intensify the sale sense of scholarship, I don't see them doing much in that sense. And I think that the insular nature of the schools of design, because schools of design, tend to attract large egos, I'm afraid I shouldn't say that about my own people. But that's kind of a reality that it may help if one admits to it. And with that in mind, egos tend to be insular and tend to be defensive. And they tend to naturally veer away from collaboration in the real sense of the word. Again, I may be making a generalisation here, but if we're looking at empirical evidence for any kind of guidance, we will see that there is a general lack of collaboration that in the event that it happened, we may be able to pick up how the professions under design are proceed. And they are many professions, in fact, have always maintained that design, including architecture is not a discipline, it's actually a point of convergence of everything. We are the eyes with whichever one sees we are the tongue and the voice that expresses all the professions. And we are all the five senses in the way they engage in presenting any discipline in any idea, including cinema, which which is now as overpower everything, the performance arts, music, all of it is actually a matter of design. And until that is understood to be something of its own merit, that has no place following others, then we're going to have this this this problem that we're enduring persists, really, because I don't see anybody defending it or rising up in the face of these overpowering tendencies to make it as uniform as everything else.

Lefteris Heretakis: 13:11

Yes, absolutely. I think the awareness is not there. The awareness is definitely not there.

Taha Duri: 13:16

Yes, yes, I

Lefteris Heretakis: 13:17

agree. So how can we help in this in this turbulent environment? How can we help students close the gap between their studies in the in the employment and the the employability?

Taha Duri: 13:32

Listen, that the result has already, I think, is already there. I think that in every institution that I've worked, and in every institution that I've interfaced with, as, I don't know a guest critic, aggressive lecture or anything else, I've noticed that the school of design, the College of Design, School of Architecture, College of Arts and Sciences, with an architecture in it, anything of that nature, tends to be quite autonomous, and the more successful it is in the way it works. It's kind of the output of the more autonomous it is. Generally, designers tend to approach those kinds of battles with an aloof outlook. If I'm not going to convince you that I have something unique to offer, then I probably will not fight this battle. And probably I will satisfy you with your little spreadsheets and statistics that you want in order for the name of the school to stay afloat. But internally, I will tell my students what I please in terms of how they need to survive as designers and how they need to perceive their relevance to society. One of the main things that I personally as an educator have been interested in and that is where I count character building to be in a College of Design is to create with the students a sense of social responsibility. That sounds a little bit awful. But actually it is not. How many runways can you design? And how many galleries? Can you design? And how many fashion Institute's can you create? I think beyond that, beyond projects of personal vanity, if you as an educator, were able to create some kind of awareness amongst your students about the society in which they live as a broader concept and a broader notion than I think some some goal has been achieved. By example of the programme that I founded and ran for 10 years, I could tell you that when we started doing our graduation thesis projects, I had four or five fashion headquarters to be designed. By the time we were at the end of our decades, one decade, I had projects of children with Down syndrome, violence against women, fighting sectarianism through design. educational facilities, and youth centres that will suppose to pick up youth off of the streets and attract them to a facility where they can meet one another share interests and delve into the professional world from an alternative point to university education. So and these came from the students, they were not dictated by the programme, they were not presented to them, all we gave them was the maximum square footage with which to work. But they actually came up with these programmes, which means that we were probably doing something right along the way to draw their attention that some of these notions do exist around this. Are they relevant to you? Are you going to do anything about them? Or are you just going to pass by in your cloud of benign creativity that doesn't have any dialogue with the world? So in that sense, I do consider that a measure of success being able to create something that responds to society somehow. Yeah,

Lefteris Heretakis: 17:15

absolutely. So if you could just have her the magic wand, and you could do whatever you wanted, what would you change what you would remove or add?

Taha Duri: 17:26

Well, I would move around us from move us around from being a service industry. Because things are aggressively moving in that direction. And I wholeheartedly disagree with that I am violently against that, if that's even possible as a as an expression. You know, I was a, you know, I've worked at a major firm major in New York City, where the mission was to serve the client best as we can. And for me, there is a lot to be desired at that statement. Because it's, it's, it's It starts by subjugating the will. And we talked about the will as being the driving force the driving Dynamo behind behind the creative act, if your aim is to serve, then what kind of what kind of value do you bring what kind of meaning to introduce and how much willing are you to bring the clients awareness to meaning that they may not know the fact that they hold their your paycheck does not mean they know more than you do. In fact, it's your primary job to go through the Battle of making your vision known and credible and elevate a client's vision to the level of yours because you are the expertise at the end of the day. I had somebody say to me in a lecture that was supposed to enhance you know, performance in the workplace or something. The worst thing that could happen to you is losing a client point of which I raised my hand I said the worst thing that could happen to me is losing myself or losing my integrity. A client will go another one will come but for me if I'm gonna be salivating over that one client and I'm gonna be doing anything they want to retain them, then I will Why am I any different from any contracts or anybody else who provides literally a service that nothing more nothing less so so I would change that I would really change that because that is not where she where we should be headed. But I do see that largely, that's what we're we're heading and then the colleges that consider themselves elite. I find that on the one hand, they offer a very well, I don't want to say arrogance viewpoint, but in a way it is a viewpoint that doesn't deign to realise or admit the challenges but considers themselves a by the name of us V sound. So we will shape the world. But as a result, the students learn those lofty concepts, and then only two did nosedive into the work field when they find out that somebody would not a fraction of their education level is telling them what to do. So they actually come out of a certain level of promise at the education level, a to another level of lack of promise at the profession. And they don't know what happened in between the two, they have to re educate themselves all over again, once once they are in the work field. So I really would change that by code.

Lefteris Heretakis: 20:44

That is very accurate. That is very accurate. So how can our viewers and listeners find you?

Taha Duri: 20:54

How can they find me? I'm actually quite available on all the all the platforms. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Instagram. Dr. Tara Dory is my name on Instagram, on LinkedIn is Tara Dory, tha D URI. I'm also currently the Dean of the College of Design at the American University in the Emirates it is the name is the American University in the Emirates, but the location is in Dubai. And I can be found on the website, which is a UAE, the UAE as well in the College of Design. Other than that, of course, there's always email, which is sadly@gmail.com, or my email at the university. So I'm quite available

Lefteris Heretakis: 21:39

both great. And what advice would you like to leave us with?

Taha Duri: 21:46

You know, I've always maintained that designers, artists, singers, sculptors, filmmakers are the last to need advice. They have traditionally been the ones who lead the way. And they are capable of leading the way because they are the ones who not only have a naturally key vision, and I'm not being fascist, actually designers and creators have an absolutely keen vision. But they are also the most in touch with their feelings and sentiments and approach to life that they can translate those visions negative or positive into the positive form of the artefact. So the mere fact that you can turn your anger into a statue, or your hatred into a song, or your most negative feeling into a work of art that people can admire already means that you are above someone who will just turn it into an act of anger. So in reality, they don't really need much advice. But the one thing I could say that that I hold, maintains a certain degree of relevance is to keep an open eye toward the world around you, without being influenced by opinions, meaning appeal to primary sources as much as you can. And don't listen to already processed opinions as delivered by politicians, influencers and media personalities. Not that I have anything against those people. But I think that primary sources give you a fresher outlook. And then when you listen to already made interpretations, you can critically listen to them to pick what suits you and discard the rest. So keep a critical outlook on the world around you. And this way, I promise that you will maintain a level of originality.

Lefteris Heretakis: 23:38

This is great. Well, what would you also say to students that would that are starting out now on their education journey.

Taha Duri: 23:46

Many of the students in the design field do not really know what they're getting into. I'm always surprised by people of first year who don't really have a clear idea of what it is they're going to study. So interior designers decoration and architecture is contracting and when it's anything but so I think that once they enter into this field, the best thing to do is to consider those before them as much a resource as the faculty is because there's only so much a faculty person can do. But people who have been in the field around you even if they're one year ahead of you will be able to tell you maybe a word in passing that will open up horizons in front of you. So to have that openness and also to realise for the students that everything around you is your business, everything around you is your concern. Do not ever think that that there is something that doesn't mean that has nothing to do with you because it's not designed it's not architecture that's something else. I had somebody telling me how is this interior design? It is interior design and you will find out soon enough just keep an open mind and open heart. We do not work any equations we work in something that not necessarily is arrived at by straight lines. So if the road sounds and scenes narrow and winding, it's because that's the way he did. It is just like the formation of a human brain. It's complex. It's exciting. It's full of surprises, but it's definitely worth the journey.

Lefteris Heretakis: 25:22

Well, this has been an amazing conversation. Thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure. And also looking forward to seeing you on our design Education Forum. Anytime it's my pleasure, always. Bye bye