This interview was conducted by Anita Yasinska, a 1st year Architecture Student, in conversation with Hermine Demaël, a professor at the Syracuse University School of Architecture. Within this interview, Demael discusses her stance on architecture as both destruction and renewal—exploring borders, housing, and the shifting role of the architect through teaching, research, and design.
Hermine Demaël is an architectural designer and researcher. Her work investigates the political ecology of building practices and the role of architecture in our transitioning energy landscape.
The theme for this issue is destruction as architecture. Architecture has a long history of destruction and reformation. Destruction can also act as a positive metamorphosis—to destroy is to decide what is of value, and in that lies like an inherently controversial act. So it’s very much up to interpretation of people’s view.
I saw one of your projects, it was called peekaboo. It was for the 26 international garden festival. And it was where you rethink the notion of border in today’s post-colonial context. I thought that was very intriguing because I feel like you could tie in some aspects of our theme into that.
In the future, how do you think destruction and reformation is important in advancing architecture and the role of architecture in society?
I’d say my work right now is maybe a form of destruction of what is the role of the architect. I feel like my interests are very fragmented right now, and that’s a result of where I went to school, where I’m interested in going. A big part of what I do is teach, obviously, then I do research that’s pretty signed, maybe more like a scientific approach .I’ve been working for many years at retrofitting existing social housing stock.
And then what I also do and that’s maybe the funniest part is design, mostly with Steven Zimmer, who also teaches in the school, and that’s the garden competition that you were talking about. We’re breaking ground soon, so that’s exciting. We were responding to a theme about borders, which was an open call and how we approached it is more through the sense of disrupting what landscape architects want from a garden but also provoking architects by bringing in more landscape strategies.
Is there anything that surprised you and what’s your approach to teaching? You were teaching mostly people introduced to architecture rather than teaching at a graduate level.
Yeah, I think it’s really a challenging thing, when you’ve been designing for a while, to remember how to talk about architecture to people that don’t know yet. I do quite a bit of that in some of my research work, like with those people working in social housing. A lot of the stakeholders I interact with don’t really have the architect lingo. So I’ve been used to being a type of stakeholder. But working with young students that want to be architects, honestly, is also about positioning myself as an instructor. I think there are things that I learned in school that I don’t want to teach you guys. The first year of teaching is about recalibrating how I learned and how I think you guys should learn, because it’s been like a decade. So, things like different priorities, different scholarships have happened. So, there’s some shift.
What inspired you to become a professor?
It’s a number of things. I think mostly right now, it’s the flexibility that it allows us to find time to do other things. I’m still pretty early on in my career and I don’t want to just go down the practice path or just go down the purely research path. So I think teaching is a nice way of balancing both. I think what my peers often talk about is: do you teach to practice or do you practice to teach? They are two different positions in the field and are represented equally in the building.
What inspired me to teach? I think a number of mentors particularly in grad school really suggested that I go down that line. I feel like schools are more exciting environments than offices. You’re more aware of what the trending topics are. You’re more challenged by your peers, you’re challenged by students. I like the discourse and the dialogue that that allows.
What do you hope to get out of teaching—any future goals?
Become a better teacher first. Work on understanding how you can teach architecture well, given the crisis the profession is going through, or if it’s about destruction, the different things that are going on, how do you still make architecture relevant and how it can be applied differently. So thinking through that with students, I also think architecture education, even if you don’t want to be an architect, is a really, really good program or major to go through. In many ways I think it’s the best education. There’s all the social sciences, the history, the theory, and you become super aware of how the built environment is designed. So I want to get better at that and then down the line building good housing. Ultimately I just want to focus on the housing models.
And moving forward, you mentioned the crisis in architecture. Can you just go a little bit deeper into that?
Everyone always says architecture is in crisis, but architecture has been in crisis for centuries.
Due to technology?
Nothing really has changed. It’s still a service industry, you still have your clients and still are subject to the pressures of the market. So it can get really hard to do work, get work or do good work. I think there’s just a lot of conflicting things. Technology is disrupting some of the roles that we’ve historically had. Some climate problems are really forcing us to reevaluate how we build. Some people are not really willing to reevaluate, but they’ll have to. So that’s one thing. I think historically, the profession of the architect is enabling a certain form of power. Obviously as a service industry, you have clients and you’re putting things out there on behalf of the client. That’s something that people are grappling with.
Everyone will have an answer as to why architecture is dying–but also why it’s then so relevant.
A lot of people will say architects can’t do anything anymore. It’s all developers or AI, and people, depending on what they care about, find something like this crisis in different discourse.
So what made you pursue architecture?
Maybe I have to ask you that question. I feel like I wasn’t really sure. I just went into it with a loose interest. I honestly have no answer to that whenever people ask me.
Why are you in architectural school?
I took architecture courses in high school and I was always around my dad when he would go to sites since he works in construction. I am interested in the philosophy of it, why people have the need to build and toward what future? I’m very interested in post-war Architecture. It’s very important because with our theme surrounding destruction, I feel like architecture can both act as destruction, but also act as a replenishment.
I think destruction is a nice theme. As you said in your introduction, things fall apart, things crumble, and it can be an exciting time to rebuild. So, finding a fine line between rebuilding from scratch.
But now, I don’t know why I walked in, I know I have many reasons to stay. It was a journey. It’s a journey that never ends for sure.
Do you have any particular pursuits in architecture that you’re interested in? Because architecture is so diverse; it’s not just about designing. There could be a political side of it. There could be the theory side of it. There’s so many different pursuits within architecture.
Right now, because of the work that I’m doing, I’m really obsessed with gardens, atmospheres, histories of this and how that has impacted architecture and this loosely. I think also down the line, I just want better housing and so that really is my goal. We’re going to be living differently, probably more collectively, with plants, with people, with different types of conditions that we haven’t, maybe in some parts of the world we haven’t experienced yet. Also thinking about what aesthetics that is going to produce. That’s something I’m working on, or excited about.
I think what I’m interested in is making sure that my design work remains fun. There’s the tendency, especially in schools, to really be so serious about everything. I think at times it’s good to have restraints. It’s very good to understand the histories of things, and be careful, be attentive to context and so on. But it’s important as designers that we keep finding what we do fun and entertaining. It should be fun. And that’s also what I hope my students retain. Some parts are really hard and some parts are really annoying, but ultimately, you should find it fun because you can only really sell an idea that you like or believe in. if it’s not a labor of love, don’t do it.
And then one last question. I just wanted to ask if you have any remarks, because we also care about how architecture students are doing, so I know that there’s students that go through things like mental health, obstacles and also, just roadblocks. So, any advice or wisdom that you would give to architecture students?
When they feel defeated?
Yes.
It’s hard. It relates to my point about trying to keep it silly and fun. It is a really hard profession and the thing that I would love to remind students is, it doesn’t get easier and maybe that’s not fun to hear when you’re a first year and you’re already finding it hard. Some parts get easier, like, drawing convention, you get better at it. But you kind of always live with the struggle and the doubt. Learning to love parts of it, as early as possible; learn as much as you can from your professor, but it really is not about if your professor loves your project or not. And I know that’s very hard to get to that level of confidence in your own work, but that’s what you should be striving for.
Is the morale feeling a bit destructed? Is that what’s going on? Is it a first year thing or is it something that you hear from upper years?
I feel like all around, it’s so easy to feel defeated in this profession. It’s very difficult. I feel it’s easier to feel defeated than to feel like you’re doing it right.
That, unfortunately, I will say will last forever. But, you need to define your own metrics for what you think. Learn as much as you can from each method. What’s really awesome in the school is you get 10 semesters, you’re going to be exposed to 10 different methods of doing things. You will never fully love all ten of them or even one entirely. But learn from some methods from professor one, then from professor two. I say get sleep, as what everyone is going to say, eat well. Architecture can do a lot, but architecture is really not everything. Whenever you think it’s the end of the world in this building, go to another department. Go learn from the people in visual arts. Talk to the structural engineers, talk to people in other departments, because I think putting things into perspective is helpful and you can only really become a good architect if you have outside interests. That’s my main suggestion. Go to the lectures, but also the lectures in different departments. Read books, watch movies. That is my advice.