Stan Allen 
Architect, Dean of the School of Architecture, Princeton University

"...the possibility of inserting, within reality, a fragment of utopia, is a privilege that architecture, as opposed to other systems of visual communication, must often be fully able to exploit." 
Manfredo Tafuri

A School of Architecture is a kind of utopia: a protected place where experimentation, play and risk taking can happen. But one is thankful for the qualifier : a “fragment” of utopia, because today we are suspicious of totalizing systems and of any institution that would shut itself off from the world.

Architects need to be reminded to see the world - the world of cities, the world of technology, the world of multitudinous societies - as an immense source of invention and creativity, a dynamic always operating in advance of our techniques. The opportunity for the new school at Delft is precisely to carve out that free place of experimentation and play while at the same time connecting as profoundly as possible with the world outside the academy.

In fact, these two may not be so far apart. When I was a student at the Cooper Union in the 1980’s, Bob Slutzsky used to say, “we are more real than the real world.” What I think he meant by this apparently contradictory statement was that it is possible, within the school, to get past the arbitrariness, the inconsistency and the irrationality that characterizes the so-called ‘real world.” Is the stock market or the internet really real, for example? So, a new reality – a fragmentary utopia inserted within reality, and informed by all the real complexity and unpredictability of the world outside. This is the opportunity that presents itself to Delft as it rebuilds.