John Hancock

JH: [Smiling], No interviews for those jobs are never simple. It’s a pretty competitive field so, there is a committee and they are going on, they are going on your references, sometimes you know who the references are and sometimes you don’t. and you have to give a speech in front of faculty and students. They take you out to dinner and kinds of stuff. So, no it wasn’t simple, but it was a good match, it’s a good match there. So, they hired me.

BO: And what are you most passionate about?

JH: You mean now?

BO: General.

JH: Well the thing about being here for 41 years is that I have gone through a lot of projects, and a lot of phases, and a lot of you know, a you can say a lot of different careers, a lot of different kinds of roles. So, I guess I have been passionate about a number of different things [Laughs] over that amount of time. I suppose, for the last half of that period, my main passion has been the Ancient Earth Works of Ohio and doing public education exhibits, and documentaries, and stuff about those. So, it’s kind of a spinoff from my architectural history background. Once I discovered that we have these fascinating Indian monuments and ruins here in Ohio, I became pretty thrilled with that. And, and, so I spent a lot of time on that, and I am still working on that because I am part of a group that is preparing a world heritage, UNESCO world heritage nomination for these sites.

BO: And what is the ancient earth works of Ohio?

JH: Well, there’s dozens and dozens of significant earth work monuments in the southern half and central part of Ohio. They were built by a culture about eighteen hundred years ago called the Hopewell Culture, that’s what it is called today. And they are pretty amazing, and pretty fascinating, they are huge. Aany of them are precisely, precise geometric figures. And many of them are aligned to perfect, astronomical, sort of like stone hinge, even more accurate, and they were made by Indians you know, almost two thousand years ago.

BO: Oh wow.

JH: Here in Ohio, so it is an amazing story, startles a lot people who hear about it the first time. And the architecture of these places is, is—lets just say unusual. It’s a little hard to perceive it sometimes, partly because they are so big. Some of them are, sort of worn down by decades of agriculture. So it is a little hard to see, a little hard to understand, so that’s why I enjoy getting involved in doing educational media about these places because, there was a challenge.

BO: And I guess you volunteer for the, for the, volunteer for the earth works?

JH: It is a volunteer position now yes to serve on this committee that’s been putting the nomination together.

BO: Oh, wow, that sounds cool.

JH: But it is something to do in retirement you know. I can, can keep doing my professional work and to some extent into retirement. It just enough, but not too much. It’s just, its, its good.

BO: It’s a good, good work balance.

JH: I am glad I am not just working in the garden. I never did play golf so that’s not going to work for me. [Laughing]

BO: Why did you want to teach at UC?

JH: Why did I want to teach?

BO: Mmhm.

JH: Well, what I think what attracted to me here was—initially was that this was a good fit for my interests. At the time in 1978, there was a lot of interest in field of architecture in historical awareness and the design students, that architectural design students should know history and they should know it well, and they should know to interpret, how to, and, you know, base their work in principles rooted in the historical tradition. okay, this was exactly my graduate thesis topic. So, and the director of the school at the time was fascinated by this question. He wanted to steer the school, the curriculum a little, a little bit of a new direction that, that would take more of that into account. And so, you know, hiring me was one of his, you know, one of, sort of his agenda things for the school. So it was a really good match. It was an opportunity to do some, to do some really intriguing things, you know, pedagogically with the course work and so forth. So it was, it was a, sort of a tailor-made opportunity for me. I felt very lucky because a lot of people in the field who just get out of graduate school, they would have to move two or three times before they find a, you know, a school that they really kind of click with. But, I was here and then, then I matched with what they wanted to do with the curriculum. I was able to handle a lot of creative input right away. Again, like a said, I knew the city, I liked Cincinnati, I thought it was a very beautiful city with a lot of potential. Not all of that potential had been realized yet in the late 70s. [Laughs]. But, it was, it was, you know, it was a good place. So, that was what attracted me here initially and then as I got into teaching for a few years, I realized the students who come here, in the architecture program and in DAAP, are really amazing. It’s a, it’s a, you may know, it’s a very very competitive program and so the quality of the students is very high. The co-op program means that they learn a lot of their technical stuff outside the school, so we can have more fun with the theoretical stuff inside the school, and I love that, as most of my colleagues do. And so it was a really, really good place to settle in and grow.

BO: And so you felt like it was a perfect match for you.

JH: Yeah. I don’t—could not think of anything really that, you know, how it could’ve been better in some ways, so.

BO: Awesome.

JH: Then I had different opportunities down along the way so when eventually I started teaching graduate programs, then I ran a graduate program for a while. I was an Associate Dean for a while, for graduate studies in research, so that was, that was pretty interesting too. And then I got a lot of external grant work to do, the earth works stuff, so I became sort of a grant writer and a museum exhibit designer. It was all kind of fun stuff that we got to do eventually.

BO: What kind of museums did you design?

JH: We—working with teams of students? We designed the exhibit space at the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park in Chillicothe. You can still go there and still see our work. We designed the physical exhibit space, and then we did a multi-media program as well that featured the earth works. We did computer model reconstructions of the earth works. That was kind of the basis for our projects that we did on the Hopewell sites. And we did interactive video exhibits, in that case, we did the physical space around it as well. And then we got a big grant from NEH, the National Endowment for the Humanities, to do a traveling exhibit about more of the sites.

BO: Wow

JH: And then that, that was also a physical design. About a five hundred square foot exhibit that could be dismounted and moved one setting to another. And we also designed that initially with the input of a studio, a DAAP studio. And had it fabricated, collaborated with the Cincinnati Museum Center people. They did the fabrication and they managed the travel, so it went to, I don’t know, probably twenty-five different sites around the country.

BO: Oh, wow

JH: And then it has now been permanently installed in the Ohio History Connections Museum in Columbus.

BO: Oh, okay.

JH: The Ohio History Center, which you probably know well.

BO: A little bit.

JH: The archeology exhibit center piece is this thing that we did back in the early 2000s.

BO: Okay, and what was the graduate program that they helped run?

JH: I started directing the Master of Science in architecture program in the late 80s and managed most it through the 90s. And then a little bit later, the school started a Master of Architecture, that’s a program for professional architecture students. The previous one was one had been a post-professional program. It’s for architects who already licensed, or licensable to do an academic study like history or theory, or something. So that was what I ran initially and then was involved in the M-Arch program, the professional program after that.

BO: What was the M-Arch program? You said it was a professional program.

JH: It’s, it’s a graduate degree for architects.

BO: Okay

JH: For people who were going to go out and practice

BO: Okay

JH: We said that wen up as a, as a, as a response to the sort of trending in the field is that the professional degree that you, most people expect now for architects is the Masters

BO: Okay.

JH: It was that, when I started it was the bachelors. And that’s what UC was teaching back in the seventies and eighties

BO: Okay.

JH: So we developed the Masters and now that’s what most of our students complete that degree.

BO: And like speaking of like UC architecture, did you have any part of, help building UC’s architecture?

JH: I’m not sure [Laughs]. The person who made it all happen was dean Jay Chatterjee.

BO: We just interviewed him not that long ago.

JH: Alright, well there was one point before it all started, he had been dean, I don’t think he had been dean for very long. He called me up I think it was before e-mail, and he said, ‘John can you give me a list, you know, ten or twelve of the best-known architects in the world right now?’ I was teaching a course at the time called ‘Architecture Since 1966.’ Okay this was around 1982, so it was only about fourteen-years worth of material in this syllabus. Right, so you know I had some expertise on that and so he asked for this list. I sent it to him and it had names on it like Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, Elder Rosi. We weren’t studying Frank Gehry yet, but you know Rothme, Ianpay. You know, these people, who were in my course. And then I never, you know, there wasn’t any follow up, I just sent him the list. But then later on, of course you know what happened. He persuaded President Steger to proceed with the signature architect program. So, whether my list had anything to do with that, I have no idea, but that’s what I have to answer your question. I don’t really know.

BO: Oh so—

JH: Because after that no, I mean they were, they were running I wasn’t involved in anything after that.

BO: Okay oh wow.

JH: So I had no official role in it, I just don’t know whether that list was the beginning of Jay Chatterjee’s research on the question of who to call. Which he started doing you know, right away practically.

BO: So you never had any role of actually designing the buildings, did you?

JH: No, no, no.

BO: Lets see—

JH: We spent a lot time interpreting the buildings in my graduate of theory seminars later on.

BO: Really?

JH: Yeah because you know, especially our building especially the DAAP building was, was very controversial, let’s say people had strong opinions about it. And so, we would always ease it in our discussion topic in our seminar, we would consider those point of view and sort of pick them apart and try to prepare them and try to let’s say well you know what point of view is this person deriving this opinion? And so that’s what we do,

BO: Okay.

JH: in architect history theory, so it was a very fun sort of case study to think about.

BO: Okay.

JH: We were living in it at that time too, so we had a different—we could encourage students to have a different understanding based on they were sort of living in it. Not just being an aloof creation, but what does it mean to actually living in it and how does that affect your perception. So anyway, a lot of fascinating questions around interpreting these buildings, yeah.

BO: Okay, how did you interpret some of these buildings at UC, like McMicken for example, I know it’s one of the oldest buildings.

JH: The original one or the one that gets, well I guess haven’t really added to that one. I was thinking of the Tangeman. Nevermind. How do we interpret McMicken? Well, it’s a, it’s a, historical period piece. I think it was, you know, thirties wasn’t it?

BO: Mhmhmm, yep

JH: And that’s when the universities wanted to make a connection with a certain slice of American heritage, right. It’s one a colonial, williamburgy-kind of stuff and so that’s what they did. And you know, most buildings up until the thirties were trying to establish their cultural meaning through which historical style they pick. Whether it’s Greco Roman, or gothic, or what have you. It’s just part of that, part of that tradition.

BO: And which style did you like more? The grecco or the—

JH: From historical styles?

BO: Yeah, yeah.

JH: Well, just talking about college buildings, I remember visiting Yale and Princeton and, and, thinking what we called it a collegiate gothic. It’s based on, mostly on British medieval style for the residence halls, you know, an old manor house or a courtyard with courtyard plans and so forth. I always thought those were particularly beautiful, charming is that they were supposed to be an intimate and domestic, but they were really, very beautiful.

BO: And now—

JH: We don’t have of that here if any, but you know as an architectural educator that was sort of, that’s sort of back there. We know we don’t never really, as styles other than its history. And we don’t do that anymore.

BO: And how would describe the UC’s changes as far as like campus buildings?

JH: Spectacular. [Laughs] Even more than the buildings is the master plan the, landscaping, the way it’s all been tied together. When I came here in ’78, this the most—really the ugliest and the most confusing and, and the most depressing campus to try to walk around on. I mean there were some buildings that were okay you know. McMicken’s okay, the old DAAP building, the original DAAP building was sort of nice modern doll house looking thing. It was okay, it wasn’t air conditioned, but if you know, you mind the look of it and a few others. But I remembered trying walk across campus to get somewhere, but if you tried to go any further than Tangeman, it was just impossible. You get lost. You tried to cut through Teachers College or something and it would be just, I remember it’s just horrible experiences trying to, trying to walk across it. It was so disoriented and so ugly there were these brick buildings that sat out there in front of Tangeman. They were all, I don’t know what originally, but I think they were like chemistry labs or something. They were just derelict and the spaces between the buildings were depressing. It was bad, so it went from being like the worst campus I ever seen in my life physically, architecturally, in terms of being of beautiful to you know, one of the best in the world. And what’s significant about that what I at least for you know with my architect hat on what’s significant about that is they did not do it in a that Miami did it, does it. I mean that’s an attractive campus too in a way, but they do it by just saying everything has to be perfect brick and white Georgian right. So we did it in a much, much, much more sophisticated way by having a really interesting contemporary buildings by really talented designers and all of them are good in their own way, even DAAP. No, I like our building. And then to bring in Hargraves and his team for the landscape plant and to weave it all together and at the same time to make allusions to Ohio and its earthworks. You know and the old waterways that you stick to course through this landscape and so I mean it’s absolutely brilliant. So from the worst to the best, so a transformation like almost beyond belief, so good.

BO: And you didn’t have part of it, you just—

JH: Just watched, talked about it in our classrooms. [Laughs]

BO: Do you wish you had part of it like? Some say in it?

JH: No.

BO: No?

BO: You just kind of left that to the higher ups and Jay Chatterjee?

JH: Well, in a way, I mean they’re responsible, I mean that are the patrons okay. The university is the is patron, and you know it’s always been the case the great architecture has its patrons, and the patron has to be the client. Of course, the patron is, you know, what call Lorenzo de Medici. You know he’s a patron, but it’s sort of the same thing. You know patrons who are savvy about design want to hire the people who are going to do the most brilliant designs because now they get the glory too. I mean Lorenzo understood that perfectly and, and, and I think that’s what happened. I hope that this is what collaborates with what Jay said. I think what’s happened to be persuaded to stay here on the Board of Trustees, that this would be good for UC. Which it was. Sorry about my phone.

BO: You’re fine.

JH: Let me worry about it.

BO: And—

JH: So, no I didn’t, I didn’t wish that I was you know helping to design the buildings or anything like that because it was like nobody got it. They’re going to take this to another level. I’m sure we’re going to get there. I think a few of my colleagues were sort of disgruntled and you know some people say, ‘well you know you got a bunch of supposedly good architects on your faculty here. Why aren’t they designing the campus?’ And some of them might have felt that I, that I was a historian I guess I had this perspective, you know, if you really want to rise at the top of the international stage, it just couldn’t be our faculty doing these buildings.

BO: And what did you hope students took away from your class?

JH: Well, I taught a lot of different classes over the years. So, the first class I developed and taught was a history of western architecture. I taught that for fifteen years. And what I wanted them to take away from that was the feeling that the, the traditions of architectural past are something that they are inheriting as professionals and they should have a mature and responsible attitude towards their own histories, which means that no they are not going to go out not doing gothic buildings. They’re not even going to go out do a classical building although there’s a little slice of practice that does that, but that’s not going to be them. But they should respect theses, theses traditions and they should understand principles to help them do better work if they are paying attention to the buildings from the past. So, that’s what I wanted them get out of it.

BO: Okay, and what about your graduate program?

JH: And in in my graduate seminar, it’s that I still have been teaching recently? It’s based in a branch of philosophy called phenomenology and it’s not terribly far away from that same point, which is that our experience of the world, our experience of the environment depends on our having memory, shared memory, an understanding of the meanings that embedded in our experience up to right now. And if we’re going to talk how we’re experiencing this building, we need to kind of go down into the roots of that of that understanding. Of, our, our, cultural memories our human memories, our, even our sort of biological memories are affecting how we understand the effects of light for example, space enclosure and so forth.

BO: Okay, so it’s almost like a kind of like a philosophy class but more,

JH: Yeah, we read, we read philosophy, we read this guy named Martin Heidegger. Who was pretty tough to read, but architects have been reading him for forty years now and so I have some ideas about we should be reading it a little bit differently, a little bit better so that what I teach.

BO: Oh nice, so that’s pretty cool and what were relationships like among your colleagues at your time at UC?

JH: Generally, generally good.

BO: Did you always have someone that you can always go to for advice or for help?

JH: Yeah, yeah, either the school director, who you know, for the first half of my career, they were sort of the default mentor, but there were other faculty as well that would help you out or help you get published somewhere or something, answer questions about the bureaucracy or whatever it might be, so I’ve always felt like I had what I needed that way, but then the second half of my career I kind of became that to others, so that was, especially as associate dean, that’s your job to help people with their projects so that was good.

BO: And how did UC respond to your needs? Like research wise, grants, money.

JH: Well I saw a lot of transformation in that area too over years like the campus transform from ugly to fascinating, wonderful. From my perspective, and I don’t have the, maybe the best perspective on it, but from my perspective, the university’s understanding of how to manage, how to help research and how to help with graduate studies, graduate programs, also improved a lot. It seemed, it could have been my own inexperience and naivete, but I think in the early years as I was trying to run a graduate program, it seemed like there wasn’t much help, there wasn’t much support and it was kind of a closed black box if anything about how you are supposed to ask for resources or share experiences with other, you know, colleagues trying to do the same thing and so forth. It was just hit or miss. Then, I’m not going to mention any names about who was in charge of those days but, and it was also true in DAAP, that it was mostly focused on undergraduate education you know all the big programs, most of all the big programs, except for planning maybe were bachelor’s degrees. And so the little the little master’s degrees that like the one I was trying to run were again, we were sort of on our own in depth-there was a lot, it was hard for many of our colleagues to understand what graduate education needed, or needed to be. When we transfer, when we started up the M-Art program, there was a long learning curve about how to do that one. What that should be like what kind resources it needed and so forth. But by then, the by the time I retired, the last you know, number of years before that, thing said it improved a lot. I remember during my last years, as a graduate program director, and associate dean, I think we were with Neville Pinto, who was then the dean of the graduate school and things were working a lot better I thought. Again, it could have been just that I had figured out a lot of stuff by now and been through a lot of struggles. But I think there was a better understanding at the university level and a better understanding in DAAP about graduate, graduate education and research.

BO: Okay, oh wow.

JH: So, I would put that right alongside the campus transformation has something that I witnessed over those forty years.

BO: And did you witness Sander Implosion?

JH: I was with a group of students in Greece at that time.

BO: Oh, really?

JH: So, we watched it on TV [Laughs]. Re-runs of it or something. I forget how we got to see that because I don’t know if it. Was the internet around then, I don’t remember now, but I just video of it.

BO: Do you wish you were there?

JH: Nah, not really [Laughing] I was kind of glad to see it go.

BO: What were your thoughts on the building?

JH: It’s a period piece from the ‘60s, and most of those are really not that great [laughing]

BO: It was just there.

JH: Yeah.

BO: And as like the history of Cincinnati, its history have an effect on UC’s architecture on the campus?

JH: Mmm. I’m not sure what you mean by that. [Laughs]

BO: Would like Cincinnati’s like city history, did some of it like kind of like influence the design of the buildings?

JH: The buildings on campus?

BO: Mmhm

JH: I can’t think of anything very specific, but generally would say that the buildings that were built on campus were a response to the stylistic preferences of the time in consideration of those, of the building type. Which have you know, through most of the 19th century and into the 20th. That’s how that’s how architecture happened.

BO: Yeah.

JH: The architect and the client but it’s more or less agree that this ought be to be a classical building because because because precedent somewhere or because it symbolizes the right thing for this kind of institution. That’s still what was going when they built the DAAP building. Because they built that there early ‘50s I think and what’s the most important modern design school in the world you want to reference in the ‘50s? You want to reference the Bauhaus so that is why it looks like the Bauhaus. They made it out of brick so I guess that mean that has a little bit to do with Cincinnati, but yeah

BO: Okay.

JH: Brick is a lot more just than Cincinnati [Laughing] It one of warming up a little bit.

BO: Okay.

JH: But basically, they built the Bauhaus on top of that hill and that was the right way to say this is a cool design school at the time.

BO: Okay, and how have students changed over time when you were at UC?

JH: Well I think there were several phases. Conditionally, I was really impressed with the students. I think we were coming out of the 60s and 70s culture and they were very, they were culturally engaged. They were idealistic, they were progressive minded. The wanted to get out and improve the world and they wanted to understand how architecture could do that. Like I said, they were very smart, so that was good for a while. And then as we started to get into the 80s, and this is a broad general culture thing too, I got into the 80s and it seemed like they were more interested in getting out you know getting a job, making a lot of money, buying a BMW, you know what I’m saying [Laughing]. And so that was another phase and then the next transformation, I remember after in the 90s, late 90s, by the late 90s, I remember teaching in a research class where the students are supposed to be formulating their thesis project and so we’re having discussions about topics and ideas and so forth and this one woman, a woman from in the class, was making a contribution to the discussion and she said, ‘Well during my co-op in Venice, I was you know,’ blah blah blah, and she talked about something and I suddenly realized wow these students have been having some amazing experiences that they didn’t have when I started here. The idea of an international co-op was you know, was just nobody was doing it in the 70s and 80s and you know by the last decade of my teaching, everybody you know, at least the top half of students in terms of talent were co-oping in Shanghai, and Singapore, and Paris, and London, and Barcelona, and Venice, and you know, Milan. They’re cosmopolitan knowledge, it just exploded, it’s just incredibly so that was the next transformation I saw in, in students.

BO: Did you like that, that period where students was able to experience more things outside of UC and were able to bring back those experiences.

JH: Yeah, they became much more sophisticated human beings and designers because of that.

BO: And what changes did you witness at UC besides like the architecture portion?

JH: Well, I think there was the growth of the graduate and research community that I talked about before. The administrative infrastructure grew a lot, and you know, it’s, there’s a kind of negative spin that can be put on that the administrative bloat you know. And I’m going to trying and stay neutral about it because, you know, I do regret that as a percentage, as percentage of the university budget that goes to hiring research and teaching faculty, that’s gone down quite a bit and the percent that is going to pay administrators is coming up quite a bit, so that you know that sounds like a negative thing and maybe it is. But let me give you an example, of what all these people are for and maybe it’s a good thing. [Laughing]. Back in the 1983, I had only been here for about four years, I decided that I wanted to do an international study program that I was going to get together a group architecture students, and we were going to go to London for a quarter, academic quarter, do it in London. I would teach the classes, they would live in the city and so forth. And so I just went to office of College Business Manager and said, ‘Here are the numbers, here’s what’s going to cost. I’m going to invite all these students that want to go. They all signed up. They pay an extra fee.’ And we go. That’s what we did then I took the money and deposited in British bank and we did the program and everything went fine and we came home again. Now, if you want to do that, there’s a lot of infrastructure. I’m not going to use the word bureaucracy because it sounds negative, but there’s a lot of infrastructure to help you do that and to make sure that all the liability issues are covered, to make sure that you know every little aspect of it is under control, and there’s a university office and I don’t know the vice provost or something there’s somebody running that. So now in order to do that, you need to work with these people, and they help you. I’m going to try to say you know it’s good both ways and in current climate, legal climate and so forth, I’m certain that this is necessary. But that’s how UC has changed.

BO: Okay

JH: That is one the ways that UC is changed. Probably every university has changed in the same way and in man, many other not just for international programs, but in many, many other areas the same kind of growth of an administrative support structure or monitoring structure or review structure or whatever, what have you, that is grown much larger.

BO: I guess you can say the more students that come into the university, the bigger the administration has to become to like handle—

JH: Yeah that could be although I know if you looked at the proportions whether it went from even more than the proportions of students. I’m not sure, but I think the ratio of faculty to administrators and the administrator level has grown a lot.

BO: Okay.

JH: Full time faculty I mean. Anyway, but anyway, but I want to be clear, I’m not complaining about that. I’m not an expert on whether that was necessary, but probably, I’m sure it was to some extent.

BO: And how have UC’s priorities shifted since you started at UC?

JH: Priorities, mmmm. Well there is quip that maybe you’re going hear him, somebody else too that the University of Cincinnati—by the way, I came when it was a just a year or two out of being a city university. I don’t, you know, I can’t imagine it being funded by the city. Or subsidized or whatever it was. [Laughs]. I don’t know it was but the quips is this, that the university has gone from being a state-supported university, to being a state-assisted university, to being a state-located university.

BO: Think—

JH: Did you follow that?

BO: Yeah.

JH: The support is gone or nearly gone, is shriveled up to the level of being assistants. It’s not gone but its way down, your state support is way down now. [Laughs] Tuition is way up, administrative costs are way up so, this is, this business I think. I mean, I forgot what the originally what the question was

BO: How have you seen UC’s priorities change?

JH: How have UC’s priorities shifted, so well this isn’t some ways been forced upon the university because of cuts from beloved legislators. So, the priorities have shifted to raising money, growing the endowment, getting private donors, naming programs, and buildings and so forth after a multi-million-dollar donor. So yeah, the job description of provost, the job description of deans, the job description even of a program direction is, number one: raise money. So that’s it, that’s a priority that in ‘78 I don’t we were worrying about that. We worry about economics.

BO: Just later, later and you know when you’re at UC, instead of teaching you’re just more focused on, you know, trying to raise money for your program. And did it, did it distract you anyway or—

JH: Well I got interested in writing grants. I mean there was some, with some motivation to do that, folks would say, well you know we need to get the research dollars up and of course, medicine and engineering are really what’s driving them with research dollars to the university. But I was interested. I took it as a challenge to raise money on the humanities, arts and humanities and I said sure why not, I can do this. Especially when I discovered the earthworks and said ‘aha, this is a public as was a question of some public interest and importance. I believe, the probably, the NEH would be interested in this,’ and they were. I got almost [unintelligible] grants from the NEH totaling about a nine hundred thousand dollars to do these earth work projects.

BO: Oh wow.

JH: From the very early experiments all the way through to this big travelling exhibit and then we did our website after that and tourism website about the earthworks called the Ancient Ohio Trail. Those were all NEH funded. So I wouldn’t want to say there was pressure to do an external funding but this sort of was at least from you know, some quarters to get the external funding up. Grants, not only to do the pay for you projects but they provide money for the infrastructure, the administrative infrastructure [Laughs] that was we were talking about and something, it trickles down to students, to I mean, we were able to teach some extra classes because of it so on so it does have an academic impact too.

BO: Okay, lets see— how have to seen UC connected to Cincinnati.

JH: Well in urban planning, there’s been the Neihoff studio, I think that’s kind of a big one and since then just I remember reading broader initiatives, but I haven’t been involved in them, but I think that’s one of President Pinto’s interests who was President Ono, before them so far as I know, it’s happening. I’m not in on it, got it, not following it.

BO: Yeah, do you, do you like the connection with UC and the city?

JH: Sure, sure. It’s an urban university I think trying to live up to that name is significant.

BO: Okay

JH: Well yeah, in the architectural terms, the local architectural firms I think of sometimes has kind of has a hard time recruiting our students, so that’s a city connection that isn’t working so well. [Laughs]. The reason for that is that they all have job offers in Paris, in New York, and San Francisco, in Portland so you know, that’s not hard to persuade them that distain since any when they’ve already spent six yeas here, going to school.

BO: Can you see—or can you think of plans or ideas for DAAP students to stay in Cincinnati?

JH: They recruit, to have a recruiting fair and they come in we’re going to have some time and of course, Cincinnati is going to be way cooler city to be in for your generation, so that’s probably helping.

BO: And do you see more DAAP students, especially architecture students staying here or at least stay in the state of Ohio or near Cincinnati?

JH: I don’t know, I don’t have that data. I’m not sure.

BO: How has faculty changed over time?

JH: How has faculty changed over time? Well again, I can only talk about our discipline I think that gradually there’s been an increasing amount of emphasis in hiring faculty and in promoting faculty on research. It’s part of that ramping up of the research, they talked about, so the that a expectation a faculty member will an area of specialty that is publishable and tenurable, that has increased over the years. And that’s—I think for most points of view, that’s a good thing. It makes it harder to have generalists on the faculty, however, which people who have kind of a broad overview of the discipline is all instead, you have an expert in computer software graphics, and you have an expert in you know, 17th century, you know, churches or something you know, you have an expert in this and an expert in that. And they all also teach in the design studios most of them.

BO: Okay.

JH: So that’s different than it was 40 years ago, but probably for the better.

BO: Do you wish there was a more of a service element to the students then a research element?

JH: Service?

BO: Yeah, like quite more teaching than researching.

JH: Do mean as an emphasis for faculty?

BO: Yeah.

JH: No, I don’t think I really wish that I think the main balance for tenure ability is teaching and research. And we have been successful in DAAP during most of my time there in helping the higher administration understand, that in the professional field, respect professional or creative field, like art of architecture, research includes doing design work and even if it’s not built. So that’s, that’s a plus. So—but that has helped us a lot. So no, I don’t think that I think, as long there’s a balance of teaching and research slash, hyphen creative work together. As long it has that balance I think that you know, that’s how all should be.

BO: Okay.

JH: Services is less typically as a criteria.

BO: Okay and what hard, what were some certain things that were hard teaching at UC?

JH: Specifically at UC?

BO: Yeah or, or in your program?

JH: [Long Pause]

BO: Was there any barriers, or?

JH: Well there were some things in the early days that just probably just you know they don’t matter now. I mean we used to be, we had an awful time with instructional technology. Was so primitive when I started. But nowadays that’s of course runs with beautifully with smart lecterns and all the right tools and so that’s, that’s out of date now. I am not concerned about that. What was difficult? I don’t know, nothing is coming to mind I guess it was Okay.

BO: Well it looks like you had, you know, a pretty easy time teaching.

JH: Well, easy is not the word, but it was hard work.

BO: Or stable.

JH: You know we all do sixty-hour weeks prepping for class. The workloads are heavy in our college because we have studios. You’re supposed to—you typically you teach a studio class and a lecturer class, and so the lecture is set three days a week and you have to prep. The studio is three days a week for five hours at a time so that is fifteen contact hours a week plus your lecture, plus you need to do your research, your design practice. So the workloads are okay, no the workloads are hard [Laughs]

BO: Is there is anything you’re are most proud of at your time at UC?

JH: Yes, I have about, when I had my retirement party, I made a list of the graduates alumni I have mentored, for whom I was their main mentor over the years both of the MS programs and the M-Art program and there were about 75 of them that I was still somewhat in touch with, who they were, anywhere they were that we could invite to my graduation party. [Laughs]. I wanted it to be about, but I wanted the student there not just the faculty and the administration. So, when I realized they were that many I that’s what I think I felt proud of it. Out of the 75, there maybe, you know, 25or 30 that I really do keep in touch with and visit them when I go to New York or wherever they live. Bucharest, Romania, places like that. It’s wonderful having this network of people that I know consider to be good friends around the world, who tell me sometimes repeatedly what a wonderful mentor I was and how much they learned and you know, I would helped their career. That’s the, that’s the best part of it all.

BO: I think it’s pretty cool that you still keep in touch with you graduate students.

JH: My mentees, yes.

BO: And are they still working in architecture or are they doing something else outside of it.?

JH: Well I’m still working in design and public education, by doing this UNESCO world heritage project. We just finished a little publication, and I was helpful in designing that so. A design work not so much. Me, my wife, and I did our house so we live in now and we helped friends when they needed it just informally, but I’m not really interested in doing anything like practice anymore.

BO: Yeah, are like your former students still like in architecture or still designing.

JH: Yeah, many of those people twenty-five or thirty or roughly so, that I mentioned are, many of them are in teaching. It’s not a lot of academic positions around the world. Those are, more of those are from the MS-Art program from the 90s when I taught that. And more of the M-Arch graduates that I’ve entered since, nothing more of them are in practice.

BO: Okay

JH: So it’s kind of a mix.

BO: Awesome, just one more question. What else would you like to tell me that we already haven’t talked about in this interview.

JH: Well I had few topics in mind that I wanted to cover and we covered in them all.

BO: Oh.

JH: No, we did.

BO: We did?

JH: We covered them all. There are some excellent questions

BO: Awesome. And there’s, there’s nothing really much to do talk about, you know.

JH: Nothing left. Nothing springs to mind.

BO: Alright then, I think we are done with the interview. I really, really do appreciate you taking time out of your day doing this interview for our class.

JH: Okay.

BO: And yeah, we really do appreciate it.

JH: Okay.

BO: Thank you

JH: Your welcome.