New Approaches to General and Professional Art and Architecture Education

Educational systems, including secondary schools and higher educational establishments, must be oriented to the future in terms of form and content. Unfortunately, the current type of education is mainly a reproductive one, forming an outlook of implementer. But this is the legacy of the old system oriented to the centralization of everything and everybody whereby any initiative in provinces was considered harmful. "Creative work" was reserved for central type-design institutes, while in provinces the creative process was limited to implementing those type designs; and the constant lack of technicians/architects created a demand for such professionals which was satisfied at the expense of new postgraduates – young architects who were forced to go to remote areas for compulsory-placement work. Most often creative initiative was not needed. Technical draftsman’s work for three or more years stifled the creative potential and initiative. Huge design institutes and universal type-design systems required "hordes" of passive implementers rather than creators.
The future type of education must be mainly a productive one, forming an outlook of the creator. Besides, the main aim of education must deal not with meeting the needs of current practice but with preparing a student as an individual and a professional to what he/she will face after finishing school or graduating from a higher educational establishment. Otherwise, any training loses its social and practical value. Education as an ideal model of possible practical activity of the future must always be ahead of current existing practices in order to help these practices avoid stagnation and advance on the way of social progress. That is why "the content of general art and architecture education must include not only features of the existing social practice and art-and-architecture competence but also social characteristics of the man and environment of the future"³ (Figure 1). In this figure general art and architecture education means not the skill of making architecture or design projects and fine art articles but a specific world outlook and ethics of the creator possessing a socio-spatial creative constructive attitude to reality.
Thus, an individual with his/her creative potential becomes the main aim of general cultural art and architecture education.

How to develop creative and personal qualities? All disciplines studied at school and at higher educational establishments can be divided into 8 major sets or blocks, the first four of which are object blocks providing information about the environment/the world around us: the 1^st block – disciplines studying man/person; the 2^nd block – disciplines studying society; the 3^rd block – disciplines studying primary nature; the 4^th block – disciplines studying secondary (man-made) nature. The other four blocks are activity blocks dealing with practical experiences of the humanity: the 5^th block – disciplines dealing with activity in the field of technical sciences; the 6^th block – disciplines dealing with activity in the field of natural sciences; the 7^th block – disciplines dealing with activity in the field of humanities; and the 8^th block – disciplines dealing with socio-spatial constructive creative activity. (Figure 2)
The outlook of the implementer is formed by the 3^rd, 5^th and 6^th blocks of disciplines (Figure 3). The outlook of the thinker and the creator is formed by the 4^th, 7^th and 8^th blocks of disciplines (Figure 4). The remaining 1^st and 2^nd blocks of disciplines form two different types of world outlook depending on the emphasis: the 1^st block of disciplines form the outlook of person studying human nature and society (Figures 5,6). The 2^nd block of disciplines form the outlook of the personality and the citizen³ (Figures 7,8).

In order to become a real professional, an architect must learn the artistic and imaginative language connected with the psychology of perception and the psychology of creation, music and poetry, and in the majority of its manifestations with architectural semiotics and in a broader sense with semiotics of space. Semiotics of space studies specific spatial means of meaning/sense generation and meaning/sense expression and reveals common patterns of relationship between form and its meaning and contents.
Art and Architecture Semiotics is a synthetic science penetrating into the field of Arts and Linguistics, Information Theory, Psychology, Rhetoric, Visual Communication, Symbolism of the Artistic Language of Form and "Visual Poetry" (Figures 9,10).
It is essential for a would-be architect to study architectural semiotics together with composition to set free his/her creative spirit, to acquire and develop skills of free and imaginative artistic and architectural language, both original and expressive.
When speaking about architecture as "visual poetry", one should remember that the term "Talking architecture" appeared as an expression of creative credo when studying creative activity of two famous French architects – innovators of the 18^th century: E.-L.Boullée (1728-1799) and C.-N. Ledoux (1736-1806).
By dividing architecture into material ("building art") and spiritual ("imaginative art"), Boullée was one out of the first who conducted a semiotic research of architecture considering it to go in parallel with nature and poetry. He wrote: "Our buildings, especially public buildings, must be in some way poems. Images that they give to our feelings should stir up the feelings that these buildings are designed to create. He continues: "Architecture, isn’t it an imaginary art and pure invention or – basic principles of this art, don’t they arise from nature?" When describing the role of architect, he says: "The architect, as it is seen here, must show himself as "a cutter" of nature. With these precious gifts he must produce an impression and seize our feelings. The art of implementing images in architecture arises from the effect of bodies and this is what creates poetry". He adds: "A real talent of an architect consists in the skill of presenting the elevated attractiveness of poetry in his works. How is it manifested? Through the effect of masses. It is where the character is born, from which it follows that the viewer does not experience any other feelings besides those where the story is sufficiently tangible"⁴.
In order to understand the language of others and to work out his/her own artistic expressive architectural language the architect of the future would have to acquire knowledge of at least the fundamentals of architectural semiotics. Thus, architectural semiotics can be compared with the art of "visual poetry", the poetry of forms. But it is constructions and materials, being the means and instruments for expressing poetic idea, that give materiality to forms. That is why the aim of the higher architectural school is to arouse in would-be architects/specialists their abilities and gifts to visual poetry, to master form in order to express their feelings and ideas, to get the skill of working with materials and constructions as means of expressing their artistic and architectural sense/meaning. Only in this case can a graduate quickly and conscientiously develop his/her own artistic and architectural language. And only in this case would architecture become art.
Architectural students at our Academy study the fundamentals of this discipline in the course "Introduction to Architectural Compositional Modeling" which is part of a larger course "Three-Dimensional Spatial Composition". The course was introduced into the curriculum at the beginning of the 1970s by Prof.A.E.Korotkovskyi who was the first to propose the semiotic approach to studying architectural composition at the 1^st and 2^nd year. Then the 3^rd-year students can extend their knowledge in this field by studying the elective course "Architectural Semiotics", the contents of which must be improved in accordance with the national and international experience ^5-6.
Today, architecture is still at the crossroads and architectural semiotics is one of the bridges that would help it move from the "Island of Fortuities" where it found itself after the wreck of the "Ship of Contemporary Architecture" to the continent of the "Great Future" worth of its "Great Past".