The Corporate University and Machines of Interdisciplinarity

Abstract

The university stands in the contemporary world as the frontier of final stages in education for students and the industry. It intends to provide valuable training ground for academia and the development of critical minds anticipating to enter the workforce of society. Therefore, naturally, decisions made by universities as an institution become affected by the sensitive flow and demands of the commercial market. A balance between academic pursuit and generating profit is desirable. However, capitalist values have overtaken the university model, not just in the author’s context but internationally, and is increasingly familiarising itself to models of commercial corporations. When profit and status becomes the gauge for quality of education and welfare, detrimental situations are witnessed to arise from within, especially threatening the presence of faculties that are deemed relatively unprofitable by the governing body of the university. The research interrogates this by investigating the inevitable embracement of the capitalistic agenda; treating it as a catalyst for reappropriating the interests of the three schools of Architecture, Engineering and Business on campus to counter the status quo. It exaggerates and exploits the conditions to discover a new perspective on academic autonomy and paradigm. The architectural machines of interdisciplinary scatter themselves over the three schools in question to facilitate agonistic conflict, interdisciplinary collaboration and action. These machines vary in levels of feasibility extending from formal gestures to metaphorical satire, to pose harsh questions of ethics while proposing different methods an institution can employ in programming its priorities to bring about the betterment of the academic environment in an ever-changing world.