The article “Why Collaborate” is written by Ellen Lupton who is a curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design museum in New York City and a director of the Graphic design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.
In the article Lupton talks about their experience in collaborating with other people, initially he says “I’d love to collaborate, as long as I can work alone”. The tone for this article starts off a bit stand-offish because of past experiences with working with other people. “It can be frustrating, however, when a few people are doing the heavy lifting and others are there only to ‘insure consensus’ or ‘weigh in’ on concepts”. The ideal goal of working in a collaboration is to collectively work together to achieve a specific goal, it can only happen when all members of that group are doing their fair share of the work but Lupton has had a bad experience with collaborating.
Lupton then goes on to talk about their situation in school, “in my own experiences as a student, I have enjoyed voluntary informal collaborations with my friends”. In school, students are generally in a place where collaboration is always happening. Students can provide each other a healthy amount of challenges, inspiration and life hack information that pertains to every day life. Lupton was surprised upon hearing of a group of young architects who have come together with their own unique skills and put them all together to create one spectacular thing. Through out the rest of this article from that point on, the tone changes into something inspiring as Lupton realizes that collaborating doesn’t stop at kids but continues on throughout life.
To give a short synopsis, this article is about the pros and cons of collaborations and why they’re important.
