Daniel Brown
National Tertiary Teaching Excellence Award Winner

"I tell my students we must never base ideas on presumption, but rather we must challenge ourselves to uncover always an essential "Rationale" while encouraging our "Imagination" to translate that rationale in extraordinary and unexpected ways. My favourite quote (by the architect and design educator Tod Williams) refers to this seeming ambiguity as the need for all projects (and all creative ideas) to hold both the "Day" and the "Dream":

Except in the mind, or perhaps in science, it is not possible to so compress
the essence of a Chair to the density of the Diamond,
nor to expand so fully on the Chair that there is no possibility of the Room.
All projects hold some of the Day and the Dream.
Those which vibrate with the Life of both make us tremble.
We know an intense pursuit of Reality to be the catalyst for the creative process.
What shape Reality?"
Tod Williams & Ricordo Scofidio, Window Room Furniture 1981

"As a teacher, I can only accomplish this challenge by embracing rather than erasing the innocence of my students. Their innocence is their greatest gift, for it provides them with the essential ability to Dream. And it reminds me utterly that as I teach my students, so too I learn from them in return. I would like now to share one final quote from a former student Ð a quote I particularly cherish because it serves to always remind me that maintaining my own innocence is as essential to my students as theirs is for me:

"Daniel, thank you for your passion, your knowledge and your warmth. I can think of no better guide. When you say our innocence touches you, remember that we are fed by yours which seems to have survived unscathed. You have given us confidence which will endure. Cheers, mate. Tim Gittos, Year 3 Architecture."