March 31st, 2026, Jonas Domeisen ran a PreText session for my Architecture History Section at Harvard Graduate School of Design.
For our Architecture History class (BTC, Prof. Erica Naginski), we meet weekly for an hour in sections of 15 students, led by a teaching assistant. Every week, two students prepare a short presentation on the required reading, explaining the text and providing context. They also prepare questions for a group discussion. Section meetings have been challenging for me. I often feel ‘stuck’ there.
Inspired by experiences in weekly PreText meetings, when it was Leo and my turn, we proposed to implement the PreText protocol into our sections meeting. We celebrated when our TA agreed to let us lead the entire section meeting in the PreText spirit. We shared the PreText website, chose a two-page excerpt from this week’s readings, and provided a clear protocol.
On the day of our presentation, my classmates were aware that something unfamiliar was happening, and they showed up curious and supportive. A classmate volunteered to read the chosen excerpt from ORNAMENT IN ARCHITECTURE (1892) by Louis Sullivan. The room was tight; we laid our questions to the text on the central table and moved around it counterclockwise until everyone read all the questions. We later repeated the ritual clockwise to read each other’s answers. We found consensus on the art form: ornamenting each other’s bodies using the paper and tape available to us. Then we guessed the connections to the text.
