Barry Svigals: The burden of expertise and the practice of not-knowing

Expertise is often what we strive for in all we do. We want to be competent, proficient, and remarkable in our respective domains. In a broader sense, from our very beginnings, we wish to “know”. We want to master the world in which we live. We see this wish manifest itself both individually and collectively, in our own lives, in the communities in which we live and in the nations around the globe. It’s a good thing, right?

Well, maybe not entirely…

What we don’t see so clearly is how that wish might stand in the way of being of service to ourselves and the world in which we live. Much of how we live and see ourselves obscures how our “expertise” might, in fact, blind us to what’s truly needed.

How might we develop a way to experience the dynamics of meaningful engagement more deeply to align our talents and knowledge with what’s needed? How does that wish for mastery distract us from an essential understanding of ourselves and our place in the world? How might we practice a way of seeing and knowing that opens us to greater resources both within ourselves and from the creative world around us

This session will explore those questions and open a conversation about how we might understand “expertise” and a complementary direction: “not-knowing.”

And as serious as this all sounds, it aims to be fun!

About Barry

Barry Svigals FAIA is an architect, artist, educator, and national speaker. He is the Founder and Partner Emeritus of Svigals+Partners, an architectural firm in New Haven Connecticut.

Founded in 1983, his firm has designed notable projects for a wide variety of clients including Yale University, Boston College, PepsiCo, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale New Haven Hospital. From the beginning, he has focused on the design of learning environments from Pre-K through Graduate Schools as well as Children’s Museums and Innovation Centers. One of the firm’s most significant projects was the new replacement school for the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT for which it won local and national awards.

In 2019, Mr. Svigals was appointed to a Fellowship at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (or d.school) at Stanford University to “Reimagine School Safety.”

Mr. Svigals is a graduate of Yale College and the Yale School of Architecture where he was a visiting critic and lecturer for over 30 years serving on the Faculty from 2003-2009. He studied sculpture at the École National Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris and in 2007, he was elevated to the College of Fellows of the Americas Institute of Architecture for “reawakening the tradition of figurative sculpture in architecture.”

Reminder: Bring an open mind and an open heart. And have a favorite beverage on-hand to enjoy a virtual toast!