Want to talk with us on the current challenges of architecture and how these are affecting architectural education? Join us from 2-4 November, live here in Delft for the ‘Architectural Education in Times of Uncertainty’ Symposium. The event unfolds over three days with discussions on the integration of circularity in current curricula, new types of collaboration, transitions in pedagogy and learning in extreme complexity with an amazing line up. For more information and registrations please visit our website.
This paper represents our CBE Hub approach towards developing a scheme of what constitutes content for teaching circularity, how the goals for integrating it into the curricula can be formulated, and what type of pedagogy is suited to support the integration.
The question for the coming autumn is resolutely not how can we recreate the architecture studio online. It is how we can liberate our discipline from the assumption that an ill-defined space, time, pedagogy and culture is the only way to teach design. It is an opportunity to re-construct architecture education in a more critical, inclusive and democratic way. (highlighting is mine)
Abdullah, 2011: separation of design and building could be the philosophical difference between thinkers (designers) and doers (builders)
Harriss & Widder, 2014: Design build projects exist between the two tectonic plates of learning in academia and practice
Vlahos, 2000: Conventional studio projects present a disconnect from the needs of people and places and the understanding of different cultures. The outcomes of the theoretical studio projects are strongly developed, controlled, formal solutions with little understanding of the architectural intervention in communities. Students engage predominantly with theoretical, fictional projects.
Nepveux, 2010: Being involved physically in building allows students to reconcile their drawings with real structures they can build, weld, wire and plumb
Delport, 2016: Design-build projects have as outcome a physical product made through a process that can vary greatly in scope, focus and intent. They bring in tacit knowledge to the curriculum. The object contributes to social change and improving the lives of others
Van der Wath, 2013: it is an oscillation between the abstract to the concrete that allows students to develop the intellectual agility to tackle the complexities of arch innovation and experimentation that they will use in prof. practice
Brown, 2014: Live Projects’ greatest opportunity is not that it is a place to reflect on one’s own learning but, that it is a place to share that learning and reflection with others (Engestrom: a collective activity system is driven by a deeply communal motive)
Criticism
Erdman, 2002: hands-on built projects in attempting to close the gap between designing and building replace the reflective process of design with the active process of building (-) they resist theorizing and critical discourse (-)
Chiles & Till, 2004: balance between practice and education encourages students to position themselves politically (+) prevarication is also not possible as the luxury of long-term studio development is removed (+)
Christenson & Srivastava, 2005: Focus on completion within a specific time frame overrides the value of process
Foot, 2012: where the completion and the focus on the end product are taken out of the equation, the notion of reflection, open-endedness and non linearity allows students to discover a variety of possible solutions
References
Hermie Elizabeth Delport, 2016, Towards Design-Build Architectural Education and Practice: Exploring Lessons from Educational Design-Build Projects, PhD Thesis, Prof Johannes Cronjé, Faculty of Informatics and Design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology
Re
conceptualizing the role of tutors in research-based pedagogy: the tutor(s) as
the curriculum
The paper presents
the efforts made to experiment with the pedagogical framework and the
operational model of a postgraduate urban design studio based on the
reconceptualization of the role of tutors. In the model examined here, the
curriculum was devised as an open and evolving network of the tutors’ resources
and affiliated researchers from within or outside the setting of the academy.
This mosaic consisted of different individual research and design practices
that are problem-focused and context-specific, communicated directly to
students by the very people responsible for their conception and development.
Learners were required to investigate the instrumentality of these practices
according to their own personal pursuits; to make their own networks of connections,
and were even encouraged to create their own personal schemata of design
research. In fact, the second major shift of the rethink lay in recognizing
learner autonomy and diversity, thus establishing a new operational framework
for the two to prosper. An amalgam of interconnected learning spaces provided
the conditions necessary for all these networks to co-exist and interact. The
paper describes the different aspects of the tutors’ involvement and
contributions in the design and implementation of this model, as they assumed a
number of roles, but most importantly, as they became learners themselves.
The network is a network of people: networked learning aims to understand social learning processes by asking how people develop and maintain a ‘web’ of social relations used for their learning and development (de Laat)
Networked learning does not necessarily involve ICT, though in specific cases it may make use of technology. What makes learning networked is the connection to and engagement with other people across different social positions inside and outside of a given institution. The network is supportive of a person’s learning through the access it provides to other people’s ideas and ways of participating in practice as well as of course through the opportunity to discuss these ideas and ways of participating and to potentially develop nuanced, common perspectives (Carvalho and Goodyear)
Networked learning may utilize ICT but it might me also supported by other means such as physical artefacts or artistic stimulation of senses and feelings while connections may also be drawn spontaneously by the learners themselves (Bober & Hynes)
The network is a network of situations or contexts: connections between the diverse contexts in which the learners participate as significant for understanding learning beyond online learning spaces, and, indeed, within them as well. This is the sense in which the network, under-stood as a network of situations, supports learning: by offering tacit knowledge, perspectives and ways of acting from known situations for re-situated use in new ones. Networked Learning’ on this under-standing is the learning arising from the connections drawn between situations and from the resituated use in new situations of knowledge, perspectives and ways of acting from known ones (Dohn)
The ‘network’ is one of ICT infrastructure, enabling connections across space and time: The support for learning provided by the network is one of infrastructure, i.e. the ease of saving, transporting and retrieving content for future use. Learning, it would seem, will be ‘networked’ whenever it is ICT-mediated, by that very fact; perhaps with the proviso that the situations of learning should indeed be separated in space and/or time so that the infrastructure (the ‘network’) is actually brought into play. This proviso would differentiate the field of networked learning somewhat from the field of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL), where many studies concern ICT-facilitated group work between physically co-located students. The re-search field of Networked Learning is characterized, not only by focusing on ‘networks’, but also by taking a certain approach to learning, focusing critically on aspects of democratization and empowerment (Czerniewicz and Lee)
The ‘network’ is one of actants: consisting of both human and non-human agents in symmetrical relationship to each other. It is a systemic approach to learning, where individual learners’ interaction and learning may be analyzed as a result of socio-material entanglement with objects and other people. The network supports learning in the sense that any learning is in fact the result of concrete socio-material entanglement of physical, virtual, and human actants (Wright and Parchoma; Jones)
References
Bonderup Dohn, N., Sime, J-A., Cranmer, S., Ryberg, T., & de Laat, M. (2018). Reflections and challenges in Networked Learning. In N. Bonderup Dohn, S. Cranmer, J-A. Sime, M. de Laat, & T. Ryberg (Eds.), Networked Learning – reflections and challenges (pp. 187-212). Switzerland: Springer. Research in Networked Learning,
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74857-3_11
the skills of listening to others becomes as important as making clear statements/ the good listener has to respond to intent, to suggestion, for the conversation to keep moving forward/ the difference between the two terms is not a matter of either/or. the heart of it all lies in picking up on concrete details, on specifics, to drive a conversation forward. Bad listeners bounce back in generalities when they respond; they are not attending to those small phrases, facial gestures or silences which open up a discussion.
Dialectic: the verbal play of opposites should gradually build up to a synthesis (…) the Aristotelian notion that although we use the same words, we cannot say we are speaking of the same things (..) the aim is to come to a mutual understanding (…) the listener elaborates the assumption by putting it into words (…) in the Socratic notion, the echo is actually a displacement
Dialogic: first coined by Mikhail Bakhtin to name a discussion which does not resolve itself by finding a common ground (…) though no shared agreements may be reached, through the process of exchange people may become more aware of their own views and expand their understanding of one another (..) knitted together but divergent exchange (…) a dialogic conversation can be ruined by too much identification with the other person.
Excerpts from Richard Sennett’s book, Together: The Rituals & Politics of Cooperation, 2012, London: Penguin Books (pages 18-20)
a deep approach is where the intention of the learner is to understand the meaning of the material/ a surface approach to learning is where a learner is concerned to memorise the material for what it is/ between the two there is a continuum with an hierarchy of stages:
noticing: representation is reproduction
making sense: representation is coherent reproduction
making meaning: representation is of ideas that are integrated and well linked (beginnings of deeper approach)
working with meaning: representation is reflective, well structured and demonstrates the linking of material with other ideas which may change as a result
transformative learning: representation demonstrates strong restructuring of ideas and ability to evaluate the processes of reaching that learning
REFLECTION has a role in the deeper approaches/ we learn from representing learning/ we upgrade learning/ Reflection:
slows down activity, giving the learner time to process
helps the learners to develop greater ownership of the learning material
it encourages meta-cognition
works with materials that are complicated and ill structured and helps students improve their cognitive ability
References
Moon, J., 2001. PDP Working Paper 4: Reflection in Higher Education Learning. In LTSN Generic Centre, full article available here
experienced designers but only rarely expert educators
teachers are not trained as teachers and rarely receive thorough, relevant feedback regarding their teaching performance/ design teachers, like other educators in academic institutions, are appointed on the basis of their professional knowledge and skills and receive all but no training as teachers
they bring knowledge, professional skills, theory in use, personalities, values and their understanding of their role
Quayle classification: instructor as source of authority/ as facilitator/ as “buddy”
Uluoglu reports that 47% of the design teachers in several schools consider their educational (pedagogic) capacity to be the single most important factor in their work
Schon: the studio master tries to figure out what the student understands/ constructs a dialogue in the media of words and performance/ tries to make interventions matched to the student’s understanding
Using linkography*, Goldschmidt examines three cases of teacher-student interaction during a crit. Her conclusions are that the teachers:
must navigate among categorical action priorities that suit the student’s needs and his or her own tendencies
must raise issues and sustain ideas at both a general and a specific level preferably while demonstrating and modeling for the student what can be done and how
must do everything without making the students feel that the teachers are designing their project for them
issues raised must be made relevant to students by tying them to students’ concepts
must give examples
must not put pressure on students to come up with “correct” notions
must not let the student feel that they know sth the students don’t have access to
coaching seems to be the most fruitful strategy in this sample of investigation
References
Goldschmidt, G., Hochman, H., Dafmi, I., 2010. The design studio “crit”: Teacher-student communication. In Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Deisgn, Analysis and Manufacturing, 24, pp. 285-302, doi:10.1017/S089006041000020X
Linkography: is a notation and analysis system that treats links among protocol units. It is based on the premise that the proportion and distribution of links among units, and in particular, units that are highly interlinked with other units, are indicative of the quality of important characteristics of the situation under scrutiny
DS teaching as a generator of research/ it is studio teaching and the design processes associated with it that lead the research/ central to this approach are studio projects and they become the focus of critical analysis – student projects are the research data/ A popular perception of the research-teaching nexus is that teaching benefits through the curriculum being informed by research – even if it is conducted independently – thus ensuring that content is at the forefront of knowledge/ research and teaching can relate to one another in a variety of ways – often influenced by the discipline context and field of inquiry (Griffiths)
Project A: Book repository
20-week design module/ exploration of the role of books/ term library was avoided/ physical books were highly significant in every project, in the majority of
the students’ projects they were an expression of a larger concept as much as for reading –such as their cultural symbolism, several projects explored the wider and more
complex roles libraries play as an important civic space and place of social interchange
within the public realm, / the projects ranged from a place for storytelling, to a place for writing, a third place, a meteorological observatory, a book museum, and an archive/
Project B: Terraced house
six weeks module/students were asked to select one of three typical UK housing types – an urban block, terraced, or detached, semi-detached to explore the potential of this typology to accommodate contemporary forms of living, whilst examining the interrelated priorities of space, affordability and environmental sustainability/ rather than just considering space standards quantitatively numerous students explored it as a qualitative concept/ the family unit was often perceived as a plastic concept, flexing and changing significantly over time
research may not be able to feed into and inform the projects that are running but including student projects in tutor research is considered positive if students stick to program brief/ get acknowledged for publishing their work/ and avoid satisfying the idiosyncratic research interests of their tutors. in a relevant survey all students responded positively to the prospect of having their projects included in research papers
References
Smith, Ch., 2017. Take the red pill: a journey into the rabbit hole of teaching informed research. In Charrette 4(1) Spring 2017
connecting data to information to knowledge 
