This post started out as a few reflections on a few distance design education events I attended recently, where most of the discussions did not centre around online vs face-to-face or technology and IT services. Instead, discussion focused on learning and teaching – basic stuff, like ideas around how to make learning activities engaging (for staff as well as students…).

Because that’s a messy human problem, not a technical one, Gaston Bachelard and Christopher Alexander both came up in discussions a few times. What they both have in common is their attempt to make sense of the ‘messy space between people and things’ (Koskinen et al, 2011). In research, this is where there’s too much evidence to ignore the fact that there is something going on but it’s hard to really know what this is.

This ‘messy space’ is actually a really important type of thinking that we do as designers and that we encourage in our students. But because it’s vague, difficult and valued far less than the end product, we tend to talk a lot about it and then just hope that students ‘get it’ as they experience it through designing.

Of course, that’s not much use for education colleagues who are not learning to become designers… To respond to this challenge, I’m going to use bits of science and architectural philosophy together, and hope that the two don’t cancel each other out.

At the end, I’ll get back to how this relates to distance design education – so if you’re thinking “???”, feel free to skip to the end where there’s a list.

Ideas matter more than reality

First, the science bit.

Basically, we have a load of assumptions about how we relate to the world around us – many of them are completely wrong.

Firstly, we are not perceiving machines: for example, we don’t just ‘see’ whatever we perceive through our eyes. Our visual system is composed of a number of different cognitive systems: some dedicated to specific things (such as people’s faces) and others to more general cognition (such as our ability to use spatial thinking to more than just ‘see’). Basically, our visual system, like most of our other cognitive systems, is not a single, linear or simple process – it’s complex, convoluted and recursive (Dehaene, 2020).

Secondly, that recursive loop just mentioned is critical: what we have already perceived affects future perceptions. It’s a cognitive learning process and a deeply important part of being human (i.e. Homo Sapiens). For example, we don’t see colour until we are taught what colours is – there are no universal colours such as ‘red’; it all depends on how we learn what colour is (Lotto, 2004). And that’s before we even consider how such learning is affected by our own environment and behaviours (see The Dress for an example).

Thirdly, all of this is before we take into account even higher order cognitive biases and prejudices. The famous study by Hastorf and Cantrell (1954) identified that people at the same sporting event saw things differently depending on which team they supported. Pretty obvious, you may think, but how often do we take this seriously and realise that people really do see different realities based on their preferences. You will use your biases to conceive of the world around you in particular ways and, the more you do this, the more reinforced these ideas become.

The ideas (conceptions) we construct of reality are often far more important (or ‘real’) than reality itself.

Back to virtual reality

This is why we do see evidence of ‘physical’ things happening in ‘virtual’ environments – things you wouldn’t expect to see. For example, students can report feeling claustrophobic in some architecture in virtual environments (Minocha & Tungle 2008). This example has a physical analogy in the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation. In both cases, being able to only see the sky, but not the horizon, can lead to feelings of claustrophobia: in the second example this is deliberate; in the first example it was accidental.

In both, it is the conception, the idea in the mind of the person, that is common.

This is quite an extreme example of a conception in two very different environments. More usefully, conceptions can be understood as effective ways of transferring ideas. Cognitively, this is the process of thinking of a generalised version of particular things – that the word dog can refer to multiple concepts involving dog, from things with four legs to Snoopy (Dehaene, 2020): what our cognitive systems are good at is thinking at these scales of concept and then applying the most appropriate version for the given context.

But more generally, we can do this at even more abstract levels. In cognitive linguistics, these abstractions, referred to as conceptual metaphors, are where we apply some common cognition (like sense or meaning) from one concept to another. For example, we talk about ‘having’, ‘losing’, ‘keeping’ ideas even though we can’t see or touch them. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) famously constructed their embodied cognitive metaphors this way, arguing that even concepts like ‘in’ are conceptual metaphors that we transfer from one thinking domain to another. Hence, we can be ‘in’ a room but we can also be ‘in’ love or ‘in’ an organisation, or even ‘in’ trouble.

Each ‘in’ has to be understood as being related to each other. This makes it really easy to translate ideas: it’s how we can talk about really complex things, like ‘justice’, ‘home’, or ‘openness’. (This is also, potentially, one of the key ways that pluriversality can emerge, rather than the either-or of difference/universality in current dominant structures and narrative. But that’s another story…)

Making things harder

So far, we’ve mostly seen examples of transferring conceptions or using them to make complex things simple.

But sometimes we simplify things far too much:

“It is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences.”

Aristotle

Hence, using conceptual metaphors can be a useful way of making simple things more complex – not for the sake of making things difficult, but nuanced enough to be of utility in the design process. This might be: representative enough of complexities; open enough to allow creative divergence; communicable enough to work with others; etc.

What we’re looking for is the optimum conception for the activity at hand: not too complex and not too simple.

Any designers reading this will get it immediately: you don’t want to jump to solutions too soon; you don’t want to over-specify; you don’t want to make the problem too distributed and complex, but you don’t want it too simple either.

All good creative design processes operate in that Goldilocks space of it being not-too-simple / not-too-complex. And we (designers) have loads of tools we use to make things more or less complex depending on the circumstances and need. In doing so we are creating a space where things are both defined and not defined at the same time. Keeping this balance is really important: defined, but not too much. Undefined, but not too much.

This is not a contradiction or a fudging of what’s true: it’s a level of cognitive conception that allows contingent uncertainty (1). At some point this uncertainty will collapse (to some specific idea) but it’s a state of thinking that we can (mostly) return to at any point and rework.

In other words, our imagination is more valuable than other cognitive processes for some complex activities – we can use our imagination to define as well as create the world, not just to come up with ideas…

Back to Bachelard

Which is where Bachelard comes back in. He deliberately writes about architecture as poetry (or I should say, poetry as architecture!) because it allows the ideas he’s talking about to be both defined and not-defined at that same time. We all ‘know’ what home is; but we might not agree on what colour it should be.

Thinking like this can be exceptionally valuable because it moves from the very specific to the very general and understands how these relate, as well as their limitations. Have a read of Ritchey’s (1991) paper on how Riemann did this to understand the mathematics behind hearing.

Bachelard is using a mix of different scales of cognitive conception. In fact, much of his work could be thought of as a series of conceptual metaphors that try to communicate the human qualities of architecture: their experience and meaning (Bachelard was writing as a phenomenologist). Critically, he was conveying this as a writer so he was necessarily using cognitive linguistic metaphors.

Beyond the technical words there is a conceptual simplicity to his work. When Bachelard describes the porch, he describes the human experience of being on a porch: what it feels like; what people do (and can’t) on porches; what the world looks like from a porch. Critically, it’s not the porch itself that enables this experience: it’s the human doing the conceiving as a result of being-in the porch (non-attribution deliberate…).

That might make you wonder whether everyone, everywhere does indeed share a similar experience of porch. Christopher Alexander took this idea further but looked at it from the ground up: if we keep seeing the same shapes in architecture all over the world and across all cultures, then that suggests a deeper pattern in human behaviour. Alexander came up with a number of patterns from human settlements and the built environment and called it a Pattern Language (Alexander et al, 1977).

But, critically, Alexander recognised that these patterns needed to be defined at the right ‘scale’ – not too defined but not too vague either. In addition, he also introduced the idea of a ‘quality without name’ (2) to refer to the underlying human value of each pattern – what it is about the pattern that people value.

Teaching bit

This brings us back to teaching design at a distance. (you still here?)

The discussions I referred to at the start have done a similar thing. Firstly, they focused on the human value and purpose of what we intend by design education. Secondly, they use a range of scales of metaphor to discuss this, something designers are particularly good at (a two line sketch can represent The Infinite Void or a soap dispenser…).

So I suppose that what’s finally useful is to explicitly recognise and acknowledge the value of this type of thinking, knowledge and discussion. In fact, to promote its value beyond discipline conversations and use it actively to engage with others (we already do this, but perhaps don’t realise it). Especially when thinking about what you need to teach at a distance.

So here’s the List of Fun Things to Try with Conceptual Metaphors:

1. Start with conceptions, not solutions or tech. Instead of saying ‘I need a Virtual Design Studio’, ask yourself what the studio space should feel like (using conceptions). What is the ‘quality without name’ you’re looking for (just because you can’t name this it doesn’t mean you can’t describe it)? Have a look at the dimensions listed here for ideas and use these to brief, specify and discuss requirements with others. You do not have to fall into the trap of using reductive tech language to ask for what you need for your students.
2. Use conceptual metaphors, not tech names. Someone else mentioned this at the CHEAD event, but to call a lecture a ‘Webinar’ is to deliberately draw attention to the technical medium. We don’t call seminars ‘f2f-inars’ … (OK, clunky example…). If an event is a tutorial then it’s OK to call it a tutorial regardless of where and how it’s arranged – it’s the human value that’s more useful to communicate than the medium or mode.
3. Make some key things more complex, not less. If you need a particular atmosphere or feeling (a ‘quality without name’) in your studio or class then state that clearly. Be confident about your uncertainty – describe this as boundaries of knowledge rather than just ignorance (you’re technically an agnotologist). But don’t hide it either – be open about how we use uncertainty with colleagues and especially students (give them something solid if they need it).
4. Be critical and reflective when you do this. I haven’t touched on the dark side of this type of cognition (it can be very dark indeed) so make use of the other major tool in our design toolkits – our ability to evaluate the process at the same time as engaging in that process. Using some simple, critical frames to help you critique from other perspectives.

Anyway, I hope that made some sense. Not sure if it all got a bit out of hand at one point but it ended with a list, so maybe it’ll be fine…

Notes

(1) Cognitive uncertainty may have analogies to, or even be a form of, of cognition-as-optimisation theories (error reduction; reward optimisation; etc.), where the fuzziness of uncertainty is used in conjunction with other cognitive feedback processes to ‘get to’ some cognitive resolution.

(2) This ‘quality without a name’ has been thoroughly criticised for good (and bad) reasons, so to give it a bit of life here I’ll suggest that it is “an appropriately scaled cognitive conceptual gestalt (or conception) interrelated with human experiences and phenomena that operates with sufficient similarity across large numbers of peoples to be evidenced in their constructed artefacts and habits”. Gaston would be horrified.

References

Alexander, C., Ishikawa, S., Silverstein, M., Jacobson, M., Fiksdahl-King, I. and Angel, S. (1977) A Pattern Language, 1st edn, New York, Oxford University Press.

Hastorf, A. H. and Cantril, H. (1954) ‘Case reports. They saw a game: a case study’, The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, vol. 49, no. 1, pp. 129–134.

Koskinen, I., Zimmerman, J., Binder, T., Redström, J. and Wensveen, S. (2011) Design Research Through Practice, 1st edn, Waltham, Elsevier Inc.

Lotto, R. B. (2004) ‘Visual Development: Experience Puts the Colour in Life’, Current Biology, vol. 14, pp. R619–R621.

Oldenburg, R. (1999) The Great Good Place: Cafaes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community, Da Capo Press.

Ritchey, T. (1991) ‘Analysis and Synthesis On Scientific Method – Based on a Study by Bernhard Riemann’, Systems Research, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 21–41 [Online]. DOI: 10.1002/sres.3850080402.

This article is based on an online presentation delivered on 22 May 2020 for the Teaching Architecture Online: Methods and Outcomes seminar, organised by Curtin University and Özyeğin University, titled ‘Responsive Ecosystems for Architectural Education’ (Morkel & Delport, 2020). In this article, we propose that, rather than the on-ground-online binary, architectural education might be conceived as an ecosystem-of-learning. We further suggest that this ecosystem-of-learning can be explored through the testing of random concepts to prompt and provoke a shift in thinking. 

Introduction

Covid-19 exposed the fragility of schools of architecture, affecting carefully integrated curricula, student experiences and teaching methodologies. We position this integrated learning approach as an ecosystem-of-learning comprised of a number of elements including those shown in Figure 1. 

Social distancing forced some parts of the default ecosystem to change drastically and suddenly, and this impacted on the entire ecosystem-of-learning. Access to physical buildings, studios, and workshops was lost. The place dimension of the learning system changed (figure 2). Where, before, time was carefully divided into segments on a timetable, organising the occupation of physical space, suddenly the timetable itself became obsolete.

‘Higher education institutions must prepare for an intermediate period of transition and begin future-proofing for the long term’ proposed DeVaney et al. (2020). So we’re asking: how might we shift our gaze to the longer term, to move online architectural education beyond “emergency remote teaching” (Hodges et al., 2020), from ‘contingency to sustainability’ (Salmon, 2020)? 

Yet, what we’ve observed in webinars, blog posts, forums and research writings over the past number of weeks, are questions asked about the uncertainty and unpredictability of the situation. In the process of adapting to a new condition, there’s a degree of vulnerability, concerns arising over inequality and access, the loss of touching paper, building models, the physical making together, the incidental moments of discovery, the informal and social learning instances, the camaraderie and the fun – these experiences have been ‘lost’ through mandatory social distancing and the resultant altered dimensions of space and time.

Is a reset possible?

Darren Ockert (2020) writes that ‘(e)ach day during the pandemic, we are suddenly finding what was once impossible is now suddenly possible.’ He quotes  Thomas Friedman, who said of online learning in 2012 ‘Big breakthroughs happen when what is suddenly possible meets what is desperately necessary.’

We believe that a reset is possible, but through ‘step(ping) beyond the obvious and rethink(ing) how we think’ (Weyler, 2020).  

What next?

To use the crisis as a catalyst for innovation, as suggested by O’Reilly (2020), we turn to the ecosystem-of-learning as a metaphor. An environmental ecosystem is defined as a ‘complex of living organisms, their physical environment, and all their interrelationships (are) in a particular unit of space’ (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). Considering learning as an intrinsically human activity that occurs in many places and in different ways (Rustici, 2018) we conceptualise an ecosystem-of-learning that involves the tools, technologies, resources, the people and the places where learning happens.We chose ecosystem over ecology as a framework because, compared to ecology which describes a universal idea, an ecosystem is associated with a specific context  (Merriam-Webster, n.d.).

A different way of thinking might embrace diversity in the way that Rex Weyler (2020) suggests: ‘Diversity remains a value in an ecosystem because diversity enhances stability.’ He further explains that ‘an ecosystem prospers if it is simultaneously stable and flexible, conservative and progressive’ (Weyler, 2020). 

To demonstrate how a shift in thinking might be prompted,  we draw on a range of random concepts to generate questions (Hitge, 2016; Kayton, 2011). These questions are borrowed from six domains, as thinking prompts, to reshape architectural education for the future. The selected domains are educational, economic, environmental, social, technological and political domains; each explored through three randomly selected conceptual question prompts.Of course the question prompts and resulting exploration will have varying results, depending on the participants. For example, some prompts may be more relevant to management, others to faculty or students. Furthermore, for each of the prompts (the list is not extensive), different viewpoints should be taken.

In a recent online lecture, entitled ‘How Limitations Boots Creativity’ Ingwio D’Hespeel from the LUCA School of Arts in Belgium, reimagined the traditional PowerPoint and presented his talk with a ‘paperpoint’. The low-tech, low-budget and low-resource paperpoint brings aspects of the interactive and the hand-made into the online space.

We hope that the thematic conceptual prompts that we introduce below, can trigger similar creative, relevant and realisable reactions to inspire the development of a responsive and resilient ecosystem-of-learning for architectural and design education.

Educational prompts

How might pedagogy of care, universal design for learning and flux pedagogy help us shift our thinking towards a responsive, resilient and relevant ecosystem-of-learning for architectural education in these times of change, uncertainty and unpredictability?

• Pedagogy of care is a concept that stresses contribution and empathy. Cormier (2020) asks ‘how can we balance the care that we give our students and the care that we give to ourselves?’ He invites us to imagine the first five minutes of class – the smiles, the eye-rolls and the catch-ups,  and to think about ways to do that online.
• Universal design for learning, according to Morin (2020), ‘is a way of thinking about teaching and learning that gives students an equal opportunity to succeed’, through the flexible use of a variety of teaching methods to remove any barriers, and respond to every student’s strengths and needs.
• Flux pedagogy is a term recently coined by Sharon Ravitch (2020), and it integrates ‘relational and critical pedagogy frameworks into a transformative teaching approach in times of radical flux.’  She explains that it is ‘a humanizing pedagogy that examines the goals and processes of education in moments of uncertainty with a goal of mutual growth and transformation.’ Also, refer to Beatty’s (2019) Hybrid-Flexible (HyFlex) Course Design.

Economic prompts 

How might sharing economy, phygital marketing and the gig economy help us shift our thinking towards a responsive, resilient and relevant ecosystem-of-learning for architectural education in these times of change, uncertainty and unpredictability?

• Sharing economy. The sharing economy or Uberfication marks a prominent ‘societal shift’ in which ‘state-regulated service providers like hotels and taxi companies, are replaced by information and data management intermediaries, like Airbnb… and  Uber’ (Hall, 2015).
• Phygital marketing. Phygital (also known as phygital) merges the ‘online and offline environments’, taking the ‘best aspects from each space to create an improved customer experience.’ For example, using technology on multiple platforms to build on the ‘immediacy, immersion, and interaction’ of the real bricks and mortar experience (Ames, 2019).
• Gig economy. The concept of the gig economy has been around for a while, with specific reference to the manner in which people work. It can be broadly defined as “a labour market made up of freelance, short-term and on-demand work…which…redefines the way companies hire and how individuals structure their careers (Investec, 2019).

Environmental prompts 

How might regenerative design, permaculture design and environmental sociology help us shift our thinking towards a responsive, resilient and relevant ecosystem-of-learning for architectural education in these times of change, uncertainty and unpredictability?

• Regenerative design, which, as a general concept, is a ‘principle that calls for products or services to contribute to systems that renew or replenish themselves. This ultimately means the materials and energy that go into a product or process, can be reintroduced into the same process or system, requiring little to no inputs to maintain it’ (Wbcsd, 2020).
• Permaculture design, although far from a new concept, has 12 key principles that ‘opens into whole systems thinking’ and are ‘thinking tools, that when used together, allow us to creatively re-design our environment and our behavior in a world of less energy and resources’  (Holmgren and Telford, 2020).
• Environmental sociology is concerned with the ‘reciprocal relationships between environment and society.’ The concept acknowledges that ‘environmental issues (we could also read here educational issues) are socially constructed in ways that need to be understood if effective and just strategies for dealing with them are to be found’ (Lockie, 2015:139).

Social prompts 

How might fun theory, social presence theory and compassionate collaboration help us shift our thinking towards a responsive, resilient and relevant ecosystem-of-learning for architectural education in these times of change, uncertainty and unpredictability?

• Fun Theory. If you want to get people to change their behaviour you must make what you want them to do, novel and fun, according to Wickes (2018). That’s Fun theory – it’s as simple as that.
• Social presence theory. Social presence theory (presence vs attention) is used to understand how people socially interact in online learning environments. Researchers like Whiteside, Dikkers and Swan (2017) define social presence in terms of being a “real” person, where others define it as feeling a connection or sense of belonging with others.
• Compassionate collaboration. Sir Ken Robinson refers to compassionate collaboration and he means compassion that is ‘fundamental to our ability to be together as communities, as the sort of cultural glue that holds us together …’ (Hall, 2017).

Technological prompts

How might human-computer interaction, bioinformatics and makification help us think about a responsive, resilient and relevant ecosystem-of-learning for architectural education in these times of change, uncertainty and unpredictability?

• Human-computer interaction. Dickson (2017) posits that “(t)hanks to advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, a slow but steady transformation is coming to education…’ and he says that it forces us to consider what it means to be human.
• Bioinformatics. Ben Williamsen (2020) references socio-genomics and geno-economics that link the study of genomics with predicted socio-economic outcomes through the power of big data and bioinformatics infrastructures.
• Makification. Cohen, Jones, Smith & Calandra, (2017:3)  writes that ‘simply put, we define makification as the process of taking characteristic elements from the maker movement and infusing them into formal educational activities in a variety of contexts.’

Political prompts 

How might cultural citizenship, development theory and the entrepreneurial state help us shift our thinking towards a responsive, resilient and relevant ecosystem-of-learning for architectural education in these times of change, uncertainty and unpredictability?

• Cultural citizenship. According to Van Hensbroek, ’cultural citizenship, psychologically and ideologically connects members within a community, or members of different communities through a sense of common belonging, reciprocal recognition of belonging, and shared experiences of daily life’ (Van Hensbroek, 2010: 317).
• Development theory. ‘Development theory is a collection of theories about how desirable change in society is best achieved’ (Gallagher, 2016: 260).
• The Entrepreneurial State. In her controversial book, ‘The Entrepreneurial State’, Mariana Mazzucato reveals that, contrary to popular belief, the state is, and has been, our boldest and most valuable innovator, e.g. in the pharmaceutical industry. Almost every medical breakthrough starts in publicly funded laboratories.

Conclusion

As the emergency subsides but normality fails to return, higher education institutions must consider a reset. There’s a good likelihood that virtual learning – in some form or another – will be part of education for the foreseeable future. Coalescent spaces for learning are inevitable (White, 2016), but exactly how this plays out, will depend on the degree to which we are able to rethink and reconceptualise the different elements of the ecosystem and how they relate.

We hope that our exploration will prompt further thinking and debate towards a responsive, resilient and relevant ecosystem-of-learning for architectural education in these times of change, uncertainty and unpredictability. Considering architectural education as an ecosystem-of-learning can help us move beyond the on-ground-onsite binary towards a dynamic but balanced, ecosystem.

This is work in progress and we invite your comments and suggestions. 

Postscript

We both studied at a traditional University in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. The University of Port Elizabeth was, at the time, operating very much like most universities today, although we graduated even before the computer made it into architecture as a tool for drawing. After a few years in practice, we both started teaching, almost at the same time, at the Cape Technikon. There, architecture was taught from a technological perspective, so, from the start of our academic careers, we taught differently to how we had been taught. We both started writing about our teaching practices when the Technikon became a University and formal research was introduced, focusing on alternative places of learning (other than the studio). We tested our respective research ideas in the second year studio, where students were involved in academic and work-based learning components. Starting in 2010, together with our students, we crafted this studio into an online and onsite model to expand the on-campus studio. The online explorations included learning through digital storytelling, wayfinding using QR codes, virtual tutors,  etcetera. During the block weeks, we met physically with our students, where they participated in interactive and hands-on exercises, such as experimenting with natural building methods, developing designs through physical model building and completing design-build projects in communities. In-between the block weeks, students were supported at their places of work, online, through various social media platforms, a course blog, feedback via podcasts and screencasts, reflection through blogging, and online desk crits using skype. These ideas led to other blended and online programmes, for example, the part-time BTech programme offered by the CPUT in collaboration with Open Architecture. 

*Dr Hermie Delport is the Programme Leader: Architecture and Spatial Design at STADIO Holdings

The diagrams

In our search for literature on ecosystems, after we had formulated the ecosystem diagrams (figures 1, 3 and 4), we serendipitously found the Sacramento startup and innovation ecosystem diagrams (Bennett, 2016). The potential of this ‘circuit board diagram, aka subway map’ diagramming method to describe and compare ecosystems-of-learning, should be further explored.  

References

Ames, C. 2019. Blurring the line between Physical and Digital. https://www.emotivebrand.com/phygital/

Beatty, B. J. (2019). Hybrid-Flexible Course Design: Implementing student-directed hybrid classes (1st ed.). EdTech Books. Retrieved from https://edtechbooks.org/hyflex

Bennet, J. 2016. Sacramento startup and innovation ecosystem diagram update. [online]. Accessed via https://startupsac.com/sacramento-startup-and-innovation-ecosystem-diagram-update/

Bregman, R. 2020. The neoliberal era is ending. What comes next? https://thecorrespondent.com/466/the-neoliberal-era-is-ending-what-comes-next/61655148676-a00ee89a

Cohen, J., Jones, W.M., Smith, S. & Calandra, B. 2017. Makification: Towards a framework for leveraging the maker movement in formal education. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia. 26(3):217–229

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Cormier, D. 2020. Move to Online Learning: 12 Key ideas.  Move to Online Learning: 12 Key Ideas – Dave’s Educational Blog http://davecormier.com/edblog/2020/05/17/move-to-online-learning-12-key-ideas/

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DeKay, M. 1996. Systems thinking as the basis for an ecological design education.  Proceedings of the 21st National Passive Solar Conference. Systems Thinking as the Basis for an Ecological Design Education. School of Architecture Washington University St. Louis.  

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D’Hespeel, I. 2020. How Limitations Boots Creativity. Online presentation on 20 April 2020, Greenside Design Centre Lockdown lecture series. 

Dickson, B. 2017. How Artificial Intelligence Is Shaping the Future of Education. https://www.pcmag.com/news/how-artificial-intelligence-is-shaping-the-future-of-education

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Morin, A. 2020. What is Universal Design for Learning (UDL)? https://www.understood.org/en/learning-thinking-differences/treatments-approaches/educational-strategies/universal-design-for-learning-what-it-is-and-how-it-works

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At the time of writing, in early May 2020, most architecture educators have passed through all five stages of the Kübler-Ross model of grief: denial, anger, depression, bargaining, acceptance (Kübler-Ross, 1969). We spent the first two months of the year in a politically-sanctioned period of denial. When it became apparent that the virus was not contained to a specific geographic region or demographic, our governments instigated restrictions and our universities closed. At that point, we entered the phase of anger. Some made it to bargaining and then depression. Those who made it out the other side are emerging with a lukewarm glow of acceptance: we are all distance educators now.

Researchers at Imperial College London have argued that we need two different but interdependent strategies to manage the effects of the virus: mitigation (slowing epidemic spread while protecting those most at risk) and suppression (reversing epidemic growth and maintaining that situation indefinitely) (Ferguson et al, 2020). If followed, the Imperial College model is sobering for teachers. We can expect at least three, perhaps four, periods of social distancing during the northern hemisphere’s 2020/21 academic year – and that’s assuming we return to campus at all.

As we approach the busiest days of the academic year in the northern hemisphere, we have to recognise a fundamental fact: “we’re not going back to normal” (Lichfield, 2020).

The shift to distance education presents a particular challenge for architecture education. Our discipline has been one of the most resistant to fundamental pedagogical change. With fairly dramatic change now imposed upon us, and as our focus shifts from just surviving this year to actively planning next year, there is an opportunity to critically engage with the widely held assumptions of how we teach design in architecture.

Our signature pedagogy

In the United Kingdom, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the Architects Registration Board (ARB) administer the discipline’s professional accreditation. The RIBA Procedures for Validation and Validation Criteria have, since their revision in 2011, explicitly prescribed that the assessed work of undergraduate and taught postgraduate courses in architecture “should consist of at least 50% design studio projects” (RIBA, 2014, p. 5). Not design projects, but design studio projects. The gatekeepers of the profession in the UK specify not only a minimum quota of design education but also an inconsistently interpreted method of delivery.

A survey of the 63 validation reports of UK architecture schools published by RIBA between 2014 and 2019 finds 25 instances of references to “studio culture”, either in the commendations by the board that visited the school of the academic position statements written by the heads of schools.[1]

These academic position statements include phrases such as “central to our programmes is a strong and vibrant studio culture,” (RIBA, 2017a, p.4) and “in our studio culture we experiment playfully, analyse thoughtfully, apply rigorously and reflect critically… Studio culture provides the safe, inclusive environment in which students can take risks and increase in confidence.” (RIBA, 2020, p.4)

Another statement reads that “central to the ethos of the school is the vibrant studio culture, which is the foundation of the student experience and emphasises a culture of the craft of making integrated with digital design … Design studio is seen as a place for the exchange of ideas where students learn from each other as well as staff and visiting scholars and practitioners.” (RIBA, 2016, p.3)

The design studio is clearly a pervasive learning environment. It is also one that absorbs students far beyond their scheduled contact hours. One school writes how “the 24-hour access to these studios plus the open kitchens has engendered a strong connection between students on all programmes.” (RIBA, 2017b, p.4) Likewise, the commendations of another report congratulate a programme team for inculcating students to treat the studio not just as a place of study, but a place of continuous occupation, where (with my emphasis) “students in the school had unselfconsciously created a genuine live-in studio culture in their main building.” (RIBA, 2017c, p.6)

In these documents we can see how the design studio can be variously celebrated as “a place to study and work in a highly creative multi-disciplinary environment alongside dance, art, design and music studios” (RIBA, 2018, p.3) or criticised as a dangerous site of intermingling with non-architects. The action point of a report observes (with my emphasis) “that the social and cultural environment of architecture in the studios needed to be carefully nurtured, and that too much diffusion of the subject area across the campus might have unintended consequences.” (RIBA, 2017c, p.6)

The design studio is architecture’s signature pedagogy. Lee Shulman defined the concept of signature pedagogy as “types of teaching that organize the fundamental ways in which future practitioners are educated for their new professions.” The design studio in the architecture school is a perfect example of how, Shulman writes, signature pedagogies “even determine the architectural design of educational institutions, which in turn serves to perpetuate these approaches.” (Shulman, 2005, p.54)

Yet the design studio is a complex and multi-dimensional thing. It is the site of both innovation and uncritical replication. It is home to both critical pedagogies that liberate students and uncritical teaching methods which demand their submission to old fashioned ways.

The four dimensions of the design studio

One way to understand the design studio, it is necessary to comprehend what I call its four characteristic dimensions. These dimensions are related to but distinct from the four learning constructs of studio education that Donald Schön described in Educating the Reflective Practitioner (1987): a physical space or constructed environment for learning and teaching; a mode of teaching and learning; a program of activity; and a culture, created by students and studio teachers working together. Schön writes how the design studio is defined by any one-or-more of these constructs, but I would argue that the four cannot be considered in isolation.

Firstly, the design studio is a physical space in the now-shuttered campuses of higher education. How many other disciplines continue to defend the right of an undergraduate student to be provided with their own desk and a working environment on campus, twenty-four-seven for the duration of their studies? In many institutions, therefore, it is the site of a conflict between the traditions of the discipline and the economic pressures of the contemporary university.

Many recent reactions to the shutdown of higher education have come from those educators who regard the space of the architecture design studio as fundamental to the “slightly odd” teaching methods of architecture education. Published in the weeks immediately following the lockdown, one architecture educator writes that “our students rely on having physical and intellectual spaces on campus in which to work. They need access to a well-lit, well-resourced model-making workshop. They require computers they cannot afford themselves. They need each other — students need to be able to rely on their peers if their home environments don’t support our much-loved but slightly odd pedagogical methods.” (Lappin in Sadler et al, 2020)

Secondly, the design studio is a period of time in the teaching calendar. With continuous access to their own learning space, the timetable of an architecture student before the coronavirus pandemic will have also included one or maybe two days per week that were simply ascribed to “studio” – the indeterminate catchall for the time when a student is expected to be present and engaging in either self-directed or directed learning. Many schools of architecture have interpreted the RIBA validation condition of fifty per cent of the curriculum being delivered through design studio to mean that fifty per cent of a student’s schedule must be designated as “studio” time.

In recent weeks, architecture educators who have described their adaptation to “pandemic teaching” have mourned the loss of this collective time. Despite invoking Jeremy Bentham’s eighteenth-century prison one educator writes:

The design studio, however panoptical, offers more than a physical infrastructure that allocates equal desktop space. It offers common hours through which skills sets, expertise, energy, motivation and/or inspiration are in constant flux and are thereby permanently redistributed. A shared studio impedes sorting into the haves and have nots … The very physicality of studio space enables regulation of common standards against the logic of competition … just as the fixed parameter of 12 studio-hours per week can help level the ground between those rich in hours and those disadvantaged by day-jobs or dependents. (Roddier in Pries et al, 2020) [2]

Thirdly, the design studio can be understood as a large field of both teaching method and pedagogies. These are not the same thing. Within the indeterminate time ascribed to “studio” in the calendar, anything goes. The more creative and critical architecture educators deliver radical pedagogical activities, teaching that is informed by educational theory and political agenda. These include collaborative workshops, peer-to-peer learning, blends of asynchronous and synchronous teaching, flipped classroom exercises, experiential learning or live projects with real clients to name just a few. Yet in the darker corners survives the studio where students endure the same old corrupt banking model of education that the tutor learned about as a student. This approach relies on repetition, replication and duplication, and I would argue this distinguishes it as a teaching method rather than a pedagogical approach.

The fourth and final characteristic dimension of the design studio is its culture. When he proposed at is a learning construct, Schön was referring to the ideas, customs and behaviour that occurs in design studio. We should not forget the other meaning of culture: the cultivation of things like bacteria or cells in an artificial medium. Things grow, both good and bad.

The prejudices of architecture education

Architecture education has long been criticised for the ways in which the design studio is the site par excellence for the perpetuation of a hidden curriculum that prejudices certain individuals and groups, inculcating behaviours, attitudes and value systems (Dutton, 1987; Ward, 1990; Banham, 1996; Groat and Ahrentzen, 1996; Stevens, 1998; Webster, 2006 & 2008; Datta, 2007; Salama, 2010; Brown, 2012; Stratigakos, 2016). Jeremy Till writes that “the world of architectural education is obsessed with what it produces, and in this forgets to examine how it produces.” (Till, 2005, p.166)

More than 30 years ago, Karen Kingsley identified the tendencies of bias against women and exclusion of women’s contribution in the popular architectural history texts (Kingsley, 1988). Around the same time, Sherry Ahrentzen and Linda Groat published the findings of a nationwide survey of architecture educators in the USA. Ahrentzen and Groat identified three characteristics of the climate which was prejudiced against female teachers: the dominance of the star system and gendering of genius; the hidden curriculum of rituals that supported power and hierarchy; the isolationism engendered by the myopic attitude of the architectural act (Ahrentzen and Groat, 1992). Design studios have long been known to “exhibit a well-known academic syndrome, in which students believe that mystery – or the neglect of rational teaching methods – is an indication of the mastery of the instructor.” (Fowler and Wilson, 2004, p. 106)

For many architecture educators the path to revealing and subverting the mechanisms of reproduction of architecture education has been to adopt the philosophies and methods of critical pedagogy, including theorists of educational resistance. Architectural education routinely privileges that which Bourdieu and Passeron first christened cultural capital: the educational or intellectual assets which promote social mobility (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990 [1973]). Peter McLaren explains:

Students from the dominant culture inherit substantially different cultural capital than do economically disadvantaged students, and schools generally value and reward those who exhibit that dominant cultural capital (which is also usually exhibited by the teacher). Schools systematically devalue the cultural capital of students who occupy subordinate class positions. (McLaren, 2009, p. 81)

Acceptance

In the weeks and months after the closure of the physical spaces of higher education, architecture educators are expressing nostalgia for our signature pedagogy. One writes: “Our experiences with remote learning may prove to be a positive experiment, and we may gain new appreciation for digital tools which can support our regular pedagogies. But there is no place like studio” (Donovan in Baxi et al, 2020).

Comparing how a postgraduate seminar course and an undergraduate design studio had transitioned to online teaching, another writes that “the pivot to online teaching was pretty smooth for the seminar… dare I say, it’s actually working quite well. But for the design studio, the transition has been trickier; for students and faculty it can feel challenging and lonely. We all miss the collective camaraderie, the companionship of the shared space.” (Lyster in Sadler et al, 2020).

We should not presume that just by moving the space of architecture education online it will become more egalitarian. Harriet Harriss warns us that:

If [Massive Online Open Courses] have taught us anything, it’s that online learning environments are not democratic spaces by default. These platforms may allocate each user equal inches of screen space, but simultaneously surrender a window into our otherwise private domestic interiors, revealing often staggering economic differentials between students, while also rendering them vulnerable to racist and other discriminatory attacks (Harriss in Martin et al, 2020).

Frank Weine observed that “traditionally, design has been taught in a studio setting and history has been taught in a lecture room. If we accept that this approach has become ineffectual, how could one conceptualize a new model that is more efficacious? One could propose a reversal, so that history is taught in the studio and design in the lecture room.” (Weiner, 2005, 31). Until now, such opinions have been peripheral to the discourse around architecture education. The idea that we might do it differently have been purely speculative. But today, the world over, architecture educators are actively planning curricula without the design studio.

What the four characteristic dimensions of the design studio in architecture education described above have in common is that none of them are consistently defined. Our discipline has, at its heart, a multi-dimensional thing that is defined in space, time, pedagogy and culture. The physical space of the design studio is generally an open-plan room or sequence of rooms, into which independent study, formal teaching, informal teaching, socialising, eating, drinking, bullying, and even harassment or abuse occurs. The temporal dimension of the studio is likewise a curtain behind which lurks a panoply of teaching and learning: sometimes it’s ground-breaking and creative, often it is derivative and even destructive. The pedagogical dimension of the design studio is equally wide and diverse. The cultural dimension of the design studio is something that is often celebrated but rarely defined, and when it is, it is usually in terms that are as exclusive (of women, minorities, mature students, people of different abilities) as they are inclusive.

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.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to James Corazzo, Sarah Kettley, Peter Lloyd, Amanda Monfrooe and Ruth Morrow for their suggestions and guidance.

Notes

[1] Accessed via https://www.architecture.com/education-cpd-and-careers/riba-validation/riba-validated-schools-uk on 5 May 2020.

[2] I note here my strong objection to the presumption that scheduling 12 studio-hours per week is all it takes to correct the academic prejudices faced by students ”disadvantaged by day-jobs or dependents.”

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It seems the technological campuses of tomorrow have manifested today as an essential and spontaneous response to the COVID-19 world outbreak. This article briefly discusses the current pivot from an on-campus physical design studio curriculum towards a distance learning and online delivery model in higher education. 

Many universities have quickly re-focused their learning and teaching of design education towards virtual community building, remote distance learning and teaching and alternative assessment outcomes via digital portals. As an educator who teaches physical design studio learning within a College of Art, housed within a parent university in Australia, the transition has been swift and relatively painless. Our university already has five physical campuses and one digital campus, and a highly successful learning management system (LMS) already fluently embedded. Yet, in my own creative institution, I have been surprised in our ability to quickly transition our curriculum, resources and staffing from a physical to a distance mode of studio learning. Indeed, when the severity of the COVID-19 became clear to our university, this switch occurred in a matter of days.

However, not all art schools and design institutions who deliver a conventional and valued face-to-face design studio education have been able to adapt so easily.

As a researcher of studio learning, my field of research has always championed the physical studio as a site for learning. Preceding 2020, my research investigated the shift from specialised studio educational environments to standardized and augmented digital classroom learning and how this has changed the shape of design education. I examined how networked learning continued to dominate higher education (HE) and institutional preference was for Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL). Uniform learning spaces to accommodate higher student numbers were widespread and as a result, studio education combined copious physical interactions and digital platforms.

A great deal of previous research into learning spaces and student engagement has focused on self-regulated design learning, the physical environments that impede or support learning, designing and making creative spaces, creating authentic learning encounters and the studio as a setting for production (Davies and Gannon, 2009; Doorley and Witthoft, 2012; Thornburg, 2013; Farías and Wilkie, 2016; Marshalsey 2017; Powers, 2017; Nair and Doctori, 2019). In recent years, the notion of the sticky campus emerged with the aim of encouraging students to stay, study, work, create and socialise actively on university-governed grounds, in buildings and with faculty (Warren and Mahony Architects, 2017; Orr and Shreeve, 2018). Orr and Shreeve (2018) presented the idea of the sticky curriculum for contemporary art and design education. They argue a complex ‘stickiness’ is the posing of uncertain, diverse and thought-provoking opportunities for learners, which may be found external to formal, assessed curriculum (Marshalsey et al. 2020).

Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, my research examined the relationship between space and learning in higher design education, and specifically, in the use of specialised ‘sticky studio’ learning spaces located within a wider university context. I attempt to address the pedagogical gap that exists between broader university learning structures and spaces, and the requirements of specialist design education. Wider university systems place pressure on space and time for exploratory learning and practice across the creative disciplines. Often there is no space or time for the necessary self-directed ‘diverse wanderings’ of messy, creative experimentation in studio learning today. Austerlitz et al. (2008, p.6) refers to this “ability to operate in the complexities of uncertainty” as the core of art and design studio education. If educators lose power over a practical curriculum then students may fail to perform, and to the depth and rigour required for creative design practice (Giroux and Aronowitz, 1986). 

It is clear moving assessment and engagement online has consequences and repercussions for practice-based art and design courses in higher education today. For these reasons, and as a reflective design educator and researcher, I was reluctant to fully embrace online studio delivery. Surely, the distinct signature style and values of a hands-on, dynamic studio education would be lost?

Yet, I and my colleagues rode the wave of the physical-to-distance/online delivery shift with little argument or obstacle. I now find myself in a position of being compelled to address what a distance and online ‘sticky studio’ delivery might comprise of and what that might mean as an educator of design students and as a researcher of physical, blended and virtual studio learning. I am now duty-bound to confront and address my assumptions of a non-physical studio delivery much quicker than I had anticipated.

Distance learning in design changes how, what and why we teach and how our students learn. What are the practical implications of design studio education in a time of distance learning? What are the drawbacks and successes of the technological platforms, digital tools and techniques essential for student engagement in distance studio education? Many have embraced this shift so far, yet I am still in the initial stages of understanding the enormous range and diversity of the platforms, workspaces and tools available online to support my teaching practice. I believe we, as creative educators, are situated at the tip of the iceberg in terms of understanding distance and online delivery for studio education.

The preliminary successes and drawbacks of a turn to distance studio learning

In terms of preliminary successes in my institution, students seem to have greater contact with educators via the university-supported online platforms teaching staff now use in our institution (BlackBoard Collaborate and Microsoft Teams). The feedback from students is positive – they feel they have more one-on-one time with key staff and peers. Voting polls, breakout tasks, interactive hand raising features, chat rooms and shared screen access supports the teaching and learning approach. In relation to the drawbacks, block learning does not work online.

For my own 4th year Honours students, the previously timetabled 4-hour seminar is not feasible to sustain online. It is exhausting for educators to maintain online presence and a challenge for students to stay engaged for so long. Instead, I find myself dispersing the 4-hour block over the entire week. I host the main class on BlackBoard Collaborate for a 2-hour block, where we reflect work to each other, discuss design thinking and strategies for the students’ individual projects with peer feedback. I then set them tasks as homework, and we stay in contact frequently via Teams and email during the rest of the week.

My colleagues also say Miro and Padlet are key platforms for creative engagement and collaboration online, and as a means to display creative work-in-progress. Despite the absence of the daily commute to university, the students (particularly the first-year students who only began their academic experience here in Australia at the end of February) do struggle to remain motivated when isolated at home with little resources other than a computer and internet connection. They miss the evolving interactions with staff and peers in a shared, physical environment. 

As a design educator, I do miss using the floors and walls of my educational environment as a blank canvas to draw ideas and connections with my students, to visually explain concepts and to teach face-to-face. I find it difficult to measure the students’ comprehension via body language and facial expressions as they are essentially invisible to me online and vice versa. Digital Post-it notes are no match for the real thing.

Yet, my attitude as an advocate of studio learning is softening, although I am not entirely convinced the key values and properties of studio can exist online – the creative messiness, the situational responsiveness to student engagement, the visibility of critical play, materiality and the support of the community of practice and discovery. Virtual breakout rooms do not have the same appeal as a group table or studio sofa and demonstrating hands-on drawing, techniques and prototyping via webcam does not have the same attraction.

Yet, in these early days of a changed studio delivery, it is forecast art and design institutions will not fully return to the way we taught the design curriculum before. There are many points for consideration and discussion as we move forward to embrace the future of design studio learning within an emerging, blended sticky studio model in higher education. Who knows what that will look like?

I’ll shortly have to add a whole list of other technologies, services and ed-tech that are emerging as “class leaders” (That was a satirical pun, by the way).

This tech changes how we teach. But I’d argue that it also changes what we teach – and sometimes even why.

If every tool is a hammer …

Martin Weller has written about the tendency of ed tech to infer a crisis only they can solve and has already got his predictions in of what that might lead to. And the individual technologies and services are not all we have to worry about – global education is a huge economic chunk of what humanity does. All the big players are getting involved.

This is not to repeat those concerns or to dismiss what could be genuinely altruistic activity on the part of some ed tech. It’s simply that technology is neither bad or good: it is always both bad and good.

Always.

This is true of blackboards and chalk too, by the way: bad teaching is bad teaching. But having a blackboard lets you concentrate the minds of many on that bad teaching. And, with hyper-scalable, centralised tech systems it’s far easier to distribute bad teaching to millions. Even worse, if the tech is itself based on poor (or even just limited) pedagogical models then it distributes (massively) those limitations.

Technologies affect the way we teach and (as some forget) how our students learn. In some subject areas that might be OK (or more OK) but in design education it can be a disaster. This is simply because few other subject areas require the degree of tool use and embodied learning as design does. It’s not that other subject areas need less attention to ed tech, simply that it’s just more utterly obvious (visible) in design education.

Designers cannot be designers without tools – whether this is pencil and paper or the latest digital design environment. The tool influences the designer and vice versa. In fact, part of the difficulty of working in design education research is precisely that interrelationship between what is done and what is know. Without getting into the theory: it’s a bit tricky to separate what a designer does from, why they do it, and how they go about that doing in order to make progress in a project (which is yet another activity at another scale of doing).

Let me be a bit more explicit – it’s hard to separate these easily and evenly, such that we can see how ALL the parts contribute to the whole. This is (hopefully) what is valuable and purposeful in design education – that facility of tutors and students to explore these parts and then change them for personal improvement.

This is one of the reasons that studio remains a signature pedagogy – it’s a single place where tutors and students can ‘see’ all of these together.

That’s from the teaching point of view. From the student point of view, getting to this point is harder. Many of us will be familiar with our eager students’ desires to get in there and start with Photoshop without first taking a bit of time to think about what and why. This is not a student deficit – I get exactly the same feeling as a professional designer (I want to play with shiny new tools!).

But I am also very aware of how those tools shape my doing and, hence, my thinking.

Here’s three examples:

• The Sketchup building. I love Sketchup. It’s fast, easy, great to communicate things quickly. But it really, really, really really, dedicated to modernism of the 90 degree variety. Some really bad buildings have been designed in Sketchup simply because it’s really fast at drawing rectangles and extruding them. Great if you live in Milton Keynes; not so great if you live in Barcelona. (Mind you, this is being reset by the current wave of procedural modelling…)
• Nearly every website since the mid 2010s. I love/hate Google and I admit to being a huge fan of their approach to interface and information design – some of it is delightfully simple and utterly clear in terms of calls to action and response. But does everything have to look like this? Do we have to see such a globalisation of style and approach? (I can feel the burning eyes of UI/UX colleagues…).
• Every photo since social media was invented. Hang on – a filter to make your photo look like the 70’s, you say? Do all my photos have to look like I’m a smiling hipster who travels the world instead of a vitamin-challenged Scotsman with just over 50% of my own teeth? If I took a picture of my coffee cup the police would want to ‘eliminate me from their inquiries’…

OK, OK – I’m being harsh here. Design is particularly susceptible to style and fashion. It has always been like this. And style, fashion and zeitgeist are important parts of designing. But with modern technology the link between style and technical process is often clearer (conflating the two) and very shareable, often leading to the style being replicated without context, meaning or purpose.

The extent to which you have a design style is the extent to which you have not solved the design problem

(Charles Eames)

Basically, the tools we use affect the way we think: how we think; what we think. It’s really easy to get stuck in only doing a task instead of stepping back to see what that task is contributing. Sometimes, however, it’s great to get lost in a task – ask Csikszentmihalyi (2014).

But an experience designer knows how to bounce in and out of these ‘scales’ of working. A good grounding through design education aims to get past such fixations and always has done.

But what happens when that education take place inside into its own fixation? Will teaching using Zoom affect how it is we collaborate? Or will Trello, Slack, and Monday affect what we learn about design process? Or will Mural help IDEO completely re-define design thinking forever…

I have some answers to questions like these – but I have far more thoughts and opinions and not enough knowledge. We know relatively little, still, about how designers are educated well. More accurately – we all know how this happens; but we can’t describe it fully.

So, who’s going to start the discussion …

References

• Csikszentmihalyi, M. and Wolfe, R. (2014) ‘New Conceptions and Research Approaches to Creativity: Implications of a Systems Perspective for Creativity in Education’, in The Systems Model of Creativity, Dordrecht, Springer Netherlands, pp. 161–184 [Online]. DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-9085-7_10.