Call for Papers: Dialectics of Pedagogy

Con­tem­po­rary dis­cus­sions regard­ing the edu­ca­tion of the archi­tect often morph into debates con­cern­ing the role of prac­tice with­in acad­e­mia and, the form that prac­tice assumes in rela­tion to the inde­ter­mi­nant tech­ni­cal, cul­tur­al, and socio-polit­i­cal demands con­tin­u­ous­ly chal­leng­ing antecedent ped­a­gog­i­cal con­ven­tions. If Karl Marx’s famous claim that ​“all social life is essen­tial­ly prac­ti­cal” is extend­ed to acad­e­mia, then those involved in archi­tec­tur­al edu­ca­tion will recall the crit­i­cal ban­ter and ide­o­log­i­cal rifts between prac­tice and ped­a­gogy that have been the focus of count­less jour­nals, con­fer­ences and insti­tu­tion­al debates. Yet, giv­en the con­stant­ly evolv­ing con­text of ​“social life,” this discussion—and the seem­ing­ly dialec­tic rela­tion­ship between acad­e­mia and practice—needs to be con­tin­u­ous­ly revis­it­ed. Notwith­stand­ing the impor­tance of build­ing design for the edu­ca­tion of archi­tects, we seek to expand the notion of prac­tice beyond the sta­t­ic course­work and cur­ric­u­lar dia­grams, embrac­ing the diver­si­ty and cre­ative poten­tial of our world, and in par­tic­u­lar, of our stu­dents as they seek to define their vision and place with­in the mul­ti­far­i­ous practice(s) of archi­tec­ture.

In the con­text of esca­lat­ing wars, anthro­pogenic cli­mate cri­sis and social inequal­i­ties world­wide, we can­not but wonder—what does it mean for acad­e­mia to be prac­ti­cal today? And, in par­tic­u­lar, what does it mean to re-enact new forms of design research and prac­tice that orig­i­nate on the edges of dom­i­nant ped­a­gog­i­cal dis­cours­es—from lan­guages, val­ues and visions that are not imme­di­ate­ly our own? AR 5 is call­ing for papers and design sub­mis­sions that broad­ly address this debate: what is the role and form of prac­tice with­in schools for the edu­ca­tion of the archi­tect; how are man­i­fold forms of knowl­edge sit­u­at­ed with­in con­tem­po­rary cur­ric­u­la and what are those forms; how does his­to­ry speak to the cur­ric­u­lar changes nec­es­sary for an archi­tect, and archi­tec­ture, to find rel­e­van­cy in a seem­ing­ly entrop­ic, anar­chic milieu?

AR/2023, Dialec­tics of Ped­a­gogy, is guest edit­ed by Igor Mar­janović. Pro­fes­sor Mar­janović is the William Ward Watkin Dean of the Rice School of Archi­tec­ture in Hous­ton, Texas. As a schol­ar, edu­ca­tor, and cura­tor, he is com­mit­ted to the dis­ci­pline of archi­tec­ture as a crit­i­cal agent of our mul­ti­cul­tur­al world. His research inte­grates the teach­ing of stu­dio and the­o­ry with his­tor­i­cal schol­ar­ship on archi­tec­tur­al ped­a­gogy and prac­tice, exam­in­ing the role of draw­ings, exhi­bi­tions and pub­li­ca­tions in the emer­gence of inter­na­tion­al archi­tec­tur­al cul­ture. His col­lab­o­ra­tive research projects have result­ed in crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed books and exhi­bi­tions such as Draw­ing Ambi­ence, On The Very Edge and a mono­graph on Chicago’s Mari­na City, which was fea­tured on PBS New­shour. He holds archi­tec­ture degrees from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bel­grade, Ser­bia (Yugoslavia), Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois at Chica­go and the Bartlett School of Archi­tec­ture in London.