A Case Study on Hid­den Cur­ricu­lums in the Archi­tec­tur­al Studio

While in recent years archi­tec­tur­al edu­ca­tion pro­grams world­wide have rec­og­nized aggres­sive pat­terns and unpro­duc­tive optics in the design stu­dio envi­ron­ment, there remains a ques­tion about ​“what sort of archi­tect” should emerge from these man­i­fold pro­grams. Every accred­it­ed aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tion has an oblig­a­tion to help stu­dents become com­pet­i­tive in the pro­fes­sion­al field. How­ev­er, by bor­row­ing the descrip­tions of a series of edu­ca­tion­al mod­els observed by edu­ca­tion researcher Jean Any­on that use eco­nom­ic con­straints and sub­jec­tiv­i­ty to deter­mine cur­ricu­lum, this arti­cle argues that the edu­ca­tion of the archi­tect too often relies on ​‘pro­duc­ing’ indus­try-ready grad­u­ates and not enough ener­gy on pro­vid­ing them with the skill-sets to inter­ro­gate our discipline’s entan­gle­ments with polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic struc­tures in and out­side the archi­tec­tur­al stu­dio. This is explored through a ter­mi­nal grad­u­ate-lev­el archi­tec­tur­al design stu­dio taught at the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Mex­i­co, School of Archi­tec­ture + Plan­ning, a pro­gram in the Amer­i­can South­west / Mex­i­co-Unit­ed States Bor­der Region that prac­ticed ways of resist­ing an archi­tec­tur­al edu­ca­tion that shapes stu­dents based on their eco­nom­ic status.

In 1980, Jean Any­on, a researcher in edu­ca­tion and pol­i­cy, pre­sent­ed a the­o­ry cen­tral to this paper called ​“Social Class and the Hid­den Cur­ricu­lum of Work,” which states that ​“pub­lic schools in com­plex indus­tri­al soci­eties like our own make avail­able dif­fer­ent types of edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence and cur­ricu­lum knowl­edge to stu­dents in dif­fer­ent social class­es,” which has a direct impact on the type and struc­ture of ​“work” that stu­dents expe­ri­ence in class. Doc­u­ment­ed in Anyon’s study were pub­lic K‑12 schools and stu­dents in medi­um-sized cities and sub­urbs, which played a sig­nif­i­cant role in help­ing iden­ti­fy the ped­a­gog­i­cal objec­tives and pro­to­cols pre­vail­ing in each school. The cur­ricu­lums Any­on iden­ti­fied were cat­e­go­rized as work­ing class, mid­dle class, afflu­ent pro­fes­sion­al class, and afflu­ent pro­fes­sion­al school and exec­u­tive elite.[1]

A work­ing-class cur­ricu­lum, which this paper will lat­er use to com­pare to archi­tec­tur­al edu­ca­tion, is intrin­si­cal­ly tied to ​"prac­ti­cal" edu­ca­tion mod­els and pri­or­i­tizes ​“docil­i­ty and obe­di­ence.” Like the oth­ers, the cat­e­go­ry bor­rows from how job sec­tors are cat­e­go­rized, where work­ing-class cur­ricu­lums par­al­lel the ​“rou­tine and mechan­i­cal” com­po­nents of a trade or field that the indi­vid­ual work­er is unfa­mil­iar with. This gives the work­ing-class cur­ricu­lum its sig­na­ture char­ac­ter­is­tic: the reg­i­ment of the work­day. Anoth­er sig­nif­i­cant com­po­nent is the con­text giv­en to assign­ments, as teach­ers empha­size the pro­ce­dur­al impor­tance of assign­ments with­out pro­vid­ing their mean­ing or learn­ing objec­tives.³ The impact and val­ue of edu­ca­tion are not instilled in a cur­ric­u­lar mod­el where the pri­ma­ry out­come of these cur­ricu­lums is rou­tine over crit­i­cal think­ing. The mid­dle-class cur­ricu­lum is not much bet­ter in this regard, pri­mar­i­ly con­cerned with fol­low­ing a strict set of instruc­tions that lead to a sin­gle cor­rect answer. In this cur­ric­u­lar for­mat, stu­dents are not encour­aged to devi­ate from the struc­ture set by the teacher. While this builds rou­tine and the impor­tance of pro­to­col, cre­ativ­i­ty, how­ev­er, is lim­it­ed. When asked to express them­selves, it is typ­i­cal­ly sec­ondary to the assign­ment and used only to moti­vate stu­dents by mak­ing school-work more exciting.

The hid­den cur­ricu­lum mod­els that pro­ceed with work­ing and mid­dle cur­ricu­lums increas­ing­ly devel­op more assertive stu­dent behav­iors. In an afflu­ent-pro­fes­sion­al cur­ricu­lum, many of the stu­dents’ par­ents worked in high­ly edu­cat­ed and well-paid pro­fes­sions. This cur­ricu­lum cen­ters on cre­ative activ­i­ty in which stu­dents inde­pen­dent­ly devel­op the ideas and con­cepts in their work. Assign­ments result in more writ­ing, illus­tra­tions, and crafts, as much of the work depends heav­i­ly on gath­er­ing resources need­ed to com­plete assign­ments. This empha­sizes free move­ment with­in the school, where stu­dents can go to the library for a book freely. The student’s intel­lec­tu­al poten­tial is real­ized in the exec­u­tive elite cur­ricu­lums, where prob­lems posed to stu­dents must be crit­i­cal­ly rea­soned. The struc­ture of com­plet­ing an assign­ment is entire­ly depen­dent on the stu­dent to con­cep­tu­al­ize rules and apply them to find solu­tions. The final mod­el, exec­u­tive elite school cur­ricu­lums, expands on these objec­tives by encour­ag­ing stu­dents to exer­cise ana­lyt­i­cal skills and rea­son­ing to work through com­plex prob­lems. The role of stu­dents as peers also evolves as they are encour­aged to dis­agree, chal­lenge, and debate sub­ject mate­r­i­al in the class­room, thus cul­ti­vat­ing a more rig­or­ous aca­d­e­m­ic body.

The tim­ing of Anyon’s study is sig­nif­i­cant because it came near­ly three decades after pub­lic schools were deseg­re­gat­ed by the Unit­ed States Supreme Court rul­ing on Brown v. Board of Edu­ca­tion and 23 years after the Unit­ed States Con­gress passed the Immi­gra­tion and Nation­al­i­ty Act, which end­ed numer­i­cal restric­tions by coun­try of ori­gin on immi­grants allowed to enter the Unit­ed States. In addi­tion to sur­vey­ing how cur­ric­u­la vary based on eco­nom­ic class, this study reflect­ed how pub­lic school edu­ca­tion is for­mat­ted with an increas­ing­ly eth­ni­cal­ly diverse and mixed-sta­tus pop­u­la­tion. This study point­ed to obvi­ous inequities in edu­ca­tion that mir­ror the eco­nom­ic strug­gles of minor­i­ty groups. This arti­cle posits that such approach­es of align­ing edu­ca­tion­al mod­els to the eco­nom­ic sta­tus of the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties keep stu­dents from break­ing away from gen­er­a­tional pover­ty and precarity. 

One of the pri­ma­ry dif­fer­ences between the work­ing-class, mid­dle-class, afflu­ent, and elite hid­den cur­ricu­lums that Any­on dis­cuss­es when seen from an archi­tec­tur­al educator's per­spec­tive is the dynam­ic between teacher and stu­dent. In the work­ing-class cur­ricu­lum, the teacher pri­mar­i­ly man­ages the exe­cu­tion of pro­to­cols and pre­sides over the class as a super­vi­sor. Where­in mid­dle, afflu­ent, and elite pro­fes­sion­al cur­ricu­lums, teach­ers increas­ing­ly per­form the role of mod­er­a­tor, advi­sor, and crit­ic. It’s impor­tant to empha­size that afflu­ent and elite cur­ricu­lum mod­els form com­mu­ni­ty and col­le­gial­i­ty among stu­dents, while the work­ing and mid­dle-class cur­ricu­lums dis­perse stu­dents with indi­vid­u­al­ly dri­ven assign­ments. If the objec­tive of high­er edu­ca­tion is the pur­suit and pro­duc­tion of knowl­edge, then a pro­fes­sion­al archi­tec­tur­al cur­ricu­lum that seeks to build new method­olo­gies in the design stu­dio set­ting might have more suc­cess in advanc­ing prac­tice in the archi­tec­tur­al profession.

Shaping Bodies & Identity in Architectural Education

Since the late 1980s, the ​“hid­den cur­ricu­lum” has been a lens to eval­u­ate archi­tec­tur­al edu­ca­tion. In a recent issue of the Jour­nal of Archi­tec­tur­al Edu­ca­tion on ​“Health,” archi­tec­tur­al edu­ca­tors and researchers Nao­mi Stead, Maryam Gusheh, and Julia Rod­well sum­ma­rized over 35 years of sim­i­lar stud­ies that unpack the hid­den cur­ricu­lums in archi­tec­tur­al edu­ca­tion. Their arti­cle, ​“Well-Being in Archi­tec­tur­al Edu­ca­tion: The­o­ry-build­ing, Reflex­ive Method­ol­o­gy, and the Hid­den Cur­ricu­lum,” states that a pow­er dynam­ic between stu­dents and instruc­tor, or as they put it, ​“mas­ter and appren­tice,” had his­tor­i­cal­ly led to ​“nar­row or skewed under­stand­ing of design ​‘qual­i­ties,’ rein­forces soci­etal pow­er struc­tures, dis­crim­i­nates against women and minori­ties and the ​‘uncul­ti­vat­ed,’ and ​“fos­ters inac­cu­rate expec­ta­tions of the pro­fes­sion in terms of scope for design and cre­ativ­i­ty.”[2] Stead, Gusheh, and Rod­well revive stud­ies on hid­den cur­ricu­lums in archi­tec­tur­al edu­ca­tion of the past to call for teach­ing prac­tices that pri­or­i­tized ​“both excel­lent archi­tec­tur­al prac­tice and the well-being of its peo­ple.” This arti­cle address­es the same points in call­ing for an archi­tec­tur­al edu­ca­tion that doesn’t shape stu­dents based on eco­nom­ic class or treat them as work­ers who may nev­er have greater influ­ence over the discipline.

The par­al­lels are quite clear in archi­tec­tur­al edu­ca­tion when com­pared to Anyon’s descrip­tion of a work­ing-class hid­den cur­ricu­lum, specif­i­cal­ly in archi­tec­tur­al design stu­dios taught in Unit­ed States schools, which are essen­tial­ly taught in a lab­o­ra­to­ry for­mat. In the stu­dio, stu­dents devel­op build­ing pro­pos­als through a set of assign­ments rang­ing from prece­dent analy­sis and stud­ies on form and spa­tial arrange­ments. The instruc­tion­al con­tact time for these cours­es, where fac­ul­ty are phys­i­cal­ly present in class to advise and pro­vide crit­i­cal feed­back, can range from 8–12 hours per week over two to three ses­sions. In an under­grad­u­ate stu­dio, that con­tact time can range up to 12–15 hours per week for a grad­u­ate stu­dio. In 1995, Gar­ry Stevens’ arti­cle, ​“Strug­gle in the Stu­dio: A Bour­di­vin Look at Archi­tec­tur­al Ped­a­gogy,” made a sim­i­lar point when exam­in­ing the archi­tec­tur­al stu­dio as ​“voca­tion­al train­ing that is also intend­ed as a form of social­iza­tion aimed at pro­duc­ing a very spe­cif­ic type of per­son.” Stevens points to the com­mon prac­tice of ​“longevi­ty” in the archi­tec­tur­al stu­dio, ​“ensur­ing that only stu­dents with the right sort of social upbring­ing pass through the sys­tem to grad­u­ate.”[3] How­ev­er, I argue that when archi­tec­tur­al edu­ca­tion in a work­ing-class com­mu­ni­ty sub­scribes to these same prac­tices, stu­dents aren’t just being ​“fil­tered,” as Stevens puts it; they are also being con­di­tioned into the reg­i­ment and pos­ture need­ed for an 8‑hour work­day that will often exceed due to the amount of work to be done. In the stu­dio, stu­dents often need to prove that they ​“have what it takes” with sta­mi­na and com­plete work, which aligns entire­ly with a work­ing-class education. 

The archi­tec­tur­al design stu­dio is at the cen­ter of archi­tec­tur­al school cur­ricu­lums in the Unit­ed States. In terms of time, it is where stu­dents spend most of their time receiv­ing instruc­tion, where­as oth­er cours­es, such as his­to­ry, the­o­ry, and tech­ni­cal cours­es, are for­mat­ted as sem­i­nar and lec­ture-based ses­sions. In the stu­dio, stu­dents are expect­ed to indi­vid­u­al­ly devel­op their projects while wait­ing to be vis­it­ed by an instruc­tor for feed­back; they are also encour­aged to seek advice from their peers despite a lin­ger­ing objec­tive to please the instruc­tor, who is seen as the cen­tral crit­ic in the stu­dio and will have an out­sized role in deter­min­ing final grades and advance­ment into upper-lev­el stu­dios. The instruc­tor sets project prompts, and para­me­ters are often pre­de­ter­mined and high­ly cal­cu­lat­ed, rarely allow­ing for stu­dent per­spec­tives to emerge in their work. These dynam­ics in the stu­dio set­ting fur­ther par­al­lel the pro­fes­sion­al archi­tec­tur­al office set­ting and frame the instruc­tor as the employ­er as stu­dents try to align their work with the instructor’s bias in aes­thet­ics, form, and methodology.

The approach­es to teach­ing archi­tec­tur­al design described above, sug­gest to stu­dents that becom­ing a suc­cess­ful archi­tect requires cer­tain nat­ur­al abil­i­ties rather than ones they will devel­op by learn­ing. Psy­chol­o­gist Car­ol S. Dweck describes in her book Mind­set: The New Psy­chol­o­gy of Suc­cess the dif­fer­ence in learn­ing approach­es, claim­ing that ​“peo­ple with a fixed mindset—those who believe that abil­i­ties are fixed—are less like­ly to flour­ish than those with a growth mindset—those who believe that abil­i­ties can be devel­oped.”[4] This is where our focus on archi­tec­tur­al edu­ca­tion as ​“voca­tion­al train­ing” with the goal of ​“indus­try pre­pared­ness” needs to also con­vey a ​“growth mind­set” for stu­dents who may not come from the walk of life that nat­u­ral­ly leads to high­er edu­ca­tion, such as work­ing class and first-gen­er­a­tion students.

The School’s Context Informs Studio Approach

The pri­ma­ry rea­son for re-eval­u­at­ing hid­den cur­ricu­lums stems from geog­ra­phy and eco­nom­ic class's roles in deter­min­ing edu­ca­tion­al mod­els for stu­dents of vary­ing expe­ri­ences in Anyon’s stud­ies. For instance, the work­ing-class cur­ricu­lum that Any­on iden­ti­fied was shaped by the fact that par­ents of the chil­dren attend­ing the sur­veyed schools were pri­mar­i­ly unskilled work­ers with blue-col­lar jobs. The com­mu­ni­ties they come from strug­gle with pover­ty and unem­ploy­ment rates that are high­er than the nation­al aver­age in the Unit­ed States. Anyon’s study pro­vid­ed a clear case study that linked the edu­ca­tion­al mod­els offered in schools to the demo­graph­ics and eco­nom­ic class of the enrolled stu­dents. While these iden­ti­fied cat­e­gories were found in K‑12 schools, they remain rel­e­vant to archi­tec­tur­al edu­ca­tion, where the pres­sure to pre­pare stu­dents for pro­fes­sion­al prac­tice erupts into a debate between tech­ni­cal and skill-based or con­cep­tu­al and research-dri­ven cur­ric­u­lar mod­els. This pres­sure increas­es when an archi­tec­ture school is in a region impact­ed by eco­nom­ic challenges. 

In what fol­lows are the meth­ods and out­comes of an archi­tec­tur­al design stu­dio taught in the Spring of 2021 at the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Mex­i­co, School of Archi­tec­ture + Plan­ning (UNM SA+P), one of the more afford­able insti­tu­tions in the coun­try, offer­ing under­grad­u­ate and accred­it­ed grad­u­ate degrees in archi­tec­ture accred­it­ed by the Nation­al Archi­tec­tur­al Accred­it­ing Board (NAAB). In the 2020–21 aca­d­e­m­ic year, when the case study course in this paper was taught, the UNM SA+P had an annu­al in-state under­grad­u­ate tuition of $8,161.00 which is, when the case study course was taught, which is 28% low­er than the recent aver­age cost of archi­tec­ture schools tuition.[5] The school is locat­ed in Albu­querque, New Mex­i­co, USA, 268 miles north of the near­est port of entry along the Méx­i­co-Unit­ed States bor­der. In 2018, accord­ing to the Amer­i­can Immi­gra­tion Coun­cil, 10% of New Mex­i­can res­i­dents were immi­grants, mean­ing there is a sub­stan­tial amount of mixed-sta­tus fam­i­lies in the state, as near­ly 58,000 U.S. cit­i­zens and New Mex­i­co res­i­dents lived with at least one undoc­u­ment­ed fam­i­ly mem­ber.[6] Fur­ther­more, New Mex­i­co has one of the high­est pover­ty rates in the US.[7] The edu­ca­tion rates in New Mex­i­co rank 42 in the coun­try, with the third high­est pover­ty rate, ranks 34^th in unem­ploy­ment[8], and near­ly half of the stu­dent body at UNM are first-gen­er­a­tion col­lege atten­dees.[9] This means that the stu­dents at these insti­tu­tions come from com­mu­ni­ties that need the agency of an equi­tably built envi­ron­ment. There­fore, edu­ca­tion and knowl­edge pro­duc­tion must be seen as a lib­er­at­ing pow­er, and their expe­ri­ences must be lever­aged to uncov­er counter-modes of practice.

The Border as a Design Studio Topic

The Méx­i­co-Unit­ed States bor­der and its com­mu­ni­ties remains a reduc­tive top­ic in news media and pol­i­cy debates as nar­ra­tives of vio­lence, traf­fick­ing, and immi­gra­tion.[10] Suc­cumb­ing to these nar­ra­tives have been trends in archi­tec­tur­al edu­ca­tion to view the bor­der region and its com­plex fil­ter­ing of cap­i­tal, mate­r­i­al, and labor as a for­ti­fi­ca­tion prob­lem to solve. This approach is deeply root­ed in a tra­di­tion­al archi­tec­tur­al scope as design projects focus on either the mate­ri­al­iza­tion, de-mate­ri­al­iza­tion, or cir­cum­ven­tion of the Méx­i­co-Unit­ed States bound­ary. Many of the design projects pub­lished or cir­cu­lat­ed from these stu­dios oper­ate on the stereo­type that immi­grants and labor­ers reside close to the bor­der, there­by over­look­ing how the bor­der man­i­fests in build­ings and spaces beyond the legal bound­ary. This stems from archi­tec­ture pro­grams that pri­or­i­tize prepar­ing indus­try-ready grad­u­ates and, there­fore, adopt a voca­tion­al mod­el of edu­ca­tion rather than prepar­ing their grad­u­ates to inves­ti­gate and uncov­er the agency to address sober­ing per­spec­tives of our prac­tice. This indus­try-dri­ven mod­el lim­its the aca­d­e­m­ic institution’s poten­tial to pro­duce new knowl­edge through research and exploration.

In the Spring of 2021, a grad­u­ate research stu­dio taught at the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Mex­i­co, School of Archi­tec­ture + Plan­ning, titled ​“Cit­i­zen­ry Exclu­sions,” explored the Méx­i­co-US bor­der as not a sta­t­ic bar­ri­er but as a trans­la­tion of expe­ri­ences and spaces. This stu­dio includ­ed 10 stu­dents enrolled in the Mas­ters of Archi­tec­ture pro­gram. Of the total, five stu­dents were either from New Mex­i­co or had been long-time res­i­dents, while two were from anoth­er part of the coun­try, and three were inter­na­tion­al stu­dents intend­ing to stay in the Unit­ed States fol­low­ing their stud­ies. The sig­nif­i­cance of this make­up was that not all stu­dents had the typ­i­cal expe­ri­ence asso­ci­at­ed with bor­der sub­jects. So, in intro­duc­ing the stu­dio top­ic, stu­dents read a chap­ter from Guy Standing’s book, The Pre­cari­at: The New Dan­ger­ous Class, called ​“Migrants: Vic­tims, Vil­lains, or Heroes?” which dis­cussed the nuances of the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and cir­cum­stances of migrants. Togeth­er, we dis­cussed how the term ​“bor­der sub­jects” can broad­en to include those whom the eco­nom­ic and secu­ri­ty poli­cies of the bor­der have impact­ed.[11] An exam­ple dis­cussed was how labor mar­kets are acti­vat­ed across the bor­der and beyond by pur­chas­ing a vehi­cle at a deal­er­ship in the Unit­ed States. By loos­en­ing the subject’s rela­tion­ship to the bor­der in these dis­cus­sions, the stu­dio took a unique approach by exam­in­ing cit­i­zen­ry as a form of civic participation—not legal status. 

These top­ics have tra­di­tion­al­ly been rel­e­gat­ed by the tra­di­tion­al scope of archi­tec­tur­al edu­ca­tion and had lim­it­ed schol­ar­ship. Yet, the stu­dents par­tic­i­pat­ing in these cours­es have first-hand expe­ri­ence as bor­der region res­i­dents or new­com­ers to the state or coun­try. In one way or anoth­er, they expe­ri­ence sub­jec­tiv­i­ty and have an untapped sense of empa­thy with the more direct col­lat­er­al groups of the bor­der. There­fore, the studio's method­ol­o­gy start­ed with maps that iden­ti­fied and traced col­lat­er­al human and or envi­ron­men­tal sub­jects that have yet to be framed by the archi­tec­tur­al schol­ar­ship on the border. 

(Un)mapping the Border to Find New Subjects & Typologies

To ensure stu­dents devel­oped their own posi­tions on the Mex­i­co-Unit­ed States bor­der and legal/illegal immi­gra­tion, a top­ic that has become polit­i­cal­ly divi­sive in the Unit­ed States, the semes­ter began with a study that would con­tex­tu­al­ize the border’s polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, and social impacts. The exer­cise was called ​“Typolo­gies I: Polit­i­cal Geo­gra­phies,” which asked stu­dents to draw the bor­der with­out affirm­ing the Mex­i­co-Unit­ed States bound­ary and remap­ping the social, eco­log­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, and infra­struc­tur­al flows that fil­ter through. An emblem­at­ic study from this exer­cise was a series of draw­ings by Natasha Ribeiro and Sam Fan­taye that found man­u­fac­tur­ing and assem­bly sites, which lever­age the bor­der labor mar­kets, to be near­ly even­ly dis­trib­uted across Mex­i­co and the Unit­ed States. [ 1 ] Their study sug­gests that eco­nom­ic and secu­ri­ty poli­cies at the bor­der shape a broad pop­u­la­tion of sub­jects globally. 

In the sec­ond exer­cise, ​“Typolo­gies II: Depen­dent Sys­tems,” stu­dents iden­ti­fied the col­lat­er­al human and non-human sub­jects shaped by the bor­der as a fil­ter. In this exer­cise, Ribeiro fur­thered her stud­ies by focus­ing on the trans-bor­der pop­u­la­tion in Tijua­na, Mex­i­co. While nation­al news media reg­u­lar­ly pro­file the pop­u­la­tions cross­ing the bor­der as groups seek­ing long-term set­tle­ment in the Unit­ed States, they fail to rec­og­nize that many who cross are bor­der res­i­dents cross­ing dai­ly for work, school, or home. To them, the bor­der is a typ­i­cal dai­ly com­mute. Yet, the aver­age time spent wait­ing at the port of entry can be as much as four hours, which is valu­able time away from their home life.[12] ​“Time” became a mea­sure for the bor­der that thread­ed (1) the Port of Entry’s US Cus­toms Booth, where com­muters expe­ri­ence sub­jec­tiv­i­ty and con­fronta­tion, (2) the Cross­ing Enclo­sure orders com­muters into a sin­gle-file line, and (3) the Home in Tijua­na, where com­muters’ home is inter­rupt­ed by the length of trav­el to and from, as the archi­tec­tur­al focus of Ribeiro’s project. These typolo­gies were fur­ther exam­ined and re-designed in ​“Typolo­gies III: Build­ings,” with the objec­tive of ana­lyz­ing the sit­ing, con­struc­tion, and mate­r­i­al of each uncov­ered typol­o­gy to pro­pose counter-mod­els and spa­tial zones where the pub­lic can be framed. [ 2 ]

Anoth­er thread of research that emerged in this phase was Nicholas Romero’s study on the flow and sites of depor­ta­tions from the Unit­ed States to Mex­i­co. Rather than map­ping this from the scale and frame of the map, Romero felt it impor­tant to draw depor­tees through space and time in order to deter­mine moments of poten­tial com­mu­ni­ty build­ing. He sur­veyed what lit­tle pho­tographs and record­ed inter­views exist of immi­grant deten­tion and land­ing sites in the Unit­ed States or Mex­i­co to draw a series that framed space and sub­ject equal­ly to con­vey the untapped influ­ence the enclos­ing archi­tec­ture could have towards build­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty among depor­tees. [ 3 ] Romero’s work was sig­nif­i­cant in the stu­dio since it tracked the ​“oth­er direc­tion of migra­tion” head­ing south and gained a latent under­stand­ing of bor­der issues while lever­ag­ing the architect’s abil­i­ty to inves­ti­gate and imag­ine space and activ­i­ty, thus expand­ing our dis­ci­pli­nary scope. 

It should be not­ed that the objec­tives for each exer­cise are pre­sent­ed before its dis­tri­b­u­tion. The intent is to share in the tra­jec­to­ry of the stu­dio and allow stu­dent per­spec­tives and the devel­op­ing direc­tions of their projects to deter­mine the log­i­cal next steps in the stu­dio. At this point in the stu­dio, the stu­dents already have a far clear­er sense of their inter­ests and how they’ll tran­si­tion from research to design. There­fore, as the instruc­tor, I am respon­si­ble for set­ting the learn­ing objec­tives fol­low­ing the school's cur­ricu­lum. How­ev­er, I share the respon­si­bil­i­ty of struc­tur­ing the process and deliv­er­ables of each exer­cise with the stu­dents. In doing so, we can counter the” direc­tions” and ​“orders” dri­ven cur­ricu­lum and towards exer­cis­ing man­age­ment and lead­er­ship skills.

Prototyping New Border Typologies

The final exer­cise, ​“Pro­to­types,” asked stu­dents to pro­pose a new gen­er­a­tion of typolo­gies of bor­der region archi­tec­ture. By this point, stu­dents have a new sense of the ​“bor­der beyond the bound­ary” by trac­ing the flows that inter­sect the bor­der to iden­ti­fy an archi­tec­tur­al scope in the typolo­gies that most influ­enced and shaped the bor­der sub­jects. Addi­tion­al­ly, stu­dents devel­oped a height­ened sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty in the stu­dio and their project as they deter­mined the focus and methods. 

The project that emerged from Ribeiro’s research pro­posed a net­work that pro­vid­ed ​“dis­trib­uted shared spaces, such as bed­rooms, liv­ing rooms, gar­dens, (etc.) to enhance the dai­ly lives of Tijua­na-based cross-bor­der com­muters.” Her project would allow respites along the bor­der com­mute where domes­tic and com­mu­nal life can resume. Rec­og­niz­ing anoth­er col­lat­er­al sub­ject of the bor­der, Ribeiro also empha­sized that by dis­pers­ing the home and work through­out the bor­der region, we’d great­ly ​“reduce the region’s car­bon emis­sions due to less dri­ving and dimin­ished idling cars.” [ 4 ]

A project by Njia Blair began by trac­ing a major migra­tion route to dense Mid­west cities like Chica­go. Blair then iden­ti­fied how mixed-sta­tus fam­i­lies con­tin­ue con­tribut­ing to their com­mu­ni­ties and the econ­o­my while remain­ing con­cealed. Even in sanc­tu­ary cities, there is a fear that dis­putes local sym­pa­thy that dur­ing the Trump pres­i­den­cy, the administration’s fever­ish crack­down on ille­gal immi­gra­tion would ulti­mate­ly catch up with them. Blair iden­ti­fied the food truck, the gro­cery store, and the home as spaces that simul­ta­ne­ous­ly allowed for par­tic­i­pa­tion in the com­mu­ni­ty while hav­ing a sense of secu­ri­ty. After a series of stud­ies that redesigned and com­bined inter­faces and spa­tial devices, Blair designed a new inner block enabling a ​“nest­ed” pub­lic domain in Chica­go com­mu­ni­ties. [ 5 ]

In this stu­dio, we set out to obtain a new under­stand­ing and reach of the Mex­i­co-Unit­ed States bor­der. One that would have a way to a larg­er uncon­scious body of bor­der sub­jects shaped by spaces beyond the bor­der. In our research togeth­er, we iden­ti­fied groups shaped by these dynam­ics and pro­posed new typo­log­i­cal counter-mod­els that can fos­ter col­lec­tiv­i­ty and sol­i­dar­i­ty, such as hous­ing, schools, and mar­kets. While pro­duc­ing high-cal­iber work is an essen­tial out­come of every stu­dio, it is not the only mea­sure of suc­cess, as eth­i­cal rea­son­ing and empa­thy out­comes are as crit­i­cal as coher­ent argu­ments and tech­ni­cal­ly sound work. Thus, advanc­ing from the ​“prac­ti­cal” mod­el of a work­ing-class cur­ricu­lum and com­bin­ing ele­ments of skills-learn­ing through draw­ing research and devel­op­ing intel­lec­tu­al rig­or by ask­ing stu­dents to adapt their archi­tec­tur­al knowl­edge to iden­ti­fy­ing and design­ing for new sub­jects. One of the most valu­able out­comes of this stu­dio was that stu­dents no longer saw the bor­der sub­jects in their research and design work as dif­fer­ent from them­selves but instead real­ized their par­al­lels and com­plic­i­ty in their own lives, there­by tran­scend­ing the bound­ary between archi­tect and subject.

Disciplinary Impacts

This course was taught in a region where many archi­tec­ture schools empha­size the pro­duc­tion of indus­try-ready grad­u­ates. While it is an objec­tive in these cours­es to pro­vide them with the skills and com­pe­ten­cy for pro­fes­sion­al prac­tice, it is a par­al­lel pri­or­i­ty to do so with­out con­di­tion­ing them for the social inequity they may find in the pro­fes­sion. There­fore, the studio’s con­tent, struc­ture, and ped­a­gog­i­cal approach were ground­ed in coun­ter­ing the hid­den cur­ricu­lums in archi­tec­tur­al edu­ca­tion asso­ci­at­ed with shap­ing stu­dents based on eco­nom­ic class and pre-deter­min­ing their future in the pro­fes­sion. Instead, the expe­ri­ence in these stu­dios asks stu­dents to devel­op projects that posi­tion the role of com­mu­ni­ty lead­er­ship and social responsibility. 

The effects of an archi­tec­tur­al edu­ca­tion in which diver­si­ty and a growth mind­set are val­ued have the poten­tial to trans­form how archi­tects will inter­face with these grow­ing pop­u­la­tions. The stu­dents who grad­u­ate from the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Mex­i­co School of Archi­tec­ture + Plan­ning enter­ing prac­tice today will be cru­cial in sup­port­ing com­mu­ni­ties in New Mex­i­co and the South­west region. An oppor­tu­ni­ty exists to pre­vent the estab­lished exclu­sion dynam­ics that impact major cities today. Fur­ther­more, the UNM SA+P is the only NAAB-accred­it­ed school in New Mex­i­co. Because grad­u­ates tend to stay in the South­west region to prac­tice, many of the school’s alum­ni start or oper­ate some of the most active archi­tec­tur­al prac­tices in the state. As the Amer­i­can South­west con­tin­ues to expe­ri­ence pop­u­la­tion growth in mixed-sta­tus com­mu­ni­ties[13], urban sprawl, as well as the increased effects of cli­mate change[14], an archi­tec­tur­al edu­ca­tion that instills social and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice val­ues can pro­duce prac­ti­tion­ers that design with the com­mu­ni­ty in mind. These social and cul­tur­al poten­tials exceed the voca­tion­al mod­el at many archi­tec­tur­al pro­grams. The con­clud­ing posi­tion of this arti­cle is that archi­tec­tur­al edu­ca­tion must not lim­it learn­ing objec­tives based on a student’s eco­nom­ic back­ground but instead val­ue their unique per­spec­tives, iden­ti­ties, and walks of life to build toward a more just archi­tec­tur­al discipline.