Defining a Transversal Discipline
The persistent need to redefine the objectives of architecture as an academic discipline has become increasingly evident. This imperative has been driven by shifts in society, the looming climate crises, the broadening of the field's scope, and the emergence of alternative modes of practice. The questions this posed on education delved into the roots of the perceived slowness for an industry to fundamentally shift and called for a rethinking of established western-dominated canons, questioned the mythologized figures transmitting the knowledge, explored ways of decolonizing curricula. Yet the impetus of newness, the revenue of the construction industry, the invisible hierarchies hardly gained and viciously protected, make these efforts cosmetic more often than fundamental. On the other hand, the transversal nature of an architect’s profession and upbringing finds new applications in an expanded field of practice which is increasingly beyond building. Being knowledgeable of various fields as prerequisite of designing and building is historically linked to the profession; Vitruvius described an architect being one well-versed in geometry, history, philosophy, music, medicine, jurisprudence, astronomy, and the theory of the heavens.[1] Current European professional qualifications directives state the necessity for an architectural practitioner to know fine arts, technology, human sciences, environmental issues, building regulations, as well as mediating between people and buildings, and between buildings and their environment.[2] This multitude of areas known are, however, primarily those related to the western anthropocentric realm and in the function of contributing to the built environment through construction. Moreover, the epistemological broadness of the discipline, while widely recognized, still refers to a broad field of concrete knowledge. This translates into well-established curricula and outcomes defined by the hard skills they produce. However, as the Architecture’s Afterlife research[3] has demonstrated, it is the soft and emotional skills, or behaviors, that architecture graduates utilize most regardless of whether they are still practicing architecture in the narrow sense of making buildings or engaging in other modes of practice or related fields. These competencies include endurance, critical thinking, determination, empathy, collaboration skills, management, and others, gained in varying degrees during education, though not being explicitly taught. While skills are typically associated with specific disciplines, behaviors are inherently more universal, transferable, and versatile. As a result, they possess the capability to withstand the constant fluctuations in socio-economic conditions and technological advancements. “While certain unique skills are needed to qualify within a discipline – such as medicine, architecture and law for example – the enduring professional protectionism of these professions could misapprehend the true source of their value.”[4] The OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030 report states that the core value of “disciplinary knowledge” lies in its ability to provide, “an essential foundation … and a structure through which students can develop other types of knowledge.”[5] Going back to historical definitions of architecture, the transversal nature includes soft and hard skills equally by implication: the fundamental systematization of human knowledge of the enlightenment’s Encyclopaedia or Systematic Dictionary of Sciences Arts and Crafts mentions architecture in all three main branches of knowledge: memory, reason and imagination. Acknowledging the value of soft skills and behaviours gained in architectural education today implies the question of their applicability in a redefined field of architectural practice, addressing the urgent needs of contemporary society and ecosystems we are part of. The transversality based on knowledge, expanded to include behaviours fundamental to meaningful practice, can be defined as pluriversality: following the question Arturo Escobar asks in Designs for the Pluriverse: “could design become part of the toolkit for transitions toward the pluriverse”?[6] A profession acknowledging relationality, as well as the necessity of operating upon a connected set of rational and emotional skills, can be one catering to all segments of the codependent planetary systems.
Raising Agency
Various considerations on the concept of Gaia have impacted architectural theory and value systems,[7] relating process philosophy to the contemporary condition in drawing on thoughts of James Lovelock,[8] Bruno Latour[9] or Donna Haraway.[10] Arturo Escobar elaborated the necessity to shift the ultimate product- and market-oriented goal of design towards a collaborative, experience-based, interspecies goal.[11] Acknowledging our belonging to the planet’s dynamic flux as prerequisite to survival, our relatedness to various non-human and post-human entities, our contribution to systems in constant change for better or worse, this paper asks the question of what skills and values are in need of addressing during architectural education.
Between 2016 and 2018, the Education Academy of the European Association for Architectural Education conducted a series of workshops in which it sought to define the aims, practices and principles of contemporary architectural education, not by mapping what was existing, but rather formulating its own position paper on topics it deemed relevant within today’s society.[12] The position paper aligned goals to socio-economic conditions characterizing different regions and focused on ongoing transformations within architectural education and the architectural profession. It also recognized diverse forms and interpretations of practice, all of which are addressed in various contexts: the practice of design, the practice of teaching through design, professional practice, and the practice of architectural research, including research by design. In its first of five parts, the position paper asks what architectural education can do, and for whom (a notion which has been replaced by ‘with whom’ in the follow-up workshops re-examining the document in relation to sustainable development goals). The first point it makes relates to shaping agency of future architects and their ability to respond to emergent needs. To do this, the key objectives of architectural education should be empowering graduates to detect, formulate, and articulate spatial problems, making them advocates for community-led initiatives and capable of generating spatial solutions independently, taught to embrace complexity and uncertainty, posing questions rather than just providing answers. It also recognizes the goals of architectural education extending beyond technical skills and knowledge, placing importance on developing tools for critical examination of local, regional, and global spatial production values, balancing local identities, regional tendencies, and global systems. The document even opens with the following statement: “The architecture graduate is a new citizen, able to detect, formulate and articulate spatial problems and know when an intervention could be beneficial to society.” Stressing the importance of training an agile mind ready to embrace the uncertainty of future practice, it encourages students to observe nascent trends and learn to deal with ambiguity, while asking schools to rethink the dominant western traditions and decolonised their knowledge bases. Yet, object-oriented curricula and content are still the dominant output of educational environments across the globe, lone auteurs glorified in subject histories, and power dynamics of entering a chosen profession prevalent in the tacit layers of the educational experience.
Experiments in education challenging the traditional methods of learning happen in cycles, related to dramatic societal shifts, to subsequently either be abandoned or assimilated into the ubiquitous ways of teaching. We can trace these reformist movements in all levels and areas of education – for example, the dramatic shifts of child-centred, active-learning pedagogies in elementary schooling which challenged the traditional school at the beginning of the 20th century either became the norm in post-war educational systems, or were abandoned, only a few retaining their particular methodology. Analogies can be drawn to the radical movements in architectural education which happened between the 1950s and 1970s, and many motives and lessons still bear relevance today. The movements examined in the Radical Pedagogies research network[13] bear a common denominator of demanding a reevaluation of curricula to address contemporary social and political issues, but also share a fate which led to abandonment of most. So, what is it that left architectural education stagnant and lacking innovation? While societal and climactic challenges are indeed acknowledged, the hidden infrastructures of the profession, reflected and groomed during education, make the true change difficult to tackle.
What all the position papers, initiatives or movements mentioned have in common is the belief that practice can only be changed if educating for it changes as well. But in fact, as the “Hidden School” conference held in Zagreb in 2019 explored,[14] transformations in content, place or process are only part of what constitutes change, as some of the tacit aspects of architectural education, embodied in power-relations and rites, transfer a profession’s ambition which is hard to break. On another note, architecture graduates demonstrate a high percentage of those leaving the discipline they educated for, compared to other regulated professions. When asked which of the skills attained during education they use most in their current profession, endurance and resilience were highlighted.[15] Yet the origin of these skills, found in the transfer of power dynamics embedded in master-apprentice, or student-jury relationships, may also be the key to answering the question of the difficulty of permanent and substantial change.
Resilient to What?
In many cases, skills are commonly associated with domain-specific and professional expertise, encompassing abilities essential for tasks like architectural design. Conversely, behavior pertains to the capacity to put these skills into action, encompassing activities like collaboration, management, organization, etc. And indeed, resilience was one of the most prominent and useful skills attained in architectural education, regardless of the subsequent professional trajectory, according the Architectures’ Afterlife enquiry. In the questionnaire answered by over 2500 respondents, “endurance” was highest ranking, with over 80% of respondents choosing it as the competency gained most during their studies; the others being (in order of score from highest to lowest: work ethic, determination, handling criticism, constant self-improvement, flexibility, and dealing with complexity being the lowest on the list).
In the further stages of the grounded theory segment of research, the Afterlife project delved deeper into reasons for the transferability of skills, through events, roundtables and – most importantly – in-depth interviews. The project’s interview roster featured professionals hailing from diverse backgrounds and occupying various roles in different sectors. The topics explored were wide-ranging, looking into the very essence of what it means to be an architect, the significance of the professional title, the skills acquired during architectural education and their practical value, interdisciplinarity, the future prospects of the architectural field, work-life balance, mobility within the profession, and – most significantly – resilience in the face of crises. The means of attaining this resilience requires focus. At first it may seem as an asset gained among the “behaviors” albeit gained implicitly through the process of education more than the content, learning outcomes or curricula. Resilience is an important trait for an architect to have in face of crisis, yet its origin may not serve the purpose which one may hope for while designing for a resilient world. The endurance mentioned in the survey, translated to resilience in professional trajectories, is not one gained explicitly, i.e. purposefully. It is in the tacit transfer of hierarchical tiers, the constant need of presenting oneself through projects, the staging of critiques, that a resilience is acquired. An asymmetry of power is tacitly expressed here, throughs customs, language, appearance, and rituals, all of which are nurtured and transmitted from those already rooted in the field to those aspiring to join it.[16] From Henri Lefebvre’s explication of backgrounds in space (re)production, to Michel Foucault’s sense of positioning oneself within these power relationships, they take shape from the very beginning. This acculturation process unfolds throughout architectural education, characterized by a series of rites serving to instill hidden values, while also cultivating a distinct sensibility and resilience essential to the role of an architect.
In fact, in addition to imparting transversal skills and fostering a particular mode of thinking, architectural education functions as a means of indoctrination into an obscured power dynamic, one that is upheld and nurtured through a variety of procedures designed to maintain the existing balance of power. While these power dynamics may exhibit various expressions, they share a common thread linked to the archetype of the architect. This archetype is cultivated in the process of shaping individuals into architects, encompassing not only a professional identity but also a particular mindset. Architectural education, beyond the conventional delivery of learning outcomes and technical skills, can also be regarded as an environment where students are initiated into a disciplinary culture, instrumentalizing the liminal states accompanying these transitional stages embedded into studio, crits etc. This liminal space where one learns about the discipline also serves as a platform for introducing issues relevant to contemporary practice, such as new value systems, the necessity for interdisciplinary work, and “defining new and emerging ontologies and epistemologies.”[17] The transformation that occurs during this liminal phase of entering the profession represents an opportunity to shape and instill a meaningful ethical foundation, define the purpose of the discipline, and influence the trajectory of learning in subsequent stages.
Collaborative Practice
The creation of physical space and therefore the process of architectural education both inherently embody power relationships, reflecting social ambitions and value systems. In the early 20th century, architectural education and practice predominantly adhered to the avant-garde model, characterized by the dominance of a select intellectual elite, what can be described as a Fountainhead complex.[18] This paradigm placed great emphasis on the individual architect as a visionary leader, shaping the direction of architectural endeavors. Consequently, architects valued personal competencies and individual responsibilities as central to their professional practice. However, today, recent architecture graduates are increasingly exploring alternative approaches to practice that diverge from the traditional model. These new modes of practice prioritize collaboration, inclusivity, and interdisciplinary exchanges. The process of creating architectural spaces is gradually evolving into a shared endeavor that actively engages a diverse range of actors, each contributing their specific expertise required for the construction process. Importantly, this evolving approach recognizes that making architecture demands the active participation and collaboration of the community for which these spaces are intended.
The modernist deviation of singular practice has been in conjunction with the conventional notion of an architect as the sole creator, though – historically as well as today – architecture witnessed other paradigms. These alternative models challenged the traditional narrative of architectural practice, as found for example in Dolores Hayden’s influential work “The Grand Domestic Revolution.”[19] The 1960s marked a significant turning point in redefining architectural roles, particularly in the context of participation, looking both into historical examples as well as possible modes of engagement at the time. This shift was greatly initiated, staged and performed by educational settings. The actions aimed to promote self-organization and establish more inclusive educational institutions while exploring experiments within educational practice directed to challenging the means and goals of architecture.[20] Notable figures such as Giancarlo De Carlo,[21] with his projects in Italy, and John Turner,[22] known for his work on "The Barriada Movement", contributed to the theorization of a new collaborative relationship between architectural creators and end-users during the design and construction processes. These practices offered a testament to the evolving dynamics within the discipline.[23]
This growing emphasis on inclusivity, community collaboration and learning from indigenous spatial practices has brought to the forefront critical questions about historical patterns of exclusion and inclusion within the realm of architectural space-making. At the same time, they imply the question of whether non-collaborative practice is in fact a deviation from the ubiquitous perception of processes in architectural conception and production. It prompts a reconsideration of who has historically been excluded from the process and who has been included. For instance, Menna Agha's research on the Nubian House underscores the collaborative nature of construction practices, where women play a central role in the process, while men within the household are responsible for executing the construction.[24] Collective work in architecture was treated as isolated experiment, confined to their own narratives or contexts. However, the notion of collectivity has evolved and is currently reshaping both the field of architectural knowledge and the practice of architecture itself. This transformation reflects a broader shift towards more inclusive and community-oriented architectural approaches.
According to the Architecture’s Afterlife research, collaborative practice and engagement with others was a topic frequently coming up in both the in-depth interviews conducted, as well as the survey. And, alongside endurance, was among those most needed in one’s current profession, regardless of how it relates to the core topic of education. Architecture’s Afterlife aimed to establish the percentage of graduates which have left practice to pursue other more or less related jobs. The survey led to a division into four groups of architectural graduates: those working solely in practice (62%), those combining architectural practice with another field, those working in a related sector and those working in unrelated sectors. Regardless of current professional placement, graduates primarily emphasize competencies like “work ethic,” “continuous learning and self-improvement,” “flexibility,” “determination,” “dealing with uncertainty,” “collaboration skills,” “handling complexity,” and “endurance.” Their common denominators are remarkably consistent: when “collaboration skills” are further elaborated in interviews, competencies such as “working with clients,” “business management,” and “mediation skills,” as competencies acquired during their architectural education and frequently applied in their respective roles emerge as crucial irrespective of their specific sector.
“Laboratory of the Future”
In the framing of the topic of the 18th Architecture Biennale in Venice, Lesley Lokko asked the question of what it means to be an “agent of change.”[25] The core theme of “The Laboratory of the Future” revolves around “change”, and the multitude of practices conveyed a message of immediacy in changing canons upon which we practice and teach. Highlighting practices and peripheral knowledge, the exhibitions became a driver of change, a wayfinder for future directions of a profession made increasingly obsolete by its own rigidity. The “gorgeous kaleidoscope of ideas, contexts, aspirations, and meanings that is every voice responding to the issues of its time”[26] established a pluriversal reality, a necessity of knowing and accepting a diverse range of narratives, knowledges, needs and histories. It underscored the importance of diversity and inclusivity within the architectural profession. Including voices from underrepresented regions, backgrounds, and perspectives was a significant step towards fostering a more inclusive and equitable architectural community. The analysis of the practice done by Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency (DAAR), recipients of the Golden Lion, directs toward a framing of relevant practice as being one of agency, as they demonstrated how architecture becomes a tool for social and political critique, engaging with marginalized communities and universal concerns related to borders, migration, and power dynamics in contested territories.
The 2023 exhibition re-framed participants as "practitioners" rather than architects or designers, acknowledging the need for a broader understanding of architecture in a diverse and hybridizing world. Biennale prompted discussions about the future of architectural education. It encouraged reflection on how architectural schools should prepare students for the evolving challenges and opportunities in the profession, including interdisciplinary work and sustainability. In fact, education emerged as a central contribution to the event as framed by Lokko.
Another statistic related to contemporary practice, known from the Architects’ Council of Europe Sector studies, explored through the Afterlife project, and incidentally unveiled at the Venice Architecture Biennale, was the domination of small practices, reflecting a significant shift in both architectural production and educating for future practice. The fragmentation of architectural practices is one of the more significant outcomes of the Afterlife project: the majority of the respondents to the survey fall into the definition of “portfolio worker,” meaning that they work with several different clients, practitioners, companies or organizations – or in this case across more than one sector at the same time.[27] Across Europe and beyond, growth in the number of portfolio workers is exponentially tied to the rise in the “gig economy” – a labor market characterized by the prevalence of zero-hours or short-term contracts or freelance work rather than permanent jobs. Following the early findings of the research, those combining practice with another field were of particular focus, as their multiple occupations usually means that they are not working full time or are contract based. The agility of this aspect of architectural practice makes raising agency in education a particularly important one, as the responsibility of action is up to the understanding and accountability of a free-lance practitioner taking on jobs of various sources and potential impacts, but also acting on their own initiative.
The question of how to educate for this conscience has been central to the strong discursive aspect of the 18th architecture exhibition in Venice, and lead to some reckoning with ourselves as practitioners and as educators. “I recognise that any design-thinking led efforts at reduction, resistance, resilience, restoration, or even re-rewilding will not be able to fully recover what has already been lost. It is only by making these admissions that it becomes possible to see how architects’ exceptional, three-dimensional problem-solving skills, could play a positive role in developing effective responses – but only if the outcome is not always and automatically a building.”[28]
Reformulating Architectural Education for Redefined Practice (concluding remarks)
As Pete Buchanan pointed out in the Big Rethink series,[29] our inability to make significant progress towards sustainability can be attributed to a deficiency in psycho-cultural development happening within schools where structures of power and institutional inertia hinder the graduates' capacity to comprehend, empathize with and address the increasingly global challenges, their diverse cultural dimensions and the need for collaboration across cultures. The previous chapters point to the necessity of questioning the pillars of architectural education, in its canons and processes through which it conveys future goals for practice, through developing agency, cultivating a productive resilience, educating for collaboration. Before that, the meaning of transversality requires expansion beyond the hard skills usually associated with the multitude of knowledge branches related to the discipline-contingent ones.
The Architecture's Afterlife questionnaire underscored that the competencies most cultivated and utilized by architecture graduates extend beyond the realm of cognitive “knowledge” and “understanding.” Notably, only a portion of the skills developed by architects during their academic years is directly related to the architectural discipline, with the most critical competencies being social and emotional in nature. Yet the canon, upon which architecture is taught, is a sporadically challenged topic – albeit fundamental in framing the contemporary directions of architectural education and subsequent future practice. Of these competencies, two are particularly highlighted: resilience and collaboration.
Resilience, a quality prominent in an architectural graduate, is not one which had been expressed in outcomes or curricula. The mode of gaining this resilience could also be the key to raising practitioners at better service to society and planetary well-being. The components that distinctly shape the essence of architectural education can range from overt to more concealed elements, discernible to those who have experienced it. The nature of studio culture, intensity of making, presentation, exposing creative acts publicly, communicating, situated learning, result in liminal states in which students position themselves and gain personal discipline-contingent value systems. Instrumentalizing these with contents and processes toward more meaningful goals could indeed produce resiliences of a different kind.
Modernism has delineated conflicting roles for architects: on one side, architects are positioned as exclusive creators, while on the other, they are envisioned as facilitators of collaborative processes. Collaborative practice is rooted in vernacular practices as well as in contemporary modalities. In the multiple forms of practice mapped out in the Architecture’s Afterlife research, architecture serves as a medium for communication and interaction, particularly in the way it shapes how diverse individuals engage with space. It goes beyond merely catering to society; it actively contributes to the formation and evolution of society itself. Notably, a growing number of impactful practices today involve collectives, challenging the conventional notion of a singular authoritative figure.
This prompts us to consider how architecture should be taught to foster meaningful spatial agency. It also raises questions about how architectural education and practice can advance the creation of spaces for and with collectives. The concept of collaboration and collectivity lies at the heart of sustainable development as defined in global common goals. Consequently, an important question for future education centers on the pedagogical approach employed by architecture schools in Europe to address and instruct these contrasting roles, but also foster an understanding of the interconnectedness of systems in constant flux.