Edu­cat­ing the Pluriver­sal Practitioner

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 20^th 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 20^th 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 18^th 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 18^th 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.