Abstract:
This paper investigates the modelling of a collaboration between academia and architectural practice whereby students rehearse and re-examine processes of architectural change. It presents a case study of a studio-based design project aimed at transmitting the tacit design research employed in architectural practice into architectural education. The pedagogy advocates a critical tension between practitioner-researcher and academic to demonstrate an iterative process of making, critique, consensus and remaking.
The project – Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes – invited students to adopt the design processes of an award-winning New Zealand practice, replicating the firm’s office layout around a shared table on which card models are repeatedly assembled and critiqued. Crucial to developing the teaching programme was the practitioner’s articulation of his vision of design – an iterative process in a dynamic, rather than fixed, context raising the question of when, if ever, can we really say architecture is finished.
The interpolation of this vision into a 12-week teaching framework provided students with separate areas of a connected site on which they responded to prompts for change by making and presenting six iterative designs. The process required students to record and analyse how their designs evolved whether through altered context, planning, form, usage, external space or other means.
The coteaching collaboration produced a programme of deliberate uncertainty. Students didn’t know what change was coming next, not unlike what happens in practice. Analysis of the teaching process revealed how the model-making milestones were vital to students understanding how design is invigorated in the act of predicting, reacting, remaking and self-critique. The frequent critiques provided ongoing interrogation of the design process and demonstrated pivotal points of tension, difference and consensus between practitioner and academic. The process created a space for students to engage with unpredictability and, through the regular ongoing critiques, revealed and communicated aspects of tacit design knowledge.