An Essential Tension: the changing space between practice and academia in teaching design research

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.