Abstract:
The archetypal idea of the university is being abandoned at the University of
Auckland due to neoliberal policing. Prompted by the unspoken discussion of suicide
on campus, this thesis critiques the risk-averse attitude of the University that has
removed risk from campus thereby securing learning without risk. It has failed its
students in unmaking the built pedagogy by regulating space, and student agency
is lost in the process. It is ultimately diluting not only the campus but critically – the
School of Architecture and architectural education. In response, this thesis seeks not
to replace the system, but to offer insight towards other modalities of learning and
practice that the neoliberal university cannot accommodate.
The thesis responds in two ways by advocating for the re-centring of student
pedagogy as a solution for university decline. The first half researches radical short-lived student actions producing a menu of forms characterized by emancipated
learning. Re-shaping the School of Architecture building in a speculative design to
highlight the potential of re-activating the dilapidated built pedagogy.
The second half looks beyond the built environment and identifies interstitial pockets
of opportunities for spatial agency. Drawing from personal practice of CRIT SPACE,
a student-led YouTube channel for curating collaborative learning, to re-define
conventional notions of architectural education and praxis; and tests emancipated
pedagogy through organising live participatory events.
The events sit in tension with the speculation, as two opposing investigative paths
that questions the neoliberal university’s limiting conditions. As CRIT SPACE is a
product of poached skills from the institution and re-appropriated for personal learning
and practice, thus student agency must be independent of the university machine.
The speculative narrative contrasts the existing regulation of the university while
the live participatory events prove its untapped potentials. This project proposes an
intangible, emancipated learning proposal that the institution cannot contain.