Editorial

We set this cycle in motion with a series of questions that target the collective desire to produce, elaborate and share knowledge, investigating possible paths that shift the understanding of architectural education. With contributions from students, teachers and practitioners in architecture, urbanism and art, this cycle explores the current learning landscape, reflects on case studies past, and proposes new forms of architectural education that imagine better conditions for future generations.

The fluctuation between prioritizing personal or professional growth has led us to question the formats of learning that cater to one over the other. With hierarchies embedded in the framework of the “institution”, pedagogies adapt to account for the agendas of decision makers. Under this light, what is the true value of a diploma? In March 2022, Southern California Institute of Architecture held a panel discussion called “How to be in an Office”, giving students the chance to ask architects for advice on how to bridge academic experiences to professional practice. The event turned into a meme, a symbol of the questionable labor ethics in architecture, emphasizing the cult of long working hours representing an individual’s worth. In the same month, a lengthy survey analysis conducted by ETH Zurich’s Department of Architecture brought to light outdated teaching models, lack of diversity and poor gender parity – the data quantifying an overdue call to action for necessary change. Driven by teachers and students alike, there is a willingness to confront the current structures of formal education and the power relations inherent.

Our contributors Shen & Juan address an open letter to their classmates to rethink their own roles in the university, in a similar nature to Marine de Dardel’s essay resisting the given social structures of the institution with an architectural reading of Marquis de Sade’s libertine philosophy. Zhifei Xu takes a look at the portfolio agency market whose complex relationship with the admissions process for architecture schools has blurred the role institutions play as adjudicators of relevance, beauty, taste and style. Suzanne Lettieri challenges recruitment strategies in US architecture schools to consider more equitable pathways for underrepresented students. Joanne Pouzenc illustrates a constant mapping of people and their movements in a diverse range of learning spaces. Charlotte Grace unpicks the term “comrade”, referencing practices at universities in London and Rojava to work on building collective solidarity, while Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber shift historically colonial spatial practices at the site of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

Though both architectural education and production are a continuously unpredictable process, rooted in a network of changing global issues, their systems of proliferation have often historically remained stagnant. An active culture of pedagogical experimentation developed over the 1960s; educational models were criticized as complacently reflecting on global issues and countered by a call for pedagogy to interact with and instigate change within contemporary social, technological and political processes. Brought to a height in 1968, students around the world took to the streets in protest and education systems across all fields were shaken to their core. Ephemeral experiments did much to challenge existing notions of pedagogy, yet the prevailing path to licensure has hardly reformed. Much of the reason may lie in the gap between education and accreditation, two forces intended to be complementary yet so often contradictory in their motivation, method and outcome.

Learning architecture is undoubtedly rooted in the past – whether it be a reflection, continuation or complete rejection – as we all sit on former foundations to propose the new. In this cycle, Pierre Menoud reflects on how the Bologna System has further eroded the experimental possibilities within architectural education. Jumanah Abbas documents the summer camps of Golan Heights; an initiative founded in 1986 to exercise resistance against Israeli occupation through a community led, situated infrastructure of alternative education. Christina Moushoul tracks the development since 1963 of the first semester core studio at Princeton School of Architecture, and Rafael Lorentz rediscovers the pedagogical exercises composing Zumthor’s foundation year program during the first three years of existence of the Academy of Architecture of Mendrisio back in 1996. Matthew Kennedy examines the pedagogical career of architect William S. Huff, who largely focused on developing the study of “basic design” coming from his experiences at the HfG Ulm. Yosuke Nakamoto reviews the Kenzo Tange laboratory, where some of its students would become the main face of the Japanese metabolism movement and active in urban development policies of the second half of XXth century Tokyo. Visual artist Anna Moreno interviewed members of The Global Tools and worked parallelly between practical research, documentation, furniture design and performance.

Given the slow rate of urgent change for social and environmental issues on a global scale, it’s somewhat unsurprising that architecture students have been addressing the same concerns for over sixty years. However, new constellations of study have been constantly developing, setting precedent for future learning. The education systems of today are as much online tutorials, community workshops and independent collectives as they are diplomas, grades and work placements. Radical pedagogies have consistently formed the landscape of speculative practice. The boundary drawn around the professional activities of an architect is blurring and extending: how many of today’s architecture students will actually go on to become practicing architects and spatial planners in the most traditional sense?

Marwa El-Mubark reconsiders stifling practices in risk averse institutions to propose a more radical, “handson” approach to education, citing three projects which contribute to a risk-positive culture of experimentation. Meanwhile, Boneless pizza explores the various extrainstitutional learning practices present in today’s and yesterday’s architectural education. Charlotte Malterre-Barthes and Zosia Dzierżawska propose New Rules for an inter-disciplinary, colorful, and generous school of architecture to strive for an alternative, non-destructive and eco-feminist future vision of the discipline. Thiago Benucci shares a collaboration with the Yanomami people from the Marauiá River (Amazonas, Brazil), questioning how architects can learn from their understanding of lightness in contemporary spatial practice.

Many of the submissions for this issue’s open call expressed a general sense of disillusionment. Frankly, the pessimism surrounding the current systems of learning architecture is a reasonable response, and marks an important moment as we nudge towards something different. Without sounding resolute, if we expect today’s students to move towards the creation of a better, fairer, healthier environment, they must be provided with the confidence to overcome the fear of action in the face of extinction. The door is still left open for what, then, an architectural education would look like which widens the possibilities for empowered future generations.