Session #119

– Paper Presentations –

Commoning: a practice of collaborating and sharing to meet every day needs and achieve the well-being of individuals, communities and environments (Collet-Sabé & Ball, 2022)

SYNOPSIS

This call for contributions is arises from the Erasmus project the Socially Situated Architectural Pedagogies – SArPe- (www.sarpe.org) which is established at the convergence of three areas of discussion, namely situated knowledges (Haraway, 1988), critical/engaged/radical pedagogies (Freire, 1968; Hooks, 1994; Crysler, 1995; Colomina et.al. 2018), and spatial commons (De Angelis, 2003; De Cauter, 2013; Stavrides, 2016; Pelger et. al, 2017). It is also a response to and joins the broader critique towards current architectural pedagogy (Deamer et al., 2020; Dutton & Mann, 1996), dissatisfaction and issues with current studio teaching (Dutton, 1987) and opposition towards professional training that focuses on star-architecture (e.g. archistars) (Till, 2013). The prescriptive models of pedagogy continues to turn a blind-eye to the multidimensional and interconnected 21st century crises. Especially the pressing needs of the climate emergency – which we see as one rooted in and not separate from social, economic, environmental, political crisis – calls for some form of reformulation of spatial practice, teaching and training.

Some modes of architectural teaching-learning such as “live projects”, participatory approaches and responsive interdisciplinary approaches have come forward, but are still seen as experimental, fragmented and not integrated into the wider curricula. If educators and learners are to break from ‘teach to the test’ approach (Korsgaard, 2019), current practices need to be challenged and alternative pathways need to be actioned.

As such we position the term socially situated pedagogies in architecture on the notion that knowledge is collaboratively produced through dialogue between universities and non-academic institutions, by both learners and educators and is strongly shaped by the social context of the civic realm. In this regard we see the commons, rooted in the practice of collaboration and sharing (Collet-Sabé & Ball, 2022), as a framework to rethink and initiate new forms of pedagogical practices. For example, Tyson Lewis’s term exopedagogy calls for uninstitutionalised learning environments and expand education beyond the profit mentality. Others interpret the architectural studio ‘as a commons’ (Charlot et al., 2019) and ‘a key space for conflict’ (Bourassa, 2017) to reveal hierarchies and exploitations and constructs a situated pedagogy that resists enclosure (Korsgaard, 2019).While the commons can be associated to tangible and intangible resources (e.g. knowledge, or the cultural commons, digital commons), very few attempts have been made to refer the common and/or the commons to architectural pedagogy. On the other hand while so-called experimental approaches show overlaps with critical, radical and situated pedagogies, we feel that there is an element of distinctiveness and the opportunity to further investigate commons in relation to pedagogy.

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

With this premise, the session invites learners and educators but also proponents beyond academia to share theoretical propositions as well as case-studies and tentative, experimental actions that take place in and beyond architectural schools. We have identified few research questions to prompt thoughts and reflections, which may be presented in the form of academic papers as well as via other formats.

• Echoing Peggy Deamer (2021), what does it mean ‘for architectural education to function as a common and not as a factory’?

• ‘Is it possible to think about a relation, a dialogue, between commoning, the care of self and others and the planet? […] could a commoning relation be seen as an educational process, an ethical and political activity and technique of self-formation?’ (Collet-Sabé & Ball, 2022)
• To what extent ‘exploring and experimenting in our day to day practices in schools’ (Korsgaard, 2019) can function in ‘institutional’ architectural schools? And, reciprocally, what are the risks and the counter effects (taming the potential, enclosure) of abandoning the school entirely?
• Ultimately, how can we imagine a form of architectural pedagogy which is empowered by the common/the commons, beyond any instrumental relationship? What capacity do we have, as educators and learners, to be commoning architectural curricula, modules and design studios?

KEY BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

Bourassa, G. N. (2017). Toward an elaboration of the pedagogical common. Educational Commons in theory and practice: Global pedagogy and politics, 75-93.

Deamer, P. (2021).The Architectural Common. In M. Mahdavi & L. Wang (Eds.), New geographies: 12, Commons (pp. 271-285). Harvard University Graduate School of Design. https://go.exlibris.link/RsMwSPKZ

Deamer, P., Deeg, L., Metz, T., & Tursky, R. (2020). Design pedagogy: The new architectural studio and its consequences. Architecture_media_politics_society, 18(1)https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.amps.2020v18i1.002

De Lissovoy, N. (2011). Pedagogy in common: Democratic education in the global era. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43(10), 1119-1134.