A Focus on Pedagogy

Abstract

Session Chairs/Speakers: René Burghardt & Lucas Buescher

The consequences of the recent pandemic have been felt in both teaching and industry in numerous ways. It has changed how we operate in the workplace and in the classroom. Research into it has generated vast amounts of data on how we interact in public space. It is data that will inform the design of the built environment for years to come. While not focused on this specific dataset itself, this session is concerned with design, planning and ubiquitous data collection in the context of teaching and expanded definitions of work, specifically in relation to complex issues such as climate change, architecture and urban planning.

If we take the example of these disciplines, the creation and management of our built environment involves ever more guidelines, laws and participants, all of which increase the complexity of modern planning and design. This coincides with the application of a flood of new technological methods and tools that generate an ever growing dataset about every aspect of our lives in the built environment.

In dealing with this flood of data, how do we know what knowledge and what data is important? How do we select, interpret and use this data correctly as professionals? Do we really need this data, or do we need new ways of thinking? Does data limit creativity and utopias, or does it lead to more creative and better solutions? How should we reflect all this in teaching design and planning?

This session seeks to explore whether the increased complexity of the problems we strive to solve, and the increased data we use to do that, leads to better solutions. More specifically, it asks how teaching can support this inquiry and goal. It is our premise that in order to do their jobs effectively educators, and their students, will have to increasingly learn how to filter what they really need form the plethora of data and information available to them in relation to questions such as planning, sustainability and performance standards. As we leave the pandemic behind we will have to readdress an issue that had been building long before its arrival – the increasing need to learn to filter, analyse and use ever more information to inform our professional practice.