IN-PERSON Prague Research & Teaching Conference
Abstract
The design studio is the core of architectural education. It possesses a unique, ever-changing social-emotional topography shaped by the power relations between its members, mainly students. It is a reflective environment of learning in which, traditionally, the tutor plays an important role. The literature emphasizes self and mentored reflections as the pillars of its pedagogy. Tutor-student power relations often overshadow the social network between studio members, namely fellow students, and their crucial role in the reflective learning process. The growing pedagogical recognition of peer learning underscores the need to explore and develop up-to-date methodologies that fully integrate the role of peers in the studio. Therefore, we propose to observe, explore, and harness the power of peers for advanced learning. The following presents the experiential reflective role-play we incorporated in architecture and design courses. This role-playing involves breaking the supervisor-student hierarchy and creating a rhizomatic structure, a non-hierarchical and interconnected network, as part of the group dynamics. Breaking the accepted studio routine and actively including peers in learning practices creates new opportunities for creative learning in design thinking. Creating such a learning habitus enables the potential space of the studio for professional and personal development. Moreover, it expands the “surface area” of the students’ experiences regarding their learning processes and outcomes. Our findings show that such power of peers allows the participants to conceive a broader picture, to contain multiple perspectives, and to develop a more complex perception of the design situation and the critical discourse in the studio.
Keren Shoham – Architect (Ph.D.), researcher, and lecturer with extensive practice and pedagogy experience. Co-founder of Sadot-Shoham Architects. A teaching staff member at Technion, teaching architectural studios and design courses since 2006 and contributed to the Technische Universität Berlin curriculum. Her research interests focus on architectural pedagogy, design thinking, visuality, and visual cognition. Dr. Shoham received multiple fellowships and awards, including the prestigious Azrieli Fellowship, the Sherman Interdisciplinary Research Fellowship, and the Szego Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Architect Ph.D. Ehud Belferman is an architect, teacher, and researcher, an adjunct senior lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, the Technion, and the Haifa University School of Design. His architectural practice involves various projects: public buildings, schools, and private houses. His research interests are the interdisciplinary fields of architecture, psychoanalysis, and education, the affinities between architectural spaces and mental states, architecture and anxiety, aesthetics, and the phenomena of the beautiful in architecture. Dr. Belferman’s Ph.D. dissertation was nominated for the Wolf Prize in 2017 and honored as the best research of 2018 in the Faculty of Architecture in the Technion.
Architect Shoham Shefy is an architect and architecture teacher at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion. He specializes in freshmen architecture and interior design studios, building technology classes for the master’s degree, and the history of modern architecture. Since 2019, he has been researching the design studio as a potential space for learning and self-development, especially in the light of playing activities.
9:00 am - 10:30 am
Wednesday 11th June, 2025