IN-PERSON Prague Research & Teaching Conference

Abstract

This paper attempts at a methodological discussion on how newcomers are introduced into architectural education. Particularly, service courses of the first year make up the scope because their practices present a transparent body of discursive formations, which (re)produce an operational and intellectual setting through which practices of the design student are supposed to be exercised. The discussion that ensues, on the one hand wishes to contribute to the literature on the role of the discipline of history within architectural education. When offered in the first year, history courses present a scientific setting for the novice design student to measure and position their own production against the context of the history and geography of human creations. The paper also aims to extend the discussion by reminding that all introductions actually have two parties. The design of introductory courses in many cases dwells on the discipline that one is introduced into, tending to take that “one” in a neutral and universal mind setting. Historically, the premise of the “innocent mind” presented by Bauhaus is mostly persistent, hardly with any contemporary articulation. The author would like to contribute to a critical evaluation with his experience of instructing introductory courses in universities in a non-Western context. The argument will be on the need to better understand the 21st century subject as the beginner in architectural education with the diversity of the local, cultural, psychological and political baggage that they bring in and on a critical re-evaluation of the introductory courses accordingly.