Pedagogy 2025
Abstract
Today’s complex and multifaceted challenges – often called ‘wicked problems’ – demand that students develop a wide range of skills. To prepare them for this reality, future-focused architectural institutions must immerse students in varied hands-on learning environments and guide them in collaborating with diverse actors across disciplines. In this context, design-build approaches are increasingly coming to the fore again. Since the early 21st century, in the wake of the Bologna Agreement, architectural institutions have also been expected to articulate their theoretical underpinnings more explicitly while simultaneously developing a research-oriented practice. Since then, former university colleges have faced challenges in addressing and integrating the diverse domains intersecting with their research, ranging from the arts to the physical and social sciences. Consequently, practice-oriented approaches have occasionally found themselves under scrutiny or pressure. Based on a description of five design-build initiatives currently taking place at the Faculty of Architecture of the KU Leuven, We demonstrate that design-build pedagogies offer multiple advantages. However, this way of teaching – literally and figuratively – exceeds the boundaries of traditional academic approaches. We discuss how this method requires a greater degree of openness, flexibility and collaboration and reflect on how academic institutions can accommodate this kind of teaching mode, on the verge of pedagogy, practice and research. We contend that this requires dismantling the proverbial ‘ivory tower’: the university must not only open itself to the world (e.g. by recognising alternative forms of knowledge), but also actively invest and engage in it.
Aurelie De Smet is a Service-learning facilitator at the Faculty of Architecture of the KU Leuven. Together with her colleagues, she initiates and supports all kinds of community-engaged learning initiatives. She also teaches two service-learning elective courses in the Master of Architecture. Aurelie is fascinated by people’s direct and indirect influence on their environment and vice versa. In her work, the interaction between ‘practice’ and ‘theory’ is a common thread, as she finds it essential to reflect on her actions and relate any research findings to the real, everyday world.
Robin Schaeverbeke is an architect, senior lecturer and researcher at the Faculty of Architecture, Catholic University of Leuven (KUL), Belgium. He holds a PhD in architecture from the KUL. His research centres around practice-based epistemologies of tools, techniques and formulas for architectural imagination in action, teaching and learning. Robin directs the educational master program, exploring ways architects and interior architects can add value to schools and various learning environments. Investigating (the teaching of) future challenges from a design based point of view is at the heart of the program. His practice occurs in between design, research, education, drawing and improvisation.
Laurens Luyten is educated and experienced through practice in structural engineering and architectural design. In research, he bridges analytical and holistic thinking to enable design collaboration between structural engineers and architectural designers. In education, he furthers this research by developing structural understanding in design thinking of architecture students through non-analytical approaches like experiential learning in material workshops. He teaches structural design in theory courses and design studios in the Bachelor’s and Master’s of Interior Architecture and Architecture at KU Leuven since 1996.
Joris Van Reusel is a practising architect focusing on innovative design in social and ecological projects. By connecting natural systems and spatial design challenges, he is pioneering in bridging the gap between contemporary design and nature conservation. Joris also teaches architectural design at the Faculty of Architecture of the KU Leuven. Since 2015, together with Daan De Volder and Pascal François, he has worked with bachelor and master students on the case of the almost abandoned village of Doel, where he is developing theoretical and hands-on strategies for spatial reconversion and re-empowerment of the local community through research by design
3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
Thursday 20th November, 2025