Pedagogy 2025

Abstract

This paper examines the changing position of architectural history and theory in design education, arguing for its continued relevance as an open field of inquiry rather than a closed canon. Building on the frameworks of Dana Cuff, Douglas Crimp, and Rosalind Krauss, it proposes that theory should be taught less as a lineage of authoritative texts and more as a set of tools for engaging architecture as the entanglement of space with cultural, political, and ecological forces. A reimagined Theories of Architecture course taught at a major U.S. university serves as a case study. Rather than presenting a comprehensive survey, the course emphasized the margins of the discipline and its intersections with other fields. Thematic units traced connections between political economy, ecological and geological scales, media and representation, human and non-human subjectivities, and the ethics of practice—underscoring architectural theory as a shifting terrain where center and periphery are continually renegotiated. The course’s “State of the Field” project extended this logic by asking students to collectively define emergent strains of theory not otherwise covered in class. Student work ranged from post-colonial identity in cities to architectural labor, health and well-being, and ecological systems thinking. Positioning students as active theorists revealed pressing gaps in the curriculum and demonstrated how conceptual inquiry can sharpen engagement with contemporary practice. More broadly, this strategy for open pedagogy surfaces the issues students themselves identify as most urgent, positioning history and theory as a platform for extending design beyond singular solutions toward systemic solutions that confront the most pressing environmental, social, and political challenges of the 21st century.