Pedagogy 2025

Abstract

Architects have been complicit in climate change. Schools of architecture have been slow to move beyond long-standing pedagogical methods such as the nineteenth-century Beaux Arts master-disciple model. New pedagogical approaches are required to develop the skills necessary to respond creatively to the climate emergency. Air, a key component in climate change and an important determinant of building and human health and comfort, is invisible in its default state and often neglected in the visually dominated design studios of architecture schools, especially in regions with temperate climates. Drawing remains the architect’s primary tool and scientific evidence now confirms its cognitive role. This paper documents a pedagogical experiment conducted in a compulsory, technology module, in the second year studying architecture in University College Dublin, whose aim was to foreground air using arts-based methods with hand-drawing as the primary tool. The students were invited to 1) consider representations of air, 2) devise low-tech methods to observe and record the air at a window of their choosing and 3) make a freehand drawing that represents the air observed. The objectives were to raise student awareness of air and enable understanding of how window openings mediate between exterior climate and interior environment and affect the air and comfort in a room.