Teaching Beyond the Curriculum
Abstract
Contemporary community architecture and disaster resilience scholarship has extensively documented the work of community architects, highlighting the features, merits and limitations of this practice in building community resilience in design processes. However, a knowledge gap not yet bridged is how these community architects are academically trained to practice community-oriented work and how Schools of Architecture – through such trainings – catalyze community development in the cities in which they are located. The aim of this paper is to fill this knowledge lacuna by outlining specific features of the academic training of community architects based on an analysis of a case study in the USA, a place where much of this pedagogy is being developed. The paper illustrates and reviews this pedagogical model through an analysis of a 14-week design/build studio for a local farm that took place during the fall semester of 2021-2022 by the Small Center, the community design center of the Tulane School of Architecture. During one-month ethnographic research with the Small Center, empirical data was harvested through review of project materials, semi-structured interviews with students and teachers and site visits to the farm. The paper shows how live community-based project pedagogy helps students gain insight into the impact of community engagement and the challenges involved, such as a limited budget, communication within the project team and collaborating with non-designers. It also outlines key takeaways and critical reflections that are relevant to European and global Departments/Schools of Architecture as they prepare the next generation of architects who promote a more socially just built environment.
Deceuninck is a recent graduate in the Master of Science: Architectural Engineering at KU Leuven in Belgium. Her thesis research was on architectural pedagogy, specifically on how to train architecture students to become community architects.
Emilie Taylor Welty is an Architect and Professor of Practice at Tulane School of Architecture where she also has the honor of Directing Tulane’s Architecture program. Her research and practice center on tactile explorations, fabrication, and broader engagement with community stakeholders in the design process. Taylor Welty teaches students through making and together they build projects with non-profit organizations in New Orleans through the Tulane’s Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design. This combination of activities go by the names: design-build pedagogy, community based design, and public interest design. Sometimes she’s asked to talk and write about these areas of research-in-action.
Also, Taylor Welty has an architecture firm in New Orleans called Colectivo.
Angeliki Paidakaki is Assistant Professor at Harokopio University of Athens. Her postdoctoral research was titled: Uncovering the catalytic role of housing alliances in forming post-disaster egalitarian cities: Lessons for Europe from the Greater New Orleans Housing Alliance.
Pieter Van den Broeck is Professor of Spatial Planning and Sustainable Development in the Department of Architecture at KU Leuven, where he leads the Research Unit Planning & Development (P&D). Pieter has over 20 years of experience in the field of spatial development analysis and planning, in both research and practice. From a critical institutionalist perspective and a methodological interest in transdisciplinary action research, he engages in research on planning instruments, social innovation and territorial development, governance of socio-ecological systems, and land policies and commons.
12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
Thursday 16th November, 2023