Teaching Beyond the Curriculum
Abstract
This paper analyses the critical reflections of participants in an international Live Project teaching collaboration between the University of Sheffield, UK, the American University in Cairo, Egypt and UN-Habitat, exploring the implementation of an urban cycle-sharing scheme within Downtown Cairo. The Live Projects Programme at the University of Sheffield School of Architecture involves teams of masters-level students collaborating with community clients on a range of real projects as part of their academic programme. The projects situate a curriculum-based approach to teaching participatory design practice within a contingent engaged learning environment that offers learning opportunities beyond the conventional curriculum in architectural education and professional training. Projects take place locally, regionally, nationally and internationally with a pedagogical emphasis on mentoring rather than tutoring, to support the personal development of ethical practitioners in the fields of architectural research and professional practice. This paper explores the limitations of traditional teaching in the discipline of architectural and urban design and how learning can be enhanced through engagement with social and experiential modes of design knowledge beyond academia. Analysis reveals the motivations for engaging in teaching beyond the curriculum in this way and the practicalities of delivering engaged learning in an international context with a focus on design pedagogy. Outcomes include critical insight into the personal development of both staff and students as traditional roles of teacher and learning are re-formed in response to the project’s evolution, as well as experience that directly informs curriculum planning for socially-engaged education outside the classroom.
Sam Brown is an Architect and University Teacher in Architecture at the University of Sheffield. His academic roles include leading the School’s Live Projects Programme, which involves teams of students working together on real briefs for real clients within their academic programmes. Sam also co-directs the MArch in Collaborative Practice programme and leads the School’s curriculum development in the Environment and Technology subject area. As an architect, Sam has led design teams at a range of scales on community-facing projects and innovative private residential schemes
Yussur Al-Chokhdar is an academic researcher at the University of Sheffield School of Architecture. Her research focuses on influencing architecture students’ creative thinking in the design studio. With an MA in Urban Design from the University of Manchester, her academic roles at the school of architecture include undergraduate design studio teaching and postgraduate supervision, as well as mentoring on the LIve Projects Programme. In 2022 while being an external examiner at The American University in (Cairo) she adapted and developed the Live Project brief discussed in this paper and facilitated the international collaboration that followed.
Momen El-Husseiny is a licensed architect and assistant professor in architecture and urban design at The American University in Cairo (AUC). He is a trained ethnographer with a PhD in Architecture from the University of California, specialising in global metropolitan studies. As an architect he has collaborated on several projects across the Middle East, including the AUC’s New Cairo Campus. Momen has also taught at UC Berkeley, the Academy of Arts in San Francisco, and the Arab Academy of Science, Technology and Maritime Transport (AASTMT), Harvard, Stanford, and the Society of Architectural Historians at the University of Buffalo, New York
2:30 pm - 4:00 pm
Thursday 16th November, 2023