Transformative Teaching

Abstract

Now more than ever, students and faculty are facing an uncertain and volatile future. Post pandemic, there is a need to foster and enable an educationally resilient generation of graduates of architecture, fully aware of their parallel potential as individuals, but also key scions of success beyond the sum of their transferable skill set. The live project is nothing new in schools of architecture but must now adapt along with the context in which it exists. The Pavilion Project at Manchester School of Architecture in partnership with the National Trust, has been re-evaluated and explored as a pedagogical construction in the context of the biosocial model. This interdisciplinary stance promoted a pedagogical construct where participant biology, psychology and socio-environmental factors were considered together with the design approach to achieve participant resilience. This paper proposes that the theory, practice, and pursuit of resilience in architectural education is not a supplementary “study skill’ but seeks a wholescale re-evaluation of both the contemporary skill set students need, and the in-built capacity to adapt and develop them in the context of an unpredictable future. This paper reflects upon and appraises the evolving trichotomy of a radically different student profile, increasingly different student experiential expectations and delivery of diminishing resources, as well as the changing nature of the culture and manifestation of architectural practice in a post pandemic digital world. Proposing a new conceptual framework to fully serve and sustain the contemporary and future architectural educational experience and practice.