VIRTUAL: Applying Education

Abstract

There is a demand for new and better methods of pedagogy through interdisciplinary architectural education. The role of Interdisciplinary Collaboration in the Search for Transdisciplinary Knowledge remains a key area of development to shape and respond to current and future global challenges in a complex changing world. This paper explores ways education is applied in response to how the built environment is made, operated, and renewed by collaborating expertise and action toward a common teaching goal which is the systemic change needed in our profession. This paper presents a range of pedagogical transformations responding to current challenges through vertical and horizontal teaching with the inclusion of key drivers, such as Social Injustice working to draw deeper pedagogical connections between Environmental Sustainability, and the Biodiversity Emergency. This paper will answer the following question: Can new approaches to architectural education produce ideas and designs that will contribute to alleviating current challenges demonstrating the power of architecture helping students become ‘agents for change’. The aim of this paper is to increase recognition that teachers and students cannot work in a ‘silo’ manner with hostile views of the built environment. It draws upon the author’s teaching research practice, analysing the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in search of transdisciplinary knowledge where its role can inspire contemporary architectural pedagogy to better serve a complex world today.