VIRTUAL: Learning. Life. Work.

Abstract

In September 2020, in response to COVID-19 pandemic and the inevitable shift to online teaching, we developed a design exercise, the results of which impacted our pedagogic approach beyond the period of the health crisis. The thematic title for our Master of Architecture studio, Budapest, Remote Discovery, called students to develop tools to engage with a live competition project in a place they could not visit. Questioning the increasingly touristic approach to architectural education, we raised the following questions: how can we explore, read, represent, and design for a city we cannot physically experience? What are the media that architects have in their hands today to understand the multiple realities of cities at a distance? What are the material, cultural, political, economic, and environmental capacities that we can unmask and reprogram? In the course of the year, the students engaged with local practitioners, academics, civil servants, and residents who became their ‘eyes’ in Budapest; they studied and surveyed the city through text, maps, photographs and videos; and, they drew and modelled its endless potential. The hybrid space established in this context blurred the boundaries between the physical reality of the city and the students’ imaginaries in constructive ways and helped develop investigative tools of greatest precision. The aim of this paper is to explore how such mediated and highly curated environments produced instruments that increased the students’ design capabilities. We discuss how this distance (between the drawing board and the site of intervention, between students and tutors, between students and local agents, between the studio and the critics, etc.) became critical, offering an opportunity to challenge traditional modes of architectural education, such as the study-trip, the lecture, the reviews, the pin up, and the design tutorial.