Next (re)generation architectural education: Disrupting design pedagogy through social lab processes

Jones, Matthew

Abstract

This paper reflects on collaborative live architectural design projects between Birmingham School of Architecture and Design (BSoAD) students and social lab, CoLab Dudley in Dudley, UK. CoLab Dudley is an experimental form of social and imagination infrastructure seeking to create the conditions for cultural action rooted in long term thinking, collective imagination and regenerative design. Through regenerative design focused projects, High Street 2030 and Extinction Rebellion Architecture, social lab processes were introduced to architectural pedagogical approaches leading to
disruption of normative design education.

There is a systemic need for the radical disruption of architectural education in context of the multiple crises we face: climate change, biodiversity loss, and growing environmental and social injustice. This
paper explores how a social lab setting can provide an experimental, systemic and social setting for architectural education to be disrupted, specifically within CoLab Dudley. We conducted a literature review to investigate social lab approaches and behaviours and compares the findings against CoLab Dudley’s emerging principles and regenerative approaches towards cultural democracy and intergenerational justice. We used a framework drawn from this literature study to analyse the two phases of collaboration between BSoAD and CoLab Dudley: a 12-week interdisciplinary live project
and a seven-month Master of Architecture design studio unit to tease out the potential of social lab processes to disrupt the architectural design process. We visually collated and coded reflection-onaction
between students, tutors, the CoLab Dudley team, and people local to Dudley to reveal new knowledge on potential disruption toward positive change in architectural education. Through cocreation
of the briefs and participation throughout the projects, CoLab Dudley’s principles and ways of working brought new approaches to the normative education that architectural designers receive,
including: longer term thinking; gratitude and reciprocity; imagining regenerative futures through narrative and storytelling; a shift from seeing buildings as the end point of a project toward seeing regenerative design as an ongoing process of collaboration; creative and innovative principles guiding emergent ideas and action; systems thinking; and weaving of networks and design into the wider
ecosystem.

Citation

Jones, M. (2023). Next (re)generation architectural education: Disrupting design pedagogy through social lab processes.

• Conference Name: PRODUCTIVE DISRUPTIVE: Spaces of exploration in-between architectural pedagogy and practice
• Conference Location: Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University
• Start Date: Jul 12, 2023
• End Date: Jul 15, 2023
• Acceptance Date: May 3, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Jul 10, 2023
• Publication Date: Jul 10, 2023
• Deposit Date: Aug 30, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 8, 2023
• Pages: 312-327
• ISBN: 1899895280
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/10980762
• Publisher URL: https://padlet.com/aae2023/productive-disruptive-puupwva4u7fy5euv/wish/2640479531