{"id":759109,"date":"2024-10-08T07:41:08","date_gmt":"2024-10-08T06:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/?p=759109"},"modified":"2024-10-08T09:14:04","modified_gmt":"2024-10-08T08:14:04","slug":"architectural-education-is-changing-but-is-it-changing-fast-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/news\/opinion\/architectural-education-is-changing-but-is-it-changing-fast-enough","title":{"rendered":"Architectural education is changing. But is it changing fast enough?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Architectural education is a slow ship to turn. Finding the appropriate balance between the teaching of design and technical knowledge is an age-old debate. With the planetary crisis, it has never been more urgent to equip students with a climatic and social understanding of their designs and their agency as professionals.<\/p>\n

The evolution of the submissions for the AJ Student Prize<\/a> since its inception in 2018 demonstrates an increased understanding of the centrality of climate issues to design year on year. In 2021, the RIBA published an excellent Climate Literacy Knowledge Schedule<\/em> and the ARB released its Guidance for Institutions on Environmental Sustainability<\/em>. Three years on, to what extent have architecture curriculums responded to this urgency?<\/p>\n

Many students still reach Part 3 without ever calculating the carbon of their projects<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We all know that architectural education centres on the studio and unit system. The new RIBA\/ARB mapping requirements include sustainability as part of the technical courses (comprising 15-to-20 per cent of the course schedule). However, they are not always a requirement of the studio projects, which can make up most of a student\u2019s grade.<\/p>\n

In short, many studio projects remain free to be sustainable or not. Tutor and ACAN member Ciaran Malik observes: \u2018Students generally have a huge appetite for [sustainable design], especially first and second year, but if they have a few studios without it being considered, it falls to the side.\u2019<\/p>\n

Environmental design tutor Sal Wilson concurs. \u2018The intuitive first step approach to all design scenarios must start with embedding a project within its local context both climatically and socially, and the guardianship of what is already there,’ she says. The teaching of architectural climate literacy will never be cracked until this is firmly incorporated into every studio from first year on. Studios must be held accountable.<\/p>\n

Before writing this column, I contacted several tutors and recent graduates. My takeaway is that an increasing number of studios focus on retrofit or natural materials, alongside more technical courses teaching carbon calculations and introducing natural materials. Yet many students still reach Part 3 without ever calculating the carbon of their projects.<\/p>\n

Numerous promising initiatives point the way forward. Topping the list is Duncan Baker-Brown and Graeme Brooker\u2019s virtual summer school The Pedagogies of Re-Use (2021), which is captured in an excellent open source book<\/a> of the same name, published this year. If you do just one thing, read Scott McAulay\u2019s scene-setting first chapter, \u2018Build Lifeboats, not Coffins\u2019.<\/p>\n

At Sheffield, Architecture Students for Climate Action (ASCA<\/a>) has been formalised as a student society with its own lecture series and events \u2013 a model other schools could follow.<\/p>\n

ACAN has appointed recent Sheffield graduate Joe Bass as a student ambassador to harness activity and found Students Climate Action Network (StuCan) groups across all UK architecture schools. Architects Declare has recently recruited for a similar role.<\/p>\n

At the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Year 3 student Rona Bisset has won an ACAN grant to develop climate pedagogy workshops for students and tutors alike. \u2018WE ARE NOT BEING QUIET ANYMORE!\u2019 she declares. Upskilling tutors is critical.<\/p>\n

A StuCan festival, held at the Centre of Alternative Technology in May, enabled cross-fertilisation of ideas among the 28 schools represented.<\/p>\n

These examples, by no means comprehensive, show that change is indeed afoot. But to catalyse meaningful change, more cross-disciplinary education is critical.<\/p>\n

LETI founder and 2024 MBE recipient Clara Bagenal George of Etude notes that her interdisciplinary MEng degree at Nottingham, where she was educated alongside architects, equipped her with fundamental insights into how architects think, and this has proven invaluable in her career. In a similar vein, UWE professor Elena Marco notes that graduates of her university\u2019s BEng Architecture Environmental Engineering degree typically earn starting salaries of up to \u00a34,000 more than Part 1 graduates.<\/p>\n

What we need is a proactive cross-school knowledge community that can pioneer and share new approaches to architectural education akin to the way that LETI, ACAN and Architects Declare have infiltrated the profession. The Technica conference, a gathering of architecture technology tutors held for the second time last May at Manchester School of Architecture, is one potential such forum. The active ACAN Education working group is another.<\/p>\n

There is no time to waste.<\/p>\n

Hattie Hartman is the AJ’s Sustainability Editor\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Architectural education is a slow ship to turn. Finding the appropriate balance between the teaching of design and technical knowledge is an age-old debate. With the planetary crisis, it has never been more urgent to equip students with a climatic and social understanding of their designs and their agency as professionals. The evolution of the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80620,"featured_media":757313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"ep_exclude_from_search":false},"categories":[745],"tags":[13795,1795,73595,1433],"yoast_head":"\nArchitectural education is changing. 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