Challenging Canons / Co-Creating Curricula
The Routledge Companion to Architectural Pedagogies of the Global South
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Section 2: Challenging Canons - Co-Creating Curricula
Challenging Canons - Co-Creating Curricula
Extract from the introduction by
Extract from the introduction by
Harriet Harriss, Barry Curtis, and Ashraf M. Salama
Harriet Harriss, Barry Curtis, and Ashraf M. Salama
The second section of this companion extends earlier efforts at canonic and curricula contestation, proposing new ways to work with established and often exclusionary content. The section begins with Johana Londoño’s petition for all U.S. architecture students to study, examine and confront the ways in which architecture’s complicity in the colonial creation of racialized and disenfranchised Latinx cities, in order to learn how to better serve this population once they reach professional practice. Chin-Wei Chang examines the pedagogies of architect-planners Huang Zuoshen (1915-1975) and Liang Sicheng (1901-1972) who were the most influential in their efforts to develop a pedagogic response to the Bauhaus and Beaux-Arts methodologies dominating architectural programs internationally and to develop a Chinese response to Western influences. In a similar vein, Ashraf Sami Abdalla interrogates al-‘Imara’s professional magazine (1939-1952) and the ways in which its ideology fostered and captured a moment when architectural modernism was adapted to local Socialism in Egypt, and influenced the regionally recalibrated discourse by developing a progressive, anti-Eurocentric position.
Namita Vijay Dharia, from the School of Architecture of the University of Costa Rica, builds a case for a construction site pedagogy that emphasizes participatory design where instruction is understood as learning from and collaborating with construction workers, recognizing their technical and creative expertise, and responding to the social and material conditions expressed on site. Her practice brings students closer to the construction site, with its capacity to undo the privileges of an architect. Natalia Solano-Meza provides an investigative contemplation of the originating concepts of architectural education as they were formed at the University of Costa Rica through interactions between individuals and the ideological and economic context of the period 1958-79. The chapter investigates the ways in which ‘Tropical Architecture’ was constituted and deployed, the prevalence and implications of empirical ‘site analyses’ on urban planning, and an emergent understanding of a need for ‘doing things differently’ in response to the colonial past. Solano-Meza’s chapter also contemplates the void between empirical methods and critical theory as indicative of the urgent need for revisionary practices.
Reflecting upon precedents at the TALCA School in Chile, whose exemplary relational engagement enabled a strong bond with the land and the community, Fernando Luiz Lara considers the connections between TALCA’s construction-based participatory-design pedagogies and the work of Brazilian and pioneering pedagogic theorist, Paulo Freire. In the context of Johannesburg, Huda Tayob introduces a curriculum entitled Race-Spaces-Architecture, which points to spatial thinking as informed by a multiplicity of displacements, of people, places, ideas, and temporalities. Premised on the assertion that decolonization is not a metaphor but is profoundly unsettling, this curriculum actively unsettles the disciplinary constraints of architecture and recognises spatial practices of resistance, maroonage, and creativity as the means to build a collective resource. Tayob’s work suggests a series of tactics for positioning the global south in architectural pedagogy.
Harriet Harriss (RIBA, PFHEA, Ph.D.) is a qualified architect and Dean of the Pratt School of Architecture in Brooklyn, New York. Her teaching, research, and writing focus upon pioneering new pedagogic models for design education, as captured in Radical Pedagogies: Architectural Education & the British Tradition, and for widening participation in architecture to ensure it remains as diverse as the society it seeks to serve, a subject she interrogates in her book, A Gendered Profession. Dean Harriss is also recognized as an advocate for diversity and inclusion within design education and was nominated by Dezeen as a champion for women in architecture and design in 2019. Her latest book Architects After Architecture (2020), considers the multi-sector impact of an architectural qualification. Visit here for more information
Ashraf M. Salama (FRSA, FHEA, Ph.D.) is Full Professor in Architecture and Director of Research at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK. He has led three of architecture in Egypt, Qatar and the United Kingdom, two of which he has founded and was Head of the School of Architecture at the University of Strathclyde (2014-2020). With experience spanning across many contexts, he has been the director of research and consulting at Adams Group Architects in Charlotte, NC. He has published 14 authored and edited books including Demystifying Doha, 2013; Architecture Beyond Criticism, 2014; Spatial Design Education, 2015; Building Migrant Cities in the Gulf, 2019; Architectural Excellence in Islamic Societies, 2020; and Transformative Pedagogy in Architecture and Urbanism, 2021. He is the UIA 2017 Recipient of Jean Tschumi Prize for Excellence in Architectural Education and Criticism. Visit here for more information
Ane Gonzalez Lara is an assistant professor of undergraduate architecture at Pratt Institute School of Architecture. Ane is the co-founder of Idyll Studio. Her professional work with Idyll balances social and cultural concerns with extensive formal and material research. She has developed academic research initiatives as part of her studio teaching that have examined the United States-Mexican border and the Korean demilitarized zone. She received her Master equivalent degree from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Navarra, Spain. She is a registered architect in Texas and Spain. Prior to working at Pratt, she taught at the University of New Mexico and the University of Houston. Her research interests include pedagogy, and social and climate justice topics as they relate to the built environment. Visit here for more information
Barry Curtis is Associate Director of Doctoral Programmes at University of the Arts, London. He was previously Professor and Head of Arts Research at Middlesex University, and has taught at the Open University, the London Consortium, The British Film Institute, Birkbeck College and the Royal College of Art. Barry is Experienced Tutor with a demonstrated history of working in the design industry. Skilled in Contemporary Art, Museums, Research Design, Lecturing, and Cultural Heritage. Visit here for more information
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