Synopsis, Aim, and Objectives

The Routledge Companion to Architectural Pedagogies of the Global South

ISBN 9780367893705

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Our aim is to develop a responsive discourse that acknowledges opportunities for (a) the recognition of historic, regional pedagogic traditions that have been overlooked or undervalued within Western knowledge frameworks, (b) the emergence of counterpoints to Western pedagogic hegemonies, and (c) pedagogies that respond directly to the unique and context specific values, opportunities and challenges facing schools of architecture and the societies that their graduates seek to serve.

The Routledge Companion to Architectural Pedagogies of the Global South.

Editors: Harriet Harriss, Ashraf M. Salama, and Ane Gonzalez Lara

The established canon of architectural education and design pedagogy has been predominantly produced within the Northern hemisphere and transposed into schools across the Global South with little regard for social or ecological culture and context, nor regional pedagogic traditions. Architecture’s academic community throughout the Global South has been deeply affected by this imposition, how it shapes and influences proto-professionals and by implication architectural processes and outcomes.

The Routledge Companion to Architectural Pedagogies of the Global South resituates and recenters an array of pedagogic approaches that are either produced or proliferate from the ‘Global South’ while antagonizing the linguistic, epistemological and disciplinary conceits that, under Imperialist imperatives, ensured that these pedagogies remained maligned or marginalized. The book maintains that the exclusionary implications of architectural notions of the ‘orders’ the ‘canon’ and the ‘core’ have served to constrain and to calcify its contents and in doing so, imperiled its relevance and impact. In contrast, this companion of pedagogic approaches serves to evidence that architecture’s academic and professional advancement is wholly contingent on its ability to fully engage in an additive and inclusive process whereby the necessary disruptions that occur when marginalized knowledge confronts established knowledge result in a catalytical transformation through which new, co-created knowledge can emerge. Notions of tradition, identity, modernity, vernacularism, post-colonialism, poverty, migration, social and spatial justice, climate apartheid, globalization, ethical standards and international partnerships are key considerations in the context of the Global South. How these issues originate and evolve within architectural schools and curricula and how they act as drivers across all curricula activities are some of the important themes that the contributors interrogate and debate.

With 34 contributions from 55 authors from diverse regional, racial, ethnic, gender, and cultural backgrounds, this companion is structured in four sections that capture, critique and catalog multifarious marginalised pedagogical approaches to provide educators and students with an essential source book of navigational steers, core contestations, propositional tactics, and reimagined rubrics. The Routledge Companion to Architectural Pedagogies of the Global South pioneers a transposable strategy for academics from all disciplines looking to adopt a tested approach to decolonising the curriculum. It is only through a process of destabilising the hegemonic, epistemological and disciplinary frameworks that have long-prescribed architecture’s pedagogies that the possibility of more inclusive, representative and relevant pedagogical practices can emerge.

Our objectives are to:

Fill a crucial knowledge gap in the contemporary discourse on the education of future architects and urban designers in the Global South.
Offer analyses of successful pedagogical practices and experiments undertaken by academics in the Global South as well as in partnerships with academics and students in the Global North and the way in which they develop architectural and urban responses to the contextual qualities of locales within which they operate.
Articulate models, adaptations, and variations in architectural and urban design teaching practices that are taking place within Global North addressing contexts in the Global South.
Examine the way in which international professional and ethical standards proliferate to address and adapt to the particularities of the Global South.

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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