Abstract:

The resilience of institutions, their faculty, and students during the two years of multiple waves of the COVID pandemic is not necessarily reflected in the continuity of curriculum and programming, but the various ways in which they thrived. Whereas many fields of student were able to pivot to online paradigms with relative ease, certain programs and courses mandating in-person activities ranging from acting in front of an audience in performance to collaborating with peers in a lab, faced a dramatic reorganization and paradigm shift in their curriculum. Online delivery threatened to especially compromise architectural pedagogy.

Steeped in a curriculum of:
a) in-person design critiques,
b) collegial engagement in shared studio environments,
c) access to physical resources and facilities,
d) an abundance of extracurricular activity to apply developed design skills, and
e) outreach opportunities to the local community, architectural pedagogy is unique; in-person activity is tacit to the discipline.

Whereas other institutions and programs adhered to a minimal threshold for continuity of education, many innovative institutions developed alternative solutions to overcome this digital divide. This paper presents the various ways Canada’s largest accredited architectural program was able to address all five of the aforementioned components to an architectural curriculum while all online. Rather than harboring resentment and fatigue for the ubiquitous online tools for course delivery, other solutions were developed to integrate online tools in these various curricular facets of architectural education. From digital whiteboards and individualized digital feedback to use of mixed reality tools and Minecraft outreach programming, this paper articulates the importance, relative ease, and accessibility of these digital tools into architectural education that proved successful during the COVID pandemic.

Keywords:

Architectural pedagogy, digital tools, digital feedback loops, technology.