Abstract:

Building on the opportunity to launch one of the newest architecture programs in Australia, we are moving beyond pedagogical precedents and establishing new priorities rooted in stimulating constructive exchanges throughout the architecture curriculum. This engenders revised approaches to history and theory courses, which are activated as vital connective tissue integrating design, communication, and technology subjects. Our progressive pursuits reflect a commitment to active learning and operative history. Advancing messages, media, and modes of architectural pedagogy, our history and theory courses shift emphasis from surveying to being conversant, from encyclopedic ambitions to open source engagements, and from compartmentalization to syncretic integrations. The foundation Contemporary Architecture course exemplifies these shifts.

Nurturing conversance entails a more discursive approach that not only stimulates more active learning but also shifts the status of facts. Rather than the reception of unquestionable data, this pedagogical approach fosters formulating arguments based on knowing and the coordination of speculation and evidence. Beyond rote familiarity with names, dates, and styles, the Contemporary Architecture class facilitates becoming conversant with key terms, characters, constructs, and debates, and becoming articulate in conveying contextualized architectural ideas textually, verbally, and graphically. Rather than default to students as passive receptors of data we are actively nurturing engagements with architecture’s multimedia repertoires.

In the proliferating multi-media environment of wikis, blogs, and social networking systems that engulf us encyclopedic coverage and the principle authorial voice of utilizing a single textbook are increasingly untenable modes of information dissemination. The growing roles played by Wikipedia, Greatbuildings.com, and Google images as common references for today’s students demand adjusting pedagogical practices to open sources of architectural information through expanded approaches to both content and media. Open source approaches, which rely on the integration of diverse materials, also demand reconsideration of mixing modes. Rather than compartmentalized supplements, we consider our history and theory classes as cross-pollinating catalysts. We strive to make history and theory imminently relevant for design students, while making relations between histories, designs, and theories evident and mutually reinforcing. The formulation and implementation of the Contemporary Architecture course demonstrate the potentials of expanding scope, skills, and significance of history, and suggest implications of crafting more complex media rich assemblages to advance architectural education and production.