Abstract:

Architecture is a particular and peculiar subject of study. It is both academic and professional and as such must advance and adapt its academic pedagogy to both serve and lead developments in the increasing complex and rapidly changing professional world. Lodged in University Institutions and therefore rooted in academic study and learning, unlike other courses, architecture must continually respond to internal and external demands.
The model of architectural education where studio teaching is split and divorced from taught lecture modules is a very traditional one and one that has remained largely unchanged since formal education within academic institutions was established in the UK after the Oxford conference in 1958. Despite attempts to integrate teaching between studio and the lecture room in the late 1970s stagnation set in and various projects were abandoned. There has been a renewed interest of late but as we have found at Nottingham trying to consistently deliver integrated modules is not without its difficulties. However over the last three years we have tried to lubricate some of the blockages by setting up a programme of Integrated Design Approaches in Architecture across all three years of the undergraduate course. This programme is situated between the lecture room and the studio. It seeks to make more real and relevant the relationship between academic education and the changing professional processes. It is inherently flexible and adaptable and can respond to the immediate demands of the pedagogy as well as those of the changing profession. It thus sits between the lecture room and the studio both within and without and contains workshop sessions, making sessions, discursive forums, case study visits, professional consultations and informal lectures supporting studio work.
Inherent in this approach is a belief that working across boundaries and thresholds is an enormously valuable and enriching experience and one that may be best suited to the increasingly complex approaches to architectural practice. Because the subject areas of architecture are a mixture of humanities and the sciences this integrated approach is particularly relevant.
This is a vital and important opportunity to open up the curriculum of architectural education and the potential to become more responsive to architectural change and thereby produce graduates who are able to not only fit in but be at the leading edge of professional practice.
In a large school, perhaps the second largest in the United Kingdom this is no mean feat. The improving degree results at undergraduate level are testament to the success of the shift.
It is not surprising that several schools of architecture mention interdisciplinarity or holistic teaching methods in their programme overviews but the reality is a series of parallel studies or separate and distinct taught modules and a division between lecture courses and studio based courses. The intention in these approaches is that the taught knowledge is brought to the studio and applied.
The introduction to the course at Nottingham of the IDA type of module and its purpose are distinct and unique.