Sadly I’m back in the city now, and have yet to see such thick purpley-green stems in any of the shops.
30 April, 2009 • 20:50 0
PhD life: Norfolk asparagus
29 April, 2009 • 09:26 1
Freire versus de Carlo
Filed under: blog, education, pedagogy, reading, research, teaching, theory
22 April, 2009 • 20:34 0
The fourth week
If I could peer inside my mind at this moment, I suspect it would look a little like the tag cloud on the right hand side of this page – only with more words of more sizes and more colours.
The first month of the project has been spent with sudden burst of reading and researching, pulling papers off online journals, accessing various libraries and building a reading list. As a result my brain is humming from too many themes and concepts – I hope to be more focused in future so that I can read around a subject rather than read a bit of everything. However, the pile of books, papers and notes on my desk is actually comforting rather than bewildering. In amongst all this are the first inklings of concepts that support some of the hunches that inspired this PhD.
This coming weekend I must excuse myself as we travel south to England for a family celebration. I will be carefully constructing a lightweight to do list for the long train journeys there and back. Foremost in mind is the tentative construction of some initial paragraphs that could one day form preliminary chapters: fieldwork that defines some of the territory and formalises the hunches I mentioned earlier. In addition, although quite unrelated to the PhD, I have to prepare a pecha kucha presentation for an event in London. This twenty seconds / twenty slides format might offer a helpful hook on which to hang some discussion of my background and justification for an interest in the field.
Until then, I hope you enjoy your weekend, even if it isn’t as long as mine. I promise to make up for it when I get back.
Filed under: blog, beginnings, PhD, travel
18 April, 2009 • 13:48 0
This weekend, I will be reading:
Filed under: blog, weekend reading
11 April, 2009 • 17:50 0
This weekend, I will be reading:
Filed under: blog, reading, weekend reading
8 April, 2009 • 12:05 0
Definitions of architectural practice: no. 2 the RIBA
Part two of my ongoing search for a definition of architectural practice (in order to help me define alternative architectural practice). The Royal Institute of British Architects offer these descriptions of their members:
- Architects are trained to take your brief and can see the big picture.
- Architects look beyond your immediate requirements to design flexible buildings that will adapt with the changing needs of your business.
- Architects solve problems creatively
- When they are involved at the earliest planning stage, they gain more opportunities to understand your business, develop creative solutions, and propose ways to reduce costs.
- Architects can save you money by maximising your investment.
- A well-designed building can reduce your bills now and increase its long-term value.
- Architects can manage your project from site selection to completion.
- In many building projects the role of the architect includes co-ordinating a team of specialist consultants such as landscape architects, engineers, quantity surveyors, interior designers, builders and subcontractors.
- Architects can save you time.
- By managing and co-ordinating key project elements they allow you to focus on your organisation’s activities.
- Architects can help your business.
- They create total environments, interior and exterior, which are pleasing and functional for the people who work and do business within them.
Why use an architect. Available: http://www.architecture.com/UseAnArchitect/WhyUseAnArchitect/WhyUseAnArchitect.aspx [4/8/2009, 2009].
Filed under: blog, architecture, beginnings, definitions, practice, Profession, riba
8 April, 2009 • 11:55 0
Definitions of architectural practice: no. 1 the ARB
As discussed earlier, one of the starting points of this process has been to address the known definitions of alternative architectural practice. But to define the alternative, I want to also define the non-alternative. I’ll be collating definitions of architectural practice under this heading. First up, is the Architects Registration Board (UK) which manages the statutory register of approved architects practising in the United Kingdom. This explanation of the 1997 Architects Act suggests some tentative definitions for non-alternative / mainstream / traditional architectural practice.
What else does the code cover?
The code expects architects to: act with integrity; provide adequate resources when undertaking professional work; promote their services in a truthful and responsible manner; carry out their work diligently, with due regard to the relevant standards; have regard to their client’s interests, and to conserving and enhancing the quality of the environment; maintain professional service and competence in areas relevant to their work; carry out the requirements of a contract with due care, knowledge and attention; ensure the security of moneys entrusted to their care; hold adequate and appropriate professional indemnity insurance; manage their personal and professional finances prudently; organise and run their professional work responsibly, with regard for their clients’ interests; and deal promptly and appropriately with disputes or complaints relating to the professional work either of themselves or their practice.
The Architects Act 1997: Q&A. Available: http://www.arb.org.uk/about/the-architects-act-1997-qanda.shtml [4/8/2009, 2009].
This is not to say that alternative architectural practice is the antithesis of this definition. But this is one of the ways in which the profession defines itself. More to follow.
Filed under: blog, ARB, architecture, beginnings, definitions, practice, Profession
8 April, 2009 • 11:33 0
Beginnings: forming the premise of the project
Three clear, succinct questions to attempt to untangle my befuddled (and probably over-caffeinated) brain this afternoon.
- What defines alternative architectural practice?
- What forms of alternative architectural practice can be found in architectural education?
- Who and what motivates these alternative practices?
Filed under: blog, Alternative Practices, architecture, beginnings, education
8 April, 2009 • 11:14 0
Disconnected thoughts: Pedagogy of the Oppressed
A week or two ago I decided to reserve judgement on Architecture Depends, the new book about the contingency of the architectural profession, by my former head of school Jeremy Till. I was aware that the book opened itself up to criticism by discussing the profession with only a handful of references to built works or architects in practice. In approaching the nature of the profession in such an open-ended manner, I suspect Till wanted to allow his observations be interpreted personally by the reader, rather than seen as an attack on specific movements, styles, buildings or designers. I regard it not as a specific attack on modern architectural practice, but a series of concise and carefully laid out observations about the flaws and opportunities of mainstream practice. A self-help guide for troubled architects, perhaps.
Re-reading Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed this week, I am beginning to understand why Architecture Depends isn’t entirely satisfactory. Pedagogy of the Oppressed was written in the context of a life time spent fighting for the rights to education of an underprivileged South American lower class. But its genius and relevance today to those with no interest in adult literacy is that it is written in such versatile language that it may be understood in most contexts where an contradiction exists between an oppressor and an oppressed.
It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors. The latter, as an oppressive class, can free neither others nor themselves. It is therefore essential that the oppressed wage the struggle to reolve the contradiction in which they are caught; and the contradiction will be resolved by the appearance of the new man: neither oppressor nor oppressed, but man in the process of liberation. If the goal of the oppressed is to become more fully human, they will not achieve their goal by merely reversing the terms of the contradiction, by simply changing poles.
Paulo Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1996 revised edition p. 38)
I was introduced to the text in a module during my Masters degree at the University of Sheffield entitled Reflections on Architectural Education. As Richard Saull explains in his preface to the English edition “there is no point in attempting to sum up, in a few paragraphs, what the author develops in a number of pages. That would be an offense the richness, depth and complexity of his thought.” So I’ll try to control my only-vaguely coherent thought processes with a thought about the text’s relevancy to a study of alternative practice in architectural education.
Freire exposes the “empty vessel” model of education – whereby a teacher with knowledge fills a student who has no knowledge as if one were a filled jug and the other an objectified receptacle – as an inherently oppressive relationship. Design – and especially architecture – education has long been cited by readers of Friere as a positive alternative to the “empty vessel” method of teaching, since much design education is structured around the problem-based scenarios that Freire favours.
In problem-posing education, people develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation … the teacher-student and the students-teachers reflect simultaneously on themselves and the world without dichotomizing this reflection from action, and thus establish an authentic form of thought and action.
Paulo Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1996 revised edition p. 64)
Key to problem-posing education is dialogue.
Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges, teacher-student with students-teachers. The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. The become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow.
Paulo Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1996 revised edition p. 61)
I’m now returning to third and fourth chapters of the book. What interests me is the creation of this problem-posing situation. The motivations of live projects and the people who initiate them in architectural education was raised as a possible line of inquiry during my last supervisions, so I want to go back to examine the ways in which problem-based learning is established and how curricula are designed. My understanding of Freire’s thesis is that the ‘oppressed’ must be part of the design of their curriculum if they are to achieve sustainable liberation. A hunch remains that the design of the curriculum remains an overlooked problem area in some problem-based educational systems. But then that also reminds me of the student involvement in such curriculum-designing exercises as described in Building Clouds Floating Walls, which is very close to both my to supervisor and myself.
Meanwhile, I leave you with a page from the superb Guy Delisle. Delisle spent a period of time living and working in North Korea, and Pyongyang: Journey in North Korea is a kind of extended travelogue about his experiences in the DPRK. Re-reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed in light of recent events reminds me of many further interpretations of Freire’s writings about the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy.
Filed under: blog, beginnings, education, jeremy till, pedagogy, reading
7 April, 2009 • 10:39 0
Reading: Pedagogy of the Oppressed
In order to ensure this blog works effectively as a means for structuring and disciplining my daily routines, I’m posting this now as I sit down to read Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I’ll be back to write some thoughts on it later today (so no excuse for me skiving off to the allotment instead).
EDIT (the next morning): well that didn’t work, did it. My notes are still all over the place, so I’ll continue to do some thinking and writing, and I’ll share them later.
Filed under: blog, allotment, education, pedagogy, reading, theory