Setting the scene: Literature review on socially situated architectural pedagogies, and adjacent theoretical perspectives

The SArPe project learns from earlier socially situated pedagogical experiments (for e.g. Eco Nomadic School, Hands on Bristol, PRAXXIS, Fourdaysontheoutside) and aims to develop its own specific approaches through commoning of knowledge by opening up the experimental tactics of Partners’ existing design studios to those outside the school, collaborating with non-academic educators and learners for developing civic agencies, transforming the studio from an isolated environment for professional education to a place for co-producing architectural knowledge with diverse participants. SArPe aims at training the student-architect (a learner, one of many) for a collaborative, inclusive and horizontal knowledge practice connecting both educators and learners (inside and beyond academia) with an assemblage of stakeholders, laypersons or initiators. The project stems from creating a medium needed to innovate pedagogy that stimulates and is shaped by dialogues between societal challenges, involving actors in the field and the architect (in making).

In doing so it  challenges the role of the architect as an expert and probes the static roles of educator-learner and architect-client with the aim to exceed mental distances and bias through working on site and with people from different backgrounds. It proposes a long-term curriculum development based on the pedagogical experiments carried out during the project process, and redefining the studio as one of the several parts of learning, which takes place as an assemblage of different practices from imagining to building together. Overall SArPe project aims at fostering socially situated forms of architectural pedagogies paired with innovation in Higher Education Institutions and beyond.

To achieve its aims and objectives, the consortium started the project by first contextualising the project in the broader framework of theories and practices of socially situated practices and document new socially situated pedagogical approaches. Within the work package 2, an activity titled “Setting the scene: Literature review on socially situated architectural pedagogies, and adjacent theoretical perspectives” has been led by University of Pavia (UniPV) with contributions from all partners from October 2022. The activity includes a literature review on “socially situated architectural pedagogies,” and adjacent theoretical perspectives through researching and reviewing the relevant literature.

The following downloada are available:

report Unipv

report Uma