Author Archives: Laura Linsi

Intervention Reflection: ‘Hairy Drawing’ WS

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Final artefacts from the intervention – a session on ‘Hairy Drawings’

Context of teaching practice

I designed my intervention for the context of the architecture design studio, more particularly for the vertical studio that I teach together with my colleague Roland Reemaa. I was working with a group of 21 students – a cohort I meet for an entire day almost every week across one academic year. The group consists of 10 second year students and 11 third year students, several of the students have Individual Support Agreements (ISAs), around 67% are B.A.M.E. students.

I identified two core issues with the design studio that hinder inclusivity:

  1. The individualistic practices (Garrett 2024) inherent to architecture education. These practices enforce the idea of meritocracy (Wong et al. 2021), create blindness to personal circumstances, and remove opportunities to learn from the rich diversity of others’ life experiences and knowledge, i.e. hinder empathy (Rekis 2023, hooks 1994). 
  2. UAL admission policies have successfully helped to increase diversity in the student cohort, but tutors are not provided with resource (most of all time) to go beyond it (re-think teaching, give extra attention to inter-personal relationships amongst students), which means diversification might become a mere box ticking exercise (Tate 2018, Sadiq 2023).

The intervention

My co-tutor Roland Reemaa and myself identified the first month of the design unit (October) to be well suited for an intervention that would encourage inclusivity. During this period, we normally do a series of group visits to the assigned site for the student projects. At this point in the year, the students haven’t yet started working on their individual projects, and have a clear common ground. The intervention brings their individual experiences of this common ground (i.e. the site) together by creating a shared drawing. We relied on a drawing method called ‘Hairy Drawing’ developed by the London architecture office East (East 2009) and on Kim England’s conceptualisation of making geography (England 1994). 

‘Hairy Drawing’ is a method for developing an understanding for a site by bringing together the observations and personal experiences of a design team, i.e. group of people working together on an architecture project in the context of an architecture office. It aims not to prioritise ‘objective’ facts over subjective ones, and also brings together existing reality and emerging ideas (East 2009). As a method, it is focussed on the process of making the drawing and sharing knowledge during it. It puts little emphasis on the final artefact. As a method, ‘Hairy Drawing’ challenges neopositivist empiricism and considers reflexivity integral to site research (England 1994).

As part of my intervention, I have developed the method further in relation to inclusivity, and to suit the context of the academic design studio. For example, after pitching the idea of this workshop to Klaske Havik and Jorge Mejia from Delft University of Technology who highlighted that students might have a fear for the blank page, I decided to start the exercise by providing the students with prompts to react to. Inspired by the group exercises we did as part of the PGCert Theories, Policies and Practices unit, I added a time component to the exercise. Students tend to see drawings as a goal rather than a thinking tool, and often aestheticise every line and figure they draw. Giving them only a short amount of time to react to a prompt encourages them to get drawing, and to overcome the fear of an ‘ugly’ drawing. Incorporated into the intervention is also the time to prepare the base map for their ‘Hairy Drawing’. It is a relatively simple and technical task – put together an aerial view from Google Maps, tile it onto A3s, print the A3s, paste them together – but it works well to encourage the group to start working together and to gain a first sense of achievement once it is completed.

Preparation slide shared with the students, with photos from similar workshops organised in previous years.

Intervention structure

The core of the intervention is the drawing workshop, but it also consists of:

  1. Site visit to the project area with the group of 21 students;
  2. ‘Hairy Drawing’ workshop: communal mapping exercise (in 4–5 groups);
  3. Pin-up and discussion.
One of the two site visits to Meridian Water in Enfield. Photo: Laura Linsi

Intervention aim

The aim of the intervention is two-fold: on the one hand it is about developing a nuanced understanding of the site and encouraging inclusion in placemaking practices (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment 2008). But perhaps even more importantly, it is about developing empathy, trust (Richards, Finnigan 2015) and peer-to-peer learning within the studio group. The intervention aims to go beyond individual learning by listening to others’ perspectives and by collaborating with them on a shared drawing.

Why and how is it inclusive?

The intervention engages with the ideas of critical pedagogy by taking a humanist approach – the students are seen not only as thinking, but also as ‘feeling and doing beings’ (Hill & Singh 2018). This aspect is embedded in the intervention setting communal drawing into its centre, but also in introducing the walk as a learning method and in asking students to reflect on their personal experience of it. England has argued that ‘fieldwork is intensely personal, in that the positionality /…/ and biography of the researcher plays a central role in the research process, /…/’ (England 1994). My intervention takes this as a starting point, and creates a platform for students to share their personal experiences with each other, as well as to consider each others’ positionality.

Positionality in the design of the intervention

As a white non-disabled woman, I am privileged for not having had to experience discrimination due to the colour of my skin or my abilities. I can feel safe in spaces and situations which might be challenging for others. As part of the intervention, the students are asked to consider these aspects of their positionality too. Site visits can be mentally and physically challenging. Like in the case of the site in Enfield that was explored as part of the intervention, project sites are often in relatively hostile environments (e.g. industrial areas, brownfield sites etc.). I always address these aspects ahead of our visits, propose alternative routes for those who need them, and include moments of rest on the visits.

Also, I am Estonian, i.e. Eastern European and non-native to the UK, and I speak English as a second language. I moved to the UK after having finished my studies elsewhere. In relation to that, I have my own feelings of not belonging. I empathise with the feeling of not knowing enough or not feeling confident enough to speak up in a group of native English speakers and/or people who I deem to have more contextual knowledge than I do. As a reaction, I always try to give space, time and encouragement for all students to express themselves in studio. I chose to design the intervention based on drawing because I have found that other means of expression than speaking can create more inclusivity and shift power dynamics.

It also matters that I am a woman teaching architecture. In the UK, the take-up figures for women entering the profession are 40 to 50%, however, among registered architects the split becomes 31 women to 69 men (Morris and Hirons 2024). Moreover, in the construction sector that is tightly knitted to the architecture one, the proportion of women is merely 13% (Bundonis 2024). I always acknowledge my role as a woman architect and the necessity to empower women in this traditionally male-dominated field, and I seek out feminist practices to include in my teaching.

Impact on inclusive teaching and future considerations

I delivered the intervention together with Roland Reemaa on October 25th, preceded by site visits on October 15th and October 8th. The intervention was successful in encouraging more inclusive group dynamics – the students engaged with each other beyond a mere conversation and found new ways of collaborating. They also did not need to be anxious about sharing individual work and comparing themselves with others. This aspect of the session was highlighted to me by another tutor, Inigo Cornago, who was teaching in the other end of the same room during the session and joined us intermittently.

The students were in groups of 4 or 5 working around a ‘station’ with a base map and a trace laid over it. Photo: Laura Linsi

One of the students who has an ISA told me that she normally avoids all group activities, but that she enjoyed the ‘Hairy Drawing’ session. It is my personal reflection that because there was a time limit, and we deliberately created an atmosphere where the groups did not have to be precious about the outcome, that student (and hopefully others too) were able to focus on the process of learning then and there together with others, rather than stressing that they would still need to develop a final artefact with a group outside of studio time. When discussing the intervention with my teaching partner Roland Reemaa, we considered ways that we could assign more importance to the final outcome of the drawing exercise – we were concerned that the students undermine their work and knowledge if they do not value the final artefact. However, the feedback from this ISA student who otherwise experiences anxiety and even panic attacks when having to present to others, has suggested to me that the intervention is best kept to this timeframe. 

However, the question for a good way to reflect on the session with the entire group, and to assign importance to all the learning, remains. After reading Kim England’s article ‘Getting Personal’, I started considering a more deliberate discussion about positionality, reflexivity, and objectivity in researching a site as a final chapter of the session (England 1994). This might be something to take on as part of the Action Research Project.

We concluded the session with a pin up and a communal reflection on the findings. Photo: Laura Linsi

Another revealing instance included a student from one of the groups asking me, whether it was OK to record completely different opinions onto the drawing. This came about in response to the prompt: ‘mark building(s) you would demolish’. It turned out that a particular building was considered the most beautiful by one student, and ugly and useless by another. This disagreement brought about a very fruitful discussion about the differing opinions, and no doubt opened up the multiple perspectives to everyone in the studio. In the future, I aim to pay more deliberate attention to including such prompts but also to discussing them with the entire group.

List of prompts given to the students one-by-one.
One part of one of the four ‘Hairy Drawings’. Photo: Laura Linsi

[1700 words]

Bibliography:

Architects Registration Board (2023) Tomorrow’s Architects: Competency Outcomes for Architects. Available via: https://arb.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/ARB-Competency-outcomes.pdf (Accessed 20 January 2025).

Architects Registration Board (2023) Tomorrow’s Architects: Standards for Learning Providers. Available via: https://arb.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/ARB-Standards-for-learning-providers.pdf (Accessed 20 January 2025).

Bundonis, B. (2024) What’s next for gender equality now Women into Construction has gone? Construction news [Online]. Available at: https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/sections/long-reads/opinion/whats-next-for-gender-equality-now-women-into-construction-has-gone-01-10-2024/ (Accessed 20 January 2025).

Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (2008) Inclusion by Design. Equality, diversity and the built environment. Available at: https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/fileadmin/uploads/dc/Documents/inclusion-by-design.pdf (Accessed 20 January 2025).

England, K. (1994) ‘Getting personal: reflexivity, positionality, and feminist research’, The Professional Geographer, 46(1), pp.80-89. Available at: https://atrium.lib.uoguelph.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10214/1811/18-England.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y  (Accessed 20 January 2025).

East (2009) Expressing Interest. London: East, pp 147–150.

Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Garrett, R. (2024). Racism shapes careers: career trajectories and imagined futures of racialised minority PhDs in UK higher education. Globalisation, Societies and Education, pp.1–15.

Hill, V. & Singh, G. (2018) Critical Pedagogy #4 ‘What does it look like in practice?’ [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6ghTlyBDNk [Accessed 20 Jan. 2025].

hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to Transgress. Educations as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.

Morris, N. and Hirons, P. (2024) What barriers are still in place for women in architecture? RIBA [Online]. Available at: https://www.architecture.com/knowledge-and-resources/knowledge-landing-page/barriers-for-women-in-architecture (Accessed 20 January 2025).

Richards, A. and Finnigan, T. (2015) ‘Embedding equality and diversity in the curriculum: An art and design practitioner’s guide.’ York: Higher Education Academy. Available at: https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/retention-and-attainment-disciplines-art-and-design (Accessed 20 January 2025).

Sadiq, A. (2023) Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Learning how to get it right. TEDx [Online]. Youtube. 2 March.

Tate, S.A. (2018) Tackling the ‘BPOC’ Attainment Gap in UK Universities [Online]. Youtube. TEDx/Re:Act, Royal School of Speech & Drama. October.

Thomas, C. (2022) Overcoming Identity Threat: Using Persona Pedagogy in Intersectionality and Inclusion Training. Social Sciences 11 (249).

Wong, B., Elmorally, R., Copsey-Blake, M., Highwood, E. & Singarayer, J. (2021) Is race still relevant? Student perceptions and experiences of racism in higher education. Cambridge Journal of Education, 51(3), pp 359-375.

Intervention Outline: ‘Hairy Drawing’ workshop

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I will ground my intervention in the architecture design studio context, more particularly in the vertical studio (2nd and 3rd year undergraduate students) that I teach together with my colleague Roland Reemaa. That means I will be working with a diverse group of approx. 20 students – a cohort I get to know well, as I meet them for an entire day almost every week across the academic year.

As a crude summary, the architecture design studio (design unit) at CSM Spatial Practices consists of:

  • Tutors provide a theme the studio is focussing on for the entire academic year (e.g. Circular Economy in the built environment);
  • Tutors assign a site where students propose an architecture project (e.g. Meridian Water in LB Enfield);
  • Students are working on the same site, but each proposes an independent project. There is no requirement for an independent project to align with their peers’ work;
  • The studio consists of 2nd and 3rd year students, whose briefs are somewhat different. However, in the end of the academic year, everyone hands in a portfolio of work consisting of their interpretation of the site and the theme, and most importantly, a proposal for an architecture project.
A studio meeting in Spring 2023. Photo: Laura Linsi

I have two main issues with the workings of the design studio that I would like my intervention to tackle:

  1. The individualistic practices (Garrett 2024) of architecture education. These enforce the idea of meritocracy (Wong et al. 2021), create blindness to personal circumstances, and remove opportunities to learn from the rich diversity of others’ life experiences and knowledge, i.e. hinder empathy (Rekis 2023, hooks 1994). 
  2. UAL admission policies have successfully increased diversity in the student cohort, but tutors are not provided with resource (most of all time) to go beyond it (re-think teaching, give extra attention to inter-personal relationships amongst students), which means diversification might become a mere tick box exercise (Tate 2018, Sadiq 2023). 

With my teaching practice, I am striving to work against the isolating nature of the independent architecture project across the academic year, engage in critical pedagogy (Freire 1970) and to establish a learning community (hooks 1994). However, it is not within my power to change the overall brief the students receive, indeed, it is not even in the power of the heads of the department, as architecture education is governed by a national umbrella organisation – Architects Registration Board – because ‘architect’ is a protected title. However, across the academic year, we (both in my studio and more widely in the department) are trying to create various points of communal learning. One point for intervening that Roland Reemaa and myself have identified in our design studio is in the first month of the unit when we do a series of group visits to the site we have assigned for the students. At this point in the year, the students haven’t yet started working on their personal projects, and have a clear common ground. We propose to bring their individual experiences of this common ground (i.e. the site) together by creating a shared mapping. 

My proposed intervention consists of the following parts:

  1. Group visit to the site we assigned to the students;
  2. Gathering back at our studio space at CSM to set up stations for the mapping exercise;
  3. Communal mapping (in 4–5 groups);
  4. Group pin-up and discussion.

The aim is to go beyond individual learning by listening to others’ perspectives and by collaborating with them on a shared drawing, i.e. communally created artefact. The intervention engages with humanising the students – seeing them as thinking, ‘feeling and doing beings’, and so with critical pedagogy (Hill & Singh 2018). We rely on a drawing method called ‘Hairy Drawing’ developed by the London architecture office East (East 2009).

A slide introducing the ‘Hairy Drawing’ method with outtakes from East’s book Expressing Interest (East 2009).

Key references:

East (2009) Expressing Interest. London: East, pp 147–150.

Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Hill, V. & Singh, G. (2018) Critical Pedagogy #4 ‘What does it look like in practice?’ [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6ghTlyBDNk [Accessed 20 Jan. 2025].

hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to Transgress. Educations as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.

Garrett, R. (2024). Racism shapes careers: career trajectories and imagined futures of racialised minority PhDs in UK higher education. Globalisation, Societies and Education, pp.1–15.

Rekis, J. (2023) Religious Identity and Epistemic Injustice: An Intersectional Account. Hypatia 38, pp 779–800.

Sadiq, A. (2023) Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Learning how to get it right. TEDx [Online]. Youtube. 2 March.

Tate, S.A. (2018) Tackling the ‘BPOC’ Attainment Gap in UK Universities [Online]. Youtube. TEDx/Re:Act, Royal School of Speech & Drama. October.

Wong, B., Elmorally, R., Copsey-Blake, M., Highwood, E. & Singarayer, J. (2021) Is race still relevant? Student perceptions and experiences of racism in higher education. Cambridge Journal of Education, 51(3), pp 359-375.

Reflecting on Race. Future imaginations

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In my teaching context at UAL, I could, fortunately, not be under the naive illusion that academia is post-racial (Wong et al. 2021). This is firstly due to my personal experiences over 5 years as an associate lecturer, and secondly, due to the Spatial Practices programme where I teach and the PgCert course where I study openly recognising UAL’s shortcomings in racial justice. 

Rhianna Garret’s article on the career trajectories and imagined futures of racialised minority PhD students in UK higher education (Garrett 2024), and professor Shirley Anne Tate’s TEDx talk on BPOC attainment gap (Tate 2018) each sketch out issues that I also recognise from my experience at UAL. Garrett’s article draws on interviews conducted with BPoC PhD students, who identify issues such as universities making ‘poster children’ out of their BPoC students and members of staff, predominantly white spaces, and colonial structures that shape individualistic practices (Garrett 2024). In her talk, Shirley Anne Tate talks about her own positive experience in receiving higher education where her teachers were recognising her as a person and nurtured her, whilst highlighting that 30 years on, the institutions’ ‘cold climate’ hasn’t changed, there is a growing BPoC attainment gap, and overall, institutional racism is still everpresent. These examples are directly reflected in my teaching context.

Having taken part in the undergraduate interview process at Central Saint Martins, UAL in 2021 and 2022, I was positively taken by UAL’s contextual admission policies, and I found the web-based training for challenging my own biases very useful. Both of these things are also a part of UAL Anti-racism action plan from 2021 (UAL 2021). However, it isn’t hard to agree with most authors of the provided resources that as the impact of such measures like training and simple diversification of student and teacher body aren’t showing meaningful improvement in attainment and career opportunities (see Garrett 2024, Sadiq 2023, Tate 2018, Wong et al. 2021) we must do more, i.e. intervene more meaningfully. Asif Sadiq concludes his TEDx talk with a list of possible solutions, from which I find the following directly and immediately applicable to my teaching context at the Spatial Practices programme at CSM: localising knowledge production, i.e. creating opportunities for sharing experiences in our direct learning communities, rather than relying on corporate structures; experiential learning, i.e. creating teaching briefs that take people out of their comfort zones and engaging them in experiences that include multiple perspectives (of their peers); encouraging self-lead learning, while opening up space for group learning (Sadiq 2023). Sadiq’s solution-based talk stood in great contrast to James Orr’s damning report on institutional anti-racism strategies where he offered no critical perspective or possible solutions other than essentially regressing to an openly unjust learning environment under the guise of meritocracy (Orr 2022).

Finally, the materials left me with some open-ended personal questions. Am I acting as a bystander (Wong et al. 2021) in my teaching context, and if so, is that an manifestation of white fragility (Amanpour & Co. 2020)? My area of expertise – architecture – is failing to meaningfully strive for inclusivity, so can we consider this to be one of the reasons why it is losing its social relevance? What is the relationship between localising (Sadiq 2023) and eurocentrism (e.g. Tate 2018)? The last question rooting from my two very different teaching contexts: one in my native Estonia, which has been subjected to Russian imperialism and where academics’ credibility seems always on a lesser standing than in Western Europe, and the other in London, with its globalism and imperialist history.

Bibliography:

Amanpour & Co. (2020) Excerpt from Robin DiAngelo’s 2018 interview with Michel Martin about White Fragility [Online]. Youtube.

Garrett, R. (2024). Racism shapes careers: career trajectories and imagined futures of racialised minority PhDs in UK higher education. Globalisation, Societies and Education, pp.1–15.

Orr, J. (2022) Revealed: The charity turning UK universities woke. The Telegraph [Online]. Youtube. 5 August.

Sadiq, A. (2023) Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Learning how to get it right. TEDx [Online]. Youtube. 2 March.

Tate, S.A. (2018) Tackling the ‘BPOC’ Attainment Gap in UK Universities [Online]. Youtube. TEDx/Re:Act, Royal School of Speech & Drama. October.

UAL (2021) Anti-Racism Action Plan Summary. Arts.ac.uk [Online].

Wong, B., Elmorally, R., Copsey-Blake, M., Highwood, E. & Singarayer, J. (2021) Is race still relevant? Student perceptions and experiences of racism in higher education. Cambridge Journal of Education, 51(3), pp359-375.

Reflecting on Faith. Epistemic (in)justice

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Until I read Jaclyn Rekis’ article on religious identity and epistemic injustice (Rekis 2023), it was very difficult for me to engage with the subject of faith as part of the course. The term epistemic injustice, coined by Miranda Fricker (Fricker 2007), provided me a way into understanding the importance of acknowledging learners’ religious identities, and moreover, the harm that overlooking them might do. 

Of the recurring themes in all the provided resources, I found the most important to my teaching context to be firstly, the possible integrity of someone’s religion and all other aspects of their life, and secondly, the deflation of a person’s credibility due to their religious identity. As both Kwame Appiah in his TED talk and Jaclyn Rekis in her article emphasise, for many people, there is no separation between religious ways of knowing and e.g. scientific ways of knowing (Appiah 2014, Rekis 2023). Therefore, for epistemic justice, we must attribute credibility to religious speakers when they speak from their theological resources and concepts. This is important not least because attributing credibility to a religious speaker helps the speaker to live with integrity (Rekis 2023, 793-794). The unjust deflation of a person’s credibility due to their religious identity, however, often happens before a person even gets a chance to offer a testimony. More often, the deflation can already happen due to prevailing stereotypes and certain associated visual religious features, e.g. muslim women wearing a veil, sikh men wearing the dastar. Simran Jeet Singh talks about the importance of challenging such stereotypes in the classroom by developing empathy, and engaging with difference (Trinity University 2016), while Jaclyn Rekis refers to the observations by Alia Al-Saji: “… the simultaneous denial of veiled Muslim women’s voices and persistent view that equates the veil with oppression itself makes it so “the veiled woman is at once hypervisible as oppressed and invisible as subject” (Al-Saji 2010, 891)” (Rekis 2023).

Even though by now I recognise my own faith-related prejudices in my teaching practice and strive to challenge them, it also pains me to realise how I’ve been affected by them in the past without questioning them. The clearest examples of this have to do with the intersection of religion and gender, and with the associated stereotypes of oppression and incredibility. I was particularly struck by Rekis drawing on the experiences of veiled muslim women to exemplify the intersection of faith and gender, but perhaps even more strongly, I was affected by her drawing on the example of Sojourn Truth, in whose case we can discuss the intersection of race, gender and faith (Rekis 2023). In this example, Rekis makes a strong case about Truth’s ways of knowing being rooted in her Christian faith. 

In my own teaching, I can identify with the issue of avoiding certain topics and themes out of fear of having to address the different life experiences and sources of knowledge my students might possess due to their faith. I recognise now, that avoidance is also injustice – the possibility to interpretate religious experiences is ruled out in the academia, and so their credibility is not deflated but removed altogether. By doing so, we are practicing injustice towards the religious students, but also, we are losing the potential to diversify the understanding of secular audiences. So how to encourage the sharing of knowledge that is rooted in faith? How to give time and space to discussions that grow empathy and engage with difference?

Bibliography:

Al-Saji, A. (2010) The racialization of Muslim veils: A philosophical analysis. Philosophy & Social Criticism 36 (8): 875–902.

Appiah, K. A. (2014) Is religion good or bad? (This is a trick question). Youtube [Online]. 16 June. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2et2KO8gcY

Fricker, M. (2007) Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jawad, H. (2022) Islam, Women and Sport: The Case of Visible Muslim Women. [Online].

Reki, J. (2023) Religious Identity and Epistemic Injustice: An Intersectional Account. Hypatia 38, pp779–800.

Trinity University (2016) Challenging Race, Religion, and Stereotypes in the Classroom. [Online].

Reflecting on Disability. Building collective capacity

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‘If you don’t see us, we have no place to be,’ says the artist Christine Sun Kim, who is deaf, in one of the short videos we watched as part of the Inclusive Practices (IP) unit.[1] Kim expresses how she is driven not to ‘get trapped in the deaf community’ [1], which she says could be comfortable as opposed to feeling oppressed as part of the hearing community. However, she is committed to the wider visibility of Deaf culture, and actively fights its marginalisation. What stands out in the video is how she has chosen to align her artistic work closely with her lived experience, i.e. how her identities as an artist and as a deaf person intersect. In the video, Kim focuses on her abilities and on skills, which she has developed because she has to navigate the world as a deaf person. By doing so, her story isn’t told from the perspective of an impairment, but from a unique set of skills. 

Its positive message harks back to the video interview with the Paralympian Ade Adepitan. He says, it is the society that creates discrimination by restricting some people’s access to parts of it, and thus creates disability. But if a person is nurtured, accepted and let shine, rather than being defined by their dis-abilities, it is their set of abilities which matters.[2] Ade Adepitan refers to the marginalisation of people with disabilities as a structural issue, and highlights the ensuring of accessibility as the most important way to confront it. When talking about the importance of the inclusion of disabled people to the LGBTQ+ community, Chay Brown emphasises accessibility as being key to trans justice too. They say about their work with TransActual, ‘If we are not working for the disabled trans people, we are not working for the trans community, because we are missing people out.’[3]

The basketball player Ade Adepitan, artist Christine Sun Kim and co-founder of TransActual Chay Brown are all spokespersons from and for intersecting marginalised identities. There is noticeable strength and resolution in their respective messages, and even though each of them speaks to an extent about the discrimination they’ve been confronted with, they have come to a point of confidence, and have the resource to empower others. 

But what could I, an able bodied (or body-minded?) tutor, do to support the learning of someone with a disability, or rather to support the learning of all my students?

As an Associate Lecturer I follow the institutional guidance and measures that have been set up to support the students who identify as disabled. These measures include extra time given to students for submitting their final deliverables (ISAs), guidance on how to accommodate for certain disabilities in my teaching practice (written guidance, clarity in feedback etc.), and signposting students with disabilities to UAL services that are available to them. However, often these measures appear somewhat technocratic, and are not always helpful for building a strong student-tutor relationship, or for nurturing a learning community [4].

This brings me back to the more everyday experience of studio teaching, and the importance of valuing each and every students’ lived experiences. In order to avoid a merely transactional relationship between myself and the students, as well as between the students themselves, it is important to allow for space to create mutual understanding and aid in the studio – or as Annabel Crowley put it at today’s IP workshop, to build our collective capacity. In order to do that, I need to design teaching interventions that facilitate the sharing of everyone’s lived experiences, e.g. assignment briefs that allow for the creation of personal work and briefs that help students figure out their positionality. Not to be afraid of clumsiness, and potential discomfort will be key to opening up space for deeper understanding.

References:

[1] Art21 (2023). Christine Sun Kim in “Friends & Strangers” – Season 11. [Online video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NpRaEDlLsI&t=779s (Accessed 11 Mayl 2024).   

[2] ParalympicGB (2020). Ade Adepitan gives amazing explanation of systemic racism. [Online Video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAsxndpgagU&t=164s (Accessed: 11 May 2024).  

[3] Parapride (2023). Intersectionality in Focus: Empowering Voices during UK Disability History Month 2023. [Online video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yID8_s5tjc&t=110s (Accessed 11 May 2024).   

[4] hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to Transgress. Educations as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.

What and how to teach on an expanded field of architecture?

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A reflection on teaching architecture as an expanded field.

To set their students on the path of becoming ‘architects’, HE Architecture courses have to be accredited by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and by the Architects Registration Board (ARB). The title ‘architect’ is protected by law, so that the public can always be sure that they are dealing with a properly qualified architect.[1] The RIBA needs to re-validate a university architecture course every 5 years. Through validation, the RIBA identifies courses and examinations which achieve the standards (their standards?) necessary to prepare students for professional practice.[2] 

On today’s expanded field of architectural practice I wonder, what exactly is protected about the title? Is it aligned with what’s necessary to prepare students for professional practice? Here’s a list of some main jobs architects (who also identify as such) in my personal social circles hold:

– project manager for a housing association,

– associate architect in a 15-people architecture studio working solely on public commissions,

– project architect and associate in a 70-people architecture office/developer working solely on private commissions and coorporate projects,

– sole practitioner working on house renovations and spatial research projects,

– a teacher,

– spatial advisor to Estonia’s Minister of Culture,

– a council’s planning officer,

– self-builder and off-the-grid camp-site owner,

– designer in a museum,

– a researcher.

So what exactly do I need to make sure I teach as part of the design studio?

In “The Motivations of Spatial Agency” in the book Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture, the authors draw out the importance of pedagogy to achieve architecture’s professional reformation from making beautiful stuff to associating the idea of betterment with a more fluid set of processes and social conditions. Relying on Steven Brint’s In the Age of Experts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), they write, “The shift in the professions from their original role as keepers of a particular branch of socially important knowledge into expert agents for an increasingly technocratic society has been accompanied with a suppression of a sense of social duty, and with it a waning of political intent.” Writing in 2011, they criticise architectural education for being under-theorised as an underlying discipline, though intensely theorised as a set of surface actions. They claim architecture education remained largely unbothered by reformist educational movements such as critical pedagogy and its central structures have altered little since the 19th century.[3] With Jeremy Till’s, who is one of the authors of Spatial Agency, appointment as Head of Central Saint Martins and Pro Vice-Chancellor of UAL in 2012, a definitive shift took place towards introducing an ethical dimension to architectural education in the university, which makes students aware at an early stage of their wider social responsibilities. At CSM, the course promotes its “innovative practice” to rethink “the architectural profession and imagine roles beyond the traditional disciplinary limit.”[4] But even then, we are bound by the requirements of the ARB and RIBA, which up until now hold onto the traditional architect skillset.

In February 2023, the ARB launched the public consultation on a fundamental overhaul of the regulatory framework for educating and training architects. This comes, on the one hand, in response to criticism towards the profession’s lack of diversity and inaccessibility, and on the other, to providers calls for more flexibility and opportunities for innovation to ensure students are ready for emerging and future challenges like the climate emergency. The proposed shift includes a move away from accrediting BA courses and could, therefore, mean a more profound re-think of the way we teach architecture in the first years of higher education.[5] [6]  

At the top, is an attempt to visualise some of my architect-teacher-student thoughts on teaching architecture on an expanded field. There is certainly a lot to chew through.

References:

[1] Pathways to Qualify as an Architect, Royal Institute of British Architects. Available at: https://www.architecture.com/education-cpd-and-careers/how-to-become-an-architect

[Accessed on 22 March 2023].

[2] RIBA Validated Schools in the UK, Royal Institute of British Architects. Available at: https://www.architecture.com/education-cpd-and-careers/riba-validation/riba-validated-schools-uk [Accessed on 22 March 2023].

[3] Awan, N., Schneider, T., Till, J., (2011). “The Motivations of Spatial Agency”. In Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture. New York: Routledge, pp. 36-52.

[4] BA (Hons) Architecture, Central Saint Martins, UAL. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/subjects/architecture-spatial-and-interior-design/undergraduate/ba-hons-architecture-csm [Accessed on 22 March 2023].

[5] Tomorrow’s Architects. ARB consultation on education and training reforms, (2023). Architects Registration Board. Available at: https://arb.org.uk/tomorrows-architects/?dm_i=GKK,876VH,3BBDI,XMDX8,1 [Accessed on 22 March 2023].[6] A New Regulatory Framework, (2023). Architects Registration Board. Available at: https://arb.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/ARB-regulatory-framework-for-education-proposal.pdf?dm_i=GKK,876VH,3BBDI,XMDX8,1 [Accessed on 22 March 2023].

Towards a learning community

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It was The Architectural Review’s Education issue [1] that made me pick up bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress [2]. In The AR’s editorial, which sets out the issue’s focus on un-institutionalised spaces of learning, Manon Mollard, Eleanor Beaumont, Ellen Peirson and Kristina Rapacki write, “Such alternative spaces for learning resonate with hooks’ liberatory politics. Formal higher education, however, is increasingly policed, shrunk and squeezed. Today’s universities are deeply marketised, having been laid bare to the forces of neoliberalism. What ought to be a lifelong project is reduced to the preparation of productive members of capitalist economies.”

Robert Mull, who was leading the Free Unit teaching initiative at the Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design in London suggests similar tendencies in his essay “The Free World” in Architects After Architecture. The Free Unit supported architecture students to structure and deliver projects in difficult contexts of deprivation, displacement and political uncertainty. In contrast to the values shared in the Free Unit, he writes about self-interest, competition and mistrust that dominate the contemporary architectural practice and also permeate architectural education. Since 2015, Mull has been involved in education, research and practice in the refugee crises. He writes, “In all the places I worked the generosity, common purpose, collective action and mutual support I witnessed represented exactly the opposite values to those that worried me about architectural practice and education.” Amongst the most important benefits of de-institutionalising the Free Unit and turning it into The Global Free Unit, he highlights the benefits to students’ wellbeing and sense of purpose, “Education is no longer a rehearsal for future practice or a space apart from their everyday lives but a part of it.”[3] 

Even though I too see and have personal experience of alternative spaces for learning having huge potential for liberatory practices, and I agree with the observations of marketised universities, it seems to me that teaching a relatively small group of students within a design studio context still entails underexplored opportunities for progressive pedagogies. Doesn’t the art, design and architecture school still hold hints of communitarian learning that might have been more easily lost from other HE departments because of a difference in dominant teaching methods? 

Mull’s observations on The Global Free Unit’s benefits to students reflect bell hooks’ writing in Teaching to Transgress, where hooks emphasises the importance to bridge teaching with students’ everyday. It reminds me that in the classroom there should be space for valuing students’ as well as teachers’ experience outside of academia, like their commitment to different kinds of activism. It should be our aim to engage students so that they have the opportunity to contribute to the classroom with their experiences. Contributions are resources. Bell hooks, “…we all bring to the classroom experiential knowledge, /…/ this knowledge can indeed enhance our learning experience.” In her essay “Theory as Liberatory Practice”, hooks discusses her stance on the theorising-practicing split. Her thoughts on the importance of intellectual work for collective resistance and the production of theory as a potentially liberatory social practice evoke possibilities that lay in the formal studio space or classroom. Learning in this context can still inspire ways to change our current reality. It inspires me that hooks insists, “The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy.”[2] 

I will finish off with a few quick but concrete ideas for undertakings that could help with building a learning community:

  • Taking time and space for shared experiences, such as visits to inspiring projects and meeting with activist groups, and reflecting on them.
  • Creating space for sharing experiences outside of academia, as well as how what the students have learnt impacted what they experienced.
  • Making use of London as our shared site for teaching and learning. Architecture is ubiquitous here and it is a waste to disregard that. Going for site and project visits together, reflecting on our day to day experiences in the city might help to build a common ground.
  • I could bring the reflective journal more deliberately into my teaching methods. Currently journals are mostly token. Again inspired by bell hooks, reading and showing journals to each other in each class might solidify that everyone’s contribution matters.
A page from Tessa Breen’s reflective journal, Studio 5, BA Architecture, CSM.
A page from Tessa Breen’s reflective journal, Studio 5, BA Architecture, CSM.

References:

[1] The Architectural Review: Education, September 2022.

[2] hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to Transgress. Educations as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.

[3] Mull, R. (2021). “The Free World”. In: Harriss, H., Hyde, R., Marcaccio, R. (eds.) Architects After Architecture: Alternative Pathways of Practice. Eds. New York: Routledge, pp. 302-311.

How to teach togetherness?

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In the interview with Gielen and van Heusden, Richard Sennet calls for avoiding “the Romantic notion of the little genius who pushes through his innovation” in education. He claims that innovation is collective activity. [1]

The artist-architect-designer Pieterjan Ginckels is probably the first teacher who inspired me to re-imagine architecture design studio teaching as collective practice. He teaches at the Department of Architecture at KU Leuven in Brussels where he is the Professor of Visual Literacies and Provocative Practices. In his design studios, he sets up polemical briefs with the aim to fundamentally question the role of the contemporary designer, to enable critical thinking (towards critical thinking) and to critically engage with shared lived experiences in a speedy compartmentalised world. Having followed his practice for some years, I can identify two main methods in his teaching:

  1. Continuous use of oversaturation. For example, his teaching is deliberately overloaded with popular culture notions and terms that are likely to link directly with the students, such as Snowflake, speed trip, anthropocene (misanthropozine), car tuning, avocado culture etc. In contrast to the dominant way of using these terms carelessly and often with an aim to insult, Ginckels’ teaching encourages a critical approach and opens them up as possibilities. [2][3]
  2. Explicit collectivism. For example, Paradigm Weekly, a Master studio Ginckels teaches, focuses on what he calls ‘collective experiments’ with visual architecture culture [3]. I have witnessed him going on so-called speed trips with his students, which involve yoga sessions in public realm, gaming in internet cafes, setting up a lifestyle shop and handing out self-branded energy drinks [4]. These unconventional activities are thought up together with the student group and involve a shared project production experience, dressing up in a group uniform and performing together. Speaking from my experience of having participated in one of such events, it was the intensity of the experience that resulted in a loss of a sense of self and in inventing a new persona who is completely and explicitly intertwined with the rest of the collective.   

Ginckels’ approach is certainly experimental, if not radical within European architecture schools. During the course, the students along with Ginckels create a collective experience that challenges the usual master-apprentice hierarchies of a design studio, they might feel encouraged to test out an alternative persona during the performative speed trips and ultimately to re-assess their designer-selves. What I admire most about these methods are playfulness, plea for togetherness and a meaningful step away from glorifying the individualistic creative practice.

Pieterjan Ginckels on a ‘speed-trip’ with Estonian Academy of Art students in 2020.

I enjoyed finding a direct link between Sennet’s take on learning outcomes as expressed in the interview and Ginckel’s setting out of his design studio ethos. Sennet says, “Often you’ve done your best job with an art student just as with a scientist when he or she comes out asking questions, rather than saying ‘I know how to do this’.” [1] This is not dissimilar from Studio Snowflake’s ethos: “STUDIO SNOWFLAKE believes we are critical agents, and produce questions rather than answers.” [2]

A common thread in Sennet’s, Ginckels’ as well as bell hooks’ works is that of building strong relationships between teachers and students. Such strong relationships form the basis for a ‘learning community’ as hooks calls it, and can help students become more motivated and engaged to learn. [5] This point resonates with my own teaching experience and I have clear ideas of methods I can implement to develop this aspect of my teaching. What I struggle with is finding the balance between pushing a more radically communalist agenda which I do believe to be beneficial, whilst making sure students manage the individual obligatory department-wide deliverables. 

References:

[1] Gielen, P. J. D., & van Heusden, B. P. (2012). “A Plea for Communalist Teaching. An Interview with Richard Sennett”. In P. Gielen, & P. De Bruyne (Eds.), Teaching Art in the Neoliberal Realm. Realism versus Cynicism (pp. 33-47). Valiz.

[2] Ginckels, P. (2022) Studio Snowflake. KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture. Available at: https://www.blog-archkuleuven.be/studio-snowflake-22-23/?filter_department=28 [Accessed 21 March 2023]

[3] Ginckels, P. (2022) Paradigm Weekly. KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture. Available at: https://paradigmweekly.com/ [Accessed 21 March 2023]

[4] Ginckels, P. NoBullFaster. Pieterjan Ginckels website. Available at: https://www.pieterjanginckels.be/index.html [Accessed 21 March 2023]

[5] hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to Transgress. Educations as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.

Microteaching: Thresholds in Spatial Design

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I focused my microteaching session on an aspect of spatial design – thresholds. In architecture, thresholds might literally mean a doorway, but more often the term is used as part of architectural jargon to mark any transition from one spatial experience to another, like stepping inside from the outside or from a communal space to a private space. The term is also used for spaces between public and private spheres – a front garden is a threshold between the street and the home.

My main aims for choosing the topic:

1.     To share with the participants ways to consider their surrounding built environment and to draw attention to designed and thus challengeable aspects of it.

  1. To challenge myself to teach an architectural notion simply, avoiding jargon and to learn from others’ perception of spatial design.

After starting with a brief explanation of thresholds and the aims of the session, I told the group that we will be using three doorways near the classroom as objects. Considering spatial design elements that affect their experience of transitioning from one space to another, I asked them to take 5 minutes to mark up everything they notice about these doorways. I explained that most of them might seem conventional but are nevertheless important to take account of. 

Object Doorway 01: Asuf and Sebastian discussing
Asuf and Sebastian’s worksheet
Object Doorway 02: Carole taking notes
Carole’s worksheet
Object Doorway 03: Smriti taking notes
Smriti’s worksheet

There were only a few of us left for my session and so two participants ended up working alone. This was fine, but looking back, doing the exercise in pairs or groups would’ve definitely evoked more noticing, discussion and learning for both myself (at this point I struggled with talking about these spaces in abstract terms and just saw “answers” clearly drawn out in front of me) as well as the participants.

We then took 5 minutes to go around all three doorways with the group to hear about everyone’s observations. The session ended with us back around the table looking at previously selected images of special, very deliberately designed thresholds. I asked everyone to identify devices that had been used to evoke certain perceptions in these cases and to find similarities between the spaces on the images and the very ordinary thresholds we observed.

Example 01 of a special threshold
Example 02 of a special threshold

My aim was that in having to take a close look at these doorways, the participants would start to notice the amount of designed elements and design decisions that make up spaces and surround them everywhere. During the group discussion most of the participants said the session led them to reflect on a number of their everyday thresholds, e.g. stepping onto the bus. I appreciated the participants noticed how this type of pro-active analysis encourages agency over designed spaces. I got feedback that participants became more mindful about their surroundings and that they appreciated the embodied dimension of the session.

Feedback notes 01
Feedback notes 02
Feedback notes 03

To add some of my own:

  • A more interestingly designed environment (e.g. CSM building) would benefit the observations and inspire further engagement with the theme.
  • I didn’t quite manage to avoid jargon such as ‘design elements’ and ‘design devices’ and took it for granted that these terms are understood.
  • I managed to hold myself back from speaking an awful lot myself and prompting too much, which is my usual way of handling nervousness or others’ silence.

The microteaching day made some of the benefits of object-based learning explicit to me, especially relating to the “power of wow” (as experienced in Joanne’s “Stop that!” plant session. My teaching of architecture already includes object-based aspects such as making of and engaging with models, asking students to bring material samples and found elements from project sites to studio. However, I never knew to set these into an object-based teaching framework and I was doubtful whether such activities made sense in the students’ tight learning and delivery schedules. I gained a lot of confidence in object-based methods from the workshop and I am already planning future sessions accordingly. I’m most excited about developing my teaching with bringing students in contact with real construction materials to encourage discussions of supply chains, labour, ecology and much else implicit in architecture.

Here are some immediate reflections I put down on the day:

  • The day reminded me how tiring studying is and was, i.e. keeping alert and learning so much new takes a lot of energy. Even if fully enjoying it, I was exhausted by the end.
  • Joanne’s computed plant really drove the “power of wow” idea home.
  • I become antsy when a teacher talks about an object but hasn’t yet provided the rest of us with access to it, i.e. when there are objects of interest around that I am not yet allowed to touch or properly engage with. 
  • I also get antsy during lengthy reflections which wander too far off from the actual activity or its central theme and might get too generic. I’ve found it suits me better to stick to a previously agreed programme and not diverge.
  • Speaking plants are absolutely hilarious. The banana that says, “Hello” in a deep male voice still gives me nightmares to this day.
  • Sarah Leontovitsch’s intense (many layers of activities within the short given period) and very well prepared session was best suitable for me. I liked going through precise activities quickly and being guided to an understanding of the main theme – alternative text. This type of very structured activity might not always be appropriate in my design studio teaching but it can certainly be implemented occasionally to cover some more precise topics and to bring in a change in tempo in the otherwise elongated individual design project development.
  • I generally enjoyed more specific subjects/topics more within the microteaching format.
Joanne’s “power of wow” speaking succulent and banana
The cover of the zine I made in Michelle’s session

References:

Hardie, K. (2015) Innovative Pedagogies Series: Wow: The power of objects in object-based learning and teaching [online]. York: Higher Education Academy. Available from: https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets.creode.advancehe-document-manager/documents/hea/private/kirsten_hardie_final_1568037367.pdf [Accessed 20th March 2023].

Professional Frameworks: an attempt to define

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Network of Norms

At Friday’s Values and Ethics in Teaching seminar, we discussed Professional Frameworks, affiliated actors and stakeholders and attempted to define associated key terms (policy, framework, strategy, code, principle, guide). Writing concise definitions is never easy and even if we managed to find UAL examples for all of them, the list remained, to a degree, impenetrable. Clearly, these terms overlap, cross-pollinate, occasionally double up, interrelate. The number of separate documents they encompass is so overwhelming that the whole topic seemed to evoke quite a bit of reluctance.

I was inspired by Lindsey’s use of a photo of a timber frame building to visualise the term framework as well as my groupmate Simon’s attempt to visualise his understanding of how the rest of the norms would fit into this metaphor (“So which of these norms would be a door?”). Based on a quick sketch I did in the class, I went home and developed my own visual version of the norms. I went full into my architect-mode, imagined a construction site and drew up the understanding I developed on the role of all the different types of norms after our group discussions in the seminar. Drawing it, I also relied on the Padlet that one of the groups set up, which worked well to spell out a definition for each norm.

I liked to imagine how all the norms feed into each other with policy enabling everything to happen. The framework is firmly rooted within it – its exact location, foundation, maximum size are all defined by policy. Most action and most creativity, however, is happening around the two and is feeding into them. The relationship is always reciprocal. The actors might even forget that they are in fact constructing something within policy (which is more like an abstract rather than a real physical boundary). The framework is a shared goal but it is also something that has been designed and can only stand up following the shared principles and ideas of everyone involved.

References:

UAL PgCert Values and Ethics in Teaching Seminar Padlet [2023]. Available from: https://artslondon.padlet.org/sleontovitsch/remake-of-define-terms-for-class-dw1w70vjsteg68xy [Accessed 20 March 2023].