Coordinating change: introducing pluralism in the assessment of a humanities module for improved engagement and attainment of first year architecture students

This paper reports on the process of diversifying assessment of the ‘History and Theory of Architecture and Design’ module at Level 1 in the undergraduate Architecture course at the University of Lincoln, UK. Replacing essays (the traditional form of assessment for theoretical subjects in our school) with other types of assignments was a strategic response to the mixture of academic ability shown in the last decade by first year students; amongst other things, this variety of knowledge and skills is a reflection of the liberalisation of Higher Education in the UK, which increased the diversity of student backgrounds along with the internationalisation of the course (RIBA 2012:7). In addition, statistically (James 2003), creative courses attract a higher incidence of dyslexia than other subjects. In this context, written assignments represented a deficit model of assessment, the solution being to make assessments less dependent on language and the module more immersive and participatory than traditional theoretical subjects, with assignments becoming episodes of active learning. The change in assessment was also seen as an opportunity to re-orient theoretical submissions to become more relevant to practice in architecture. This paper details the reasons and scope of the modifications, describes methods used, within the constraints currently placed on Higher Education in general and Schools of Architecture in particular, and comments on the consequences of these changes for students and academics, from the author’s point of view, as module coordinator

Of portals and gateways. In OTHER worlds: the woodhall spa project

This article describes a design project proposed to 3rd year BArch students following a request for ideas made to our school by a local charity - Jubilee Park Ltd - which runs a community park in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire, UK. The charity trustees outlined several issues with their community park, ranging from micro-scale (the half-hidden, decaying main gate) to macro (a plan for a sustainable future). With any real-life projects in architectural education, there is always a need for a bridging exercise between the pragmatism of their requirements and didactic realities of academic assignments, learning outcomes and professional accreditation criteria. Most importantly, architecture students need to learn to construct a brief before proposing solutions, by starting to question the question, rather than attempt to answer it with arithmetic precision. It is vital for their development as architectural thinkers and designers, even when engaged in live projects, to be able to continue operating in the world of ideas. For this reason, the challenges faced by Jubilee Park were framed within the author’s 3rd year studio brief: in OTHER worlds: the woodhall spa project. Micro-scale issues identified by the charity trustees were not suitable as stand-alone design challenges for a 3rd year project, they were discrete, isolated problems which lacked the necessary complexity for this level of study. Considerations at the macro-scale, however, offered students the opportunity to examine the wider context for aspects identified, or not, by the charity, from the immediate environment of Woodhall Spa, to that beyond - regional or even global. This macro-scale analysis did result, in some of the students’ work, in interventions which addressed the micro-scale issues highlighted by the trustees, while other projects proposed triggers for long term strategic plans. In the context of the introductory project in 3rd year, the Jubilee Park was re-wired and activated through follies or more complex structures, meant to act as catalysts for a sustainable future. What follows is the story of our journey and the resulting student projects

Fluid boundaries: Architectural tool kits for water-lands

This article is a commentary on natural border conditions between land and water, on how they and communities associated with them are affected by behavioural changes of the weather and how groups of architecture students responded to the challenge of conceiving ways to minimise, alleviate and even harness the effects of deluges. The historic dependence on water of human civilisation is making us vulnerable to the impact of the intensification and rise in frequency of climatic or other natural events. Lack of planning, regulation, strategies are in some cases responsible for an increase in the severity of damage caused by adjacency to water. The groups of students engaged in the project analysed different site conditions across the globe, investigating extreme cases reported in the media or of personal interest. Their proposals are based on material, social, cultural research into the affected communities and demonstrate the future architects’ awareness and their responsible, professional engagement with contemporary issues. As a pedagogical exercise, the project demonstrated the students’ ability to construct effective groups in a short time to propose solutions ranging from long term visions to pragmatic immediate solutions

Lincoln's Orgone accumulator: The question concerning life and architecture

Are the controversial ideas of Wilhelm Reich a topic worth discussing in contemporary architecture? There is no better way of trying to answer this question than by testing it. This is what happened at the University of Lincoln in 2017. The Centre for Experimental Ontology offered support and the initial concept while authors of this article, as architectural educators from Lincoln School of Architecture and the Built Environment (LSABE), incorporated it into students’ brief

[light/box]project: an interdisciplinary collaboration for production and transference of knowledge and skills between Architecture & Contemporary Lens Media (CLM) 1st year students

The [light/box] experiment embodies the University of Lincoln’s ethos of ‘student as producer’ (Neary 2012). It is part of a more extensive piece of action research which reconsiders assessment in response to student diversity, an increase in numbers of international students and the need to support transition from high school to HE in order to improve engagement, attainment and retention (Carter 2014). The [light/box] project facilitates a cross-programme collaboration where students work as partners, enabling the sharing of student knowledge and offering an experience outside of the traditional curriculum remit of each course. This paper comments on the project’s premise, organisation, results and research data. In its 3rd year, the [light/box] brings together 1st year BArch(Hons) Architecture and BA(Hons) Contemporary Lens Media (CLM) students in a one day workshop, during which they build, light and photograph a physical scale model of a historic interior design. In this process of active learning students cement classroom subject specific knowledge in a dynamic, interactive manner mimicking real-life professional situations: the CLM students have their first experience of a ‘client’, with specific requirements, to which they have to respond using diverse, newly acquired knowledge; the architecture students need to respond in their design of the scale models to the particular requirements of photography shoots and relinquish control over how their work is ‘seen’ (interpreted). Also, for the architecture students learning to take good photographs of perishable models is one of the essential study skills necessary in studio; grasping its basics in 1st year helps not only with the transition to second year but also equips them for life in practice. Such collaborations improve students’ confidence in their own domains, while triggering the awareness of belonging to a creative community, within the University and beyond. One important aspect of the on-going action research is strengthening the transferable skill-set acquired during such events which can be traced in subsequent studio work. This paper reports on the results of such collaborations, which are pedagogically and palpably more than the sum of the parts. This formula of interdisciplinary events can be applied to other domains: the [light/box] experiment has inspired a similar, very successful project between the Journalism and Performing Arts courses within the University of Lincoln

The Ship of Theseus - a paradox fit for Master of Architecture students

This paper describes a pedagogical exercise involving Master of Architecture students and their investigation of the ancient paradox of Theseus’ ship. The myth was offered as a starting point for developing a personal design brief and was conducted in collaboration with a real client, who represented the philosophy forum at the University of Lincoln, thus mimicking the reality of client-designer relationship in professional practice. Work was developed by students both individually and as a group and the exercise forms part of ongoing action research led by the authors. The Greek myth, with its inherent abstraction, presented students with a conundrum regarding their expectations from a brief but also, quite importantly, it tested their approach to challenging, unfathomable problems. Their responses revealed their thinking patterns, tried their ability to experiment outside of comfort zones and altered the expectations of student-tutor relationship: answers could not be given, the process had to be led by the students and their individual research into the paradoxical world opened by Theseus’ ship myth. The goal of the project for our client was the building of an installation to be exhibited on campus in Lincoln, students had to divide labour for this enterprise to be successful: from designing it, to procuring materials and building it, to PR exercises and feasibility studies for suitable display spaces. The work was student-led, under the guidance of the two authors, in the spirit of the ‘Student as producer’ ethos embedded into our teaching and learning practice at the University of Lincoln. The paper presents our pedagogical approach, the students’ responses as their completed work and the production of the installation, detailing some aspects of the process, which unfolded, tripped or accelerated like any live project. The paper also offers a contextualisation of the significance of such philosophical approaches within architectural education and practice, through several case studies analysed here from points of view suggested by Theseus’ ship paradox

in OTHER worlds: the Woodhall Spa project

This book is a record of a successful collaboration between the Jubilee Park Woodhall Spa Ltd charity and a group of 3rd year architecture students from the Lincoln School of Architecture and the Built Environment. The charity’s trustees approached the University in quest of support for developing their plans, driven by a clear ambition to make sustainable the preservation of Jubilee Park, a valuable historic legacy in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire. In the first meeting held in June 2019 on the University of Lincoln campus, the trustees outlined three areas which required expertise: help with a coherent strategy for sustainability (social, economic and environmental), the refurbishment and possible expansion of existing facilities and a park survey. The question was: could our school help? What follows is a reflection on what became a rewarding community based project

The humanist Don Quixote and the windmills of sustainability

This chapter looks at how innovative pedagogy transformed a humanities subject to make the module more immediately relevant to architectural education, the profession and society, while improving engagement of an increasingly diverse student population. This was achieved through didactic shifts: from word to image, from individual, passive study to social, active, participatory, experiential and interdisciplinary learning, from pure theory to practical applications of theory. Militating for the survival of humanities subjects challenges the current societal (and pedagogical) trope that by concentrating on ‘sustainability’ subjects, Architecture schools will produce perfectly trained new generations of specialists able to create a sustainable future. The aim of any educational environment, tertiary education in particular as professional springboard, is to create responsive individuals, unafraid of the unknown, but also unafraid of knowledge, capable of finding it with intentionality and of sifting through it in order to deal with problems of varied complexity. In today’s politico-economic climate it would be financially unfeasible to provide a classical architectural education based on the pedagogical algorithm developed in the nineteenth century by L’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris - the model employed in many European countries over the last decades. Compulsory subjects which were part of such courses (philosophy, aesthetics, history of art/architecture/urban and landscape design, theory of architecture and so on) are now separate specialist degrees. However, for architecture to maintain the artistic, humanistic, social aspects of the craft, architectural education has to be divergent enough to provide at least an awareness of these subjects. As the this chapter discusses, even such frugality has been proving onerous in recent years because of changes in Higher Education and the diversification of student profiles. It is the author’s conviction that professionals with multi-nodal cognitive nets are more adaptable and in consequence more prepared to address complexity, regardless of what the problem is - sustainability being only one of them

From Portals and Gateways to Time Machines

The two projects presented here are part of the author's long-standing interest in life projects, which stems from the belief that when embedded in Higher Education settings. Our methodology is based on Vygotsky’s (1978) activity theory, which asserts that activities of the mind cannot be separated from overt behaviour, or the social context in which they take place.</p