cover the hidden school EAAE

ISBN: 978-94-6366-196-6

Editors: Mia Roth-Čerina, University of Zagreb; Roberto Cavallo, Delft University of Technology

Scientific committee: Oya Atalay Franck, Zurich University of Applied Sciences Winterthur; Roberto Cavallo, Delft University of Technology; Johan De Walsche, University of Antwerp; Harriet Harriss, Royal College of Art; Siniša Justić, University of Zagreb; Mia Roth-Čerina, University of Zagreb; Sally Stewart, Glasgow School of Art; Tadeja Zupančič, University of Ljubljana.

Reviewers: Pnina Avidar, Fontys University of Applied Sciences; Michela Barosio, Politecnico di Torino; Roberto Cavallo, Delft University of Technology; Koenraad Van Cleempoel, Hasselt University; Johan De Walsche, University of Antwerp; Hugo Dworzak, University of Liechtenstein; Harriet Harriss, Royal College of Art; Siniša Justić, University of Zagreb; Riva Lava, National Technical University of Athens; Gunnar Parelius, Norwegian University of Science and Technology; Carl Frederik Schetelig, Norwegian University of Science and Technology; Carla Sentieri Omarrementeria, Polytechnic University of Valencia; Sally Stewart, Glasgow School of Art; Krunoslav Šmit, University of Zagreb; Tadeja Zupančič, University of Ljubljana; Tonči Žarnić, University of Zagreb.

Published: 2019-11-01

Preface

  • Oya Atalay Franck

    The mission of the European Association for Architectural Education EAAE is to advance the quality of architectural education in Europe and thus of architecture in general. The EAAE is a forum for the generation and dissemination of knowledge and information on all aspects of architectural education and architectural research. This year, we are very thankful for the commitment and generous support of the University of Zagreb, whose efforts brought together the representatives of over 130 architecture schools from all over Europe here in the capital of Croatia. In this conference we will...

  • Oya Atalay Franck, Roberto Cavallo, Johan De Walsche, Harriet Harriss, Siniša Justić, Mia Roth-Čerina, Sally Stewart, Tadeja Zupančič

    The EAAE Annual Conference of 2019 is titled ‘The Hidden School’, aiming to discuss an architecture school’s true character, the substance and the quality of architectural education in the broadest sense, and that which is beyond the stated curricula, yet — whether concretely manifested or subliminally perceived — embodies the culture of the school.

    The Hidden School can be observed through a range of tacit aspects or conspicuous specificities which make the educational path a unique one. It is the content that can be embedded within the syllabus, learned informally, personified...

Presentation Abstracts

  • This research provides an important opportunity to advance our understanding of the evolving conception of learning in the design studio and specifically how first year students at architecture schools adapt to their new learning environment.

  • Architectural design studio is a dynamic/interactive/productive atmosphere. This atmosphere is not limited to a physical space — like the school building — but can be produced collectively with the students where the educator comes together with them. Changing the atmosphere during the design process keeps students active, excited and motivated. This motivation triggers creativity. In order to support this creative atmosphere, a pendulum-like movement should be created between the ontology and epistemology of architecture through relational and critical thinking. At this stage, the...

  • Ayse Zeynep Aydemir, Ahmet Sezgin, Arda Inceoğlu

    As a part of stated curriculum of MEF University Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, design-build studio is a compulsory summer internship for the students completing their first year in architecture and interior design. Within the framework of the design-build studio, the school communicates its set of values through emphasizing learning by doing, implying horizontal learning and underlining the process. This paper will discuss how a design-build studio can be a distinctive subliminal quality of an architecture faculty through the case of Boathouse project conducted during Summer...

  • This paper considers the introduction of a Personal Development Portfolio into our assessment for architectural education. When revising out undergraduate course structure we moved to a fully integrated model, where assessment was based on a portfolio or ‘body of work’ produced during a ten-week studio project. These projects introduce, develop and integrate understanding and ability of the key knowledge and skills of the curriculum; design, communication, realisation (technology) and contextual studies. Each year of study also includes one unit where professional knowledge is also...

  • For one and a half year, we have been renting the 24th floor of the abandoned WTC1-building, a tower waiting for total restructuring financed by a Regulated Real-estate Investment Trust (BE-REIT), listed on Euronext Brussels. 1500 m² of free space. This floor is located next to the north station, which connects people between the big city and smaller ones. The North Station connects trains with trams and buses. The North Station connects fast food with a bike point. The North Station is, or was a building. Not anymore. Today, it does not imply connection, only separation, brutal...

  • The topic of the use of architecture as reference within the creative architectural design process is not a matter given for granted, both in the architectural culture and in the teaching. The Italian architecture studio courses are based on theoretical lectures and laboratory activities. The student's design experience is built through the combined action of theory and practice. The theoretical lectures offer the opportunity to address design issues also through discussion of examples of architecture. What are the examples of architecture that we can consider useful for the design...

  • Architecture is a quite elusive discipline, both unleashed and restrained by a perennial calling into question of its own fundamentals. Being and becoming an architect means to cast a doubtful, unsatisfied, interrogative gaze on the world and especially on the world of architecture. Teaching such a (self-) critical discipline is, therefore, an intrinsically impossible task. Of course, syllabuses include specific competencies such as drawing, history, structures, law, economics... but when it comes to integrating them into the architectural project, any fixed framework becomes...

  • The vast majority of architects are no longer independent designers, but part of complex design teams working with and across different disciplines. But there is resistance to professional and educational evolution ingrained in the enculturation and historic identity of architects as independent creative designers, the hidden curriculum. As long as we continue to look into the mirror for answers, are we really likely to change?

  • Anica Dragutinović, Aleksandra Milovanović, Ana Nikezić, Jelena Ristić Trajković

    There is a global aspiration for continuous improvements of teaching curricula and teaching models in the field of architectural design, especially in response to the changing context of architectural education. New research areas and thematic frameworks within it are being continuously re-introduced and becoming more process and problem-oriented. Traditional teaching approaches and established programs thus require the development of extended forms of the teaching process and learning that empowers students to develop their competencies and skills further. The basic study program at the...

  • Instructional models are increasingly online, remote, and accessible whenever convenient, ostensibly leaving the conventional design studio behind. What are the consequences of design education without a place of its own — the studio? What are the consequences if architecture Schools resist the pressures to move to a remote platform? The Architectural design studio is unique educational setting in which Information doesn’t flow in a single direction, from professor to student. Instead, it is exchanged in complex patterns of dialogue and production that form the foundation of a...

  • Teachers are far more decisive for the quality of architectural education than curriculum, academic organization and management. Put all efforts into reorganization and restructuring. It will, however mean little to the quality of education. Good schools are built by outstanding teachers. And architectural education is socially relevant and valid, linking to the culture and needs of a society. At least this was so in a small school close to the North Pole, started in 1945, right after the second World War as part of a process of rebuilding a nation.

  • Patrick Flynn, Miriam Dunn, Mark Price, Maureen O’Connor

    Assessment in architecture and creative arts schools has traditionally adopted a ‘one size fits all’ approach by using the ‘crit’, where students pin up their work, make a presentation and receive verbal feedback in front of peers and academic staff. In addition to increasing stress and inhibiting learning, which may impact more depending on gender and ethnicity, the adversarial structure of the ‘crit’ reinforces power imbalances and thereby ultimately contributes to the reproduction of dominant cultural paradigms. Our collaboration on an alternative to the traditional model was...

  • Who makes the architecture first, Ariadne with her thread defining a place, or Daedalus making the labyrinthine space? What makes the educational process, not the bright new shiny buildings (space), but the bodies of students, travelling on their overlapping educational journeys (place)? So Samsonite suitcases at the ready. This paper will explore the hidden, implicit relationship between space and place in architectural education, not in the physical (architectural school) but as the locating of process in architectural research.

  • Decolonising the curriculum demands curricula and pedagogic change across all academic disciplines. Whereas the contents of architecture may well be epistemologically diverse, the recognized producers of architecture are determinedly less diverse resulting in calls to reconsider who gets to determine what architecture contains. To challenge this, a broader body of knowledge inclusive of gender, class and race is needed, one that responds to both nascent change and persistent instability, and yet remains ‘’live’ — able to adapt to new authors and new audiences as they arise. To generate...

  • The hidden school is implicitly experienced, embodied and perpetuated by staff and students through the hidden curriculum, defined by Sambell and McDowell (2006) as those aspects of the curriculum ‘implicit and embedded in educational experiences, in contrast with the formal statements about curricula and surface features of educational interaction’. Kolberg and Meyer (1972) regard the behavior of the teacher as complicit in the production of hidden curriculum, positing that ‘the hidden curriculum arises when an educator splits his/her own life from the act of teaching.’

  • There have been various paradigms, which effect the architectural practice as well as education (Salama, 1995). Environmental, social, economic, political and technological aspects of these are being often discussed in the last decades, throughout the world (Nicol, D.; Pilling, S., 2000). The way of learning and performing practice, the tools and methods that are being used for it and the spaces that these processes take place are shifting with the change of information and technology. Under these circumstances architectural education has faced difficulties in being up to date in...

  • To grasp a beautiful thing or some difficult idea — the language clearly pronounces the hand–to–reason connection. In the world of things, this connection manifests itself in a HANDPRINT that a humble craftsman leaves on a handy mud brick, or a great artist in a perfect block of Carrara marble. In transition from essence towards presence, they leave traces thus uncovering the thingness of things: their purpose, shape and matter. The mythical lord of shadows and everything in earth lurks from the interior of a cave and comes into the light only briefly, to abduct the beautiful Proserpina....

  • Our understanding of the world is manifested in what we make and produce. Through the last 250 years there has been a change in the understanding of man´s place in the world. Our way of building is characterized by market economy and controlled production processes — as if we can control everything through our consciousness. Both the given nature and what is transferred to us through history, are regarded as resources made for us. Today our understanding of the world makes the cities more and more similar. This understanding of nature and culture challenges our human conditions.

    ...
  • What we call visible is (…) the surface of a depth, a cross section upon a massive being. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty

    If, as stated by the French philosopher Guillaume Blanc [2], the visible is sewn to the invisible, while reading the projects developed by students, we should be able to read traces of the hidden, the structure which made them possible. We will therefore focus on HOUSE 1, an experimental collaborative project designed and built by 227 first-year architecture students by the end of the spring semester 2016 in the XXX university campus.

  • On this annual EAAE meeting I would like to talk about and explain an initiative that has been taking place on our campus for three academic years now because I think it fits the theme of the EAAE meeting 2019 ‘Hidden School’ so well and is worth mentioning because it might inspire other European Architectural Institutes to organize a similar event. It is so easy to do and we notice it has meant so much to our students already. It is called TAXI.

    TAXI — phonetically the same in every language — is an ephemeral drive to any destination, taken from point A to B, driven by a myopic...

  • I would like to share my knowledge, experience and reflection on experiential learning by designing, making and co-creating, ‘the design built’, within the architectural education. The specific case Upcycle Pavilion is a ‘design built’ pavilion of today’s building waste by students in collaboration with the local community in Vejle, Denmark within the topic ‘better use of today’s building waste’.

  • Cinematic Commons’ research and practice explores active relationships between film, architecture and city through 'essayistic gaze', 'journeying long take' and 'filmic commoning'. It weaves together filmic techniques, an essayist approach, scenographic constructs, architectural intervention and issues of public space, or 'commons', as a way to restore cities as sites for productive dreaming.

  • Architectural education in Ireland — as elsewhere — is a somewhat unique educational environment in that it must provide for professional requirements within its system. It must produce graduates which have demonstrated standards of knowledge, skill and competence for practice as an architect and who possess particular professional attributes. Coupled with this framework, architectural education is also required to instil in students their civic responsibilities, in being bound by professional codes of ethics to act and to build in a way that has societal values at its heart; considering...

  • Claus Peder Pedersen, Naime Esra Akin

    This abstract proposes to explore the — continued — relevance of everyday life to architecture in general and architectural education in particular. We want to discuss overlooked, plain, ordinary and pragmatically organised spaces, structures and events. We want to focus on how these spaces and events outside, in the margins of, or even in opposition to, architectural awareness and intentions provide a continuous source of architectural discovery and learning.

  • What world does a European student imagine as they look beyond the Academy towards their future professional life? What horizons can they see which we cannot? Does that picture engage their moral compass, tracking the pressing contemporary issues from Planetary Environmental Crisis to the fragility of the Global South? How do they, as members of an increasingly international community, navigate that moral complexity? When their own future is unclear, how can they design the human future? ‘Horizons’ could be the sixth thematic area in this conference. ‘Horizons’ is closely linked to...

  • Learning, like creation, takes place in relation. Life happens in the interval of matter. In the magnetic field — space-time interval of change — a new form of life is created. Intention is to explore the incentive for knowledge production dynamics in education of architects through a lens of relational phenomena. Phenomenology of the inside-outside relation in spatial perception of architecture is compared to the one in psychoanalytical dynamics.

    In a culture of interconnectedness and change, architectural education is an experimental process. School-laboratory is an organized...

  • The word ‘education’ is defined to be: ‘the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university’ by the Cambridge Dictionary. And this is supposedly the definition of what we do at the MSA as well as every other university. Except there is that other layer of learning that weaves its importance into the fabric of our everyday educational experience.

    The participation model of students at the MSA is exemplary in the German higher education landscape, as the student body takes an important place in responsibility and organization of the...

  • Creativity is a mental process, as Andreasen (2006) describes, it happens when a thought comes up to surface in the mind, it has a complex nature and it does not happen in a tabula rasa condition, instead interaction of human thoughts with socio-cultural situations creates this phenomenon, as Portillo (1996) defines the creativity as an interconnected and multidimensional construct involving person, process, product and place (environment/ press). One of the main intentions of this paper is to address the relationship between the creativity and its supportive environment in case of...

  • This paper is the result of multiple forms of inquiry on architectural education across the sixteen schools of architecture part of the Nordic Baltic Academy of Architecture NBAA.

    In particular it reports the following:

    — Fourteen in-depth conversations conducted with architectural students during October, November, December 2018, and January 2019 across eleven schools of architecture part of the NBAA: KADK in Copenhagen, Chalmers in Gothenburg, AHO in Oslo, BAS in Bergen, VGTU in Vilnius, VDA in Vilnius, RTU in Riga, EKA in Tallinn, Aalto in Helsinki, NTNU in Trondheim,...

  • Architecture matters. The space where education takes place matters. The spatial dimension of a school transforms an abstraction into a situated phenomenon. In doing so, the context intentionally or implicitly affects education.

    The potential impact the physical environment and the implied connotations it carries on one’s experience in and of it, is best argued by common sense. Consider the following example.

    A wall is a boundary marker. Its function varies: to protect, to enclose, to constrain, to separate and differentiate between spaces, to redirect and flank. Erecting...

  • In what ways and to what extent can the individual shape the institution and thereby the architectural education it provides? How does this manifest itself in the formation and experience of the student on their journey towards establishing their own personal creative practice and agency?

    This paper attempts to explore the three-way relationship between school, teacher and student, with the aim of exposing the constant dynamic and flux as each acts on and is responsive to the others, while all aim to achieve a coherent and synthesised architectural education and entry to...

  • ‘Loge’ (cell, cubicle, box, cabinet, compartment, hut) is a spatial typology built to serve often ritualistic, also quotidian practices of physical, social and mental seclusion. From monastic life, to prisons, one can find various examples where voluntarily or involuntarily; isolated cells were used to renounce one’s contact with the outside world in order to incubate contemplation, concentration for individuals.

    One of the strongest rituals of loge is found in the pedagogic traditions of École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, a seminal model that influenced the history of architectural...

  • João Pedro Xavier, Teresa Calix, Francisca Mesquita

    The Faculty of Architecture at the University of Porto (FAUP), founded in 1979, and benefiting from the legacy of the School of Fine Arts (ESBAP), is internationally recognized and a worldwide reference in architectural teaching. Important names of the ‘School of Porto’ studied and lectured at ESBAP and FAUP. Fernando Távora (1923–2005), Álvaro Siza (b. 1933) and Eduardo Souto de Moura (b. 1952) — the last two Pritzker Prize winners, among many other distinctions — might be considered the three pillars of the school, although their contribution cannot be considered without their...

Poster Abstracts

  • Complexity of the 20th century society, along with strong professions' specialization, led to separation between all participants in the developing processes, especially in public spaces design. Lack of cohesion and consensus along with poor communication between professions, citizens, government and business sector, resulted in new participative and interdisciplinary trends emerging in the 21st century to bring sectors back together. Students' education must follow these trends, as their orientation in shaping the desirable futures.

    Elective course ‘Participatory design of...

  • Recently, I left the educational process at the Faculty of architecture and was given the opportunity to work as an assistant at the studio classes (so-called atelier). As a fresh graduate, I entered the teaching process with the student's insight, but gradually I was confronted with the situation on the ‘other side’. The position of the fresh graduate has many advantages. For example, still up-to-date insight into the bureaucratic system of the faculty — with other words, knowing how it goes. On the other hand, one encounters questions: how to teach properly? In the present days a new...

  • Drafting and designing in architecture involve an iterative process of testing and comparing architectural thoughts and ideas. The goal of this iterative process is to find the best of several possible solutions, at each stage of the design process. To bring these architectural thoughts and ideas to reality designers need tools. Tools for discussing ideas and writing, sketching, plan drawing and model making for explaining, documenting and testing thoughts. But do the users of these tools, the designers, really know how these tools work or do the designers use these tools only out of...

  • It is well known that programs and places are agents of educational process, but the interaction between them is very different during each of the 5 years of an architectural degree course.

    Since its launch in 1991, Ferrara school of architecture has experimented a new teaching method in Italy based on interdisciplinary laboratories, inspired to the Bologna Agreement. The themes on which these laboratories were based were mainly referred to project of new settlements.

    This interaction through design between disciplines and new settlements was for many years in Italy the...

  • This paper identifies two visions of the challenge of technology integration in architecture for education. Then, the appropriateness of conceiving architecture from a holistic perspective of the human dwelling is suggested, proposing an awareness of its technological aspects. Finally, some considerations of technology in architecture, in particular in teaching and learning are challenged, first analytically and then with an integrative intention.

  • The Zagreb EAAE 2019 Annual Conference provides a unique opportunity to reflect the theme of 100-years long teaching of technical disciplines to architecture students and to present a selection of their early works created from the 1919s to the 1926s in construction courses at the Royal Technical High School of Architecture. When founded in 1919, the Zagreb Faculty of Architecture was originally named the Royal Technical High School. Until 1926 in architecture department four generations of architects were educated and altogether forty architects received the Royal Technical High School...

  • Most of the artificial assembly that surrounds us is made through a series of processes, and the finalised objects emerge from an operation of multitude of devices. Since each space carries with it something of the being that designed it, every artefact hides some technical invention. The general trend of market uniformity, technological mass, and a constant flow of materials that stimulate our senses, reduces our ability to consider alternatives and possible deviations from the omnipresent. One of the potentials of education is to slow down the process and draw our attention to a...

  • Andreas Savvides, Spyros Spyrou, Teresa Tourvas

    The premise of the studio, the discovering and mapping of aspects of ‘hidden’ spatial publicness as a primer for the collaborative design of shared collective space in the public domain, as this is framed by individual addition based on a consensus proposal by students of the first semester, second year students at the Department of Architecture of the University of Cyprus, emanates from a number of readings and references that set the pedagogical framework for this design exercise. One such reference comes from Jane Jacobs’ description of the qualities of living in lively cities and she...

  • Petronela Schredlová, Tereza Haumerová

    To introduce ourselves first, we are a group of human beings working together only because of one hidden school — EASA ( European architecture student assembly).

    It works like a perfect filter. Filter for those that are looking for more than general education.

    Forming this vision about education was a general effort of 5 of us till the very end. Following text is not just about transdisciplinarity but about educating ourselves in communication, values, equality and daily choices. We´ve learned how to take a creative critique, how to trust each other, but mostly to...