The Agile, Culture-Building Hacker: Advancing Through Uncertainty Patrick Macasaet RMIT University Melbourne
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Charrette The Agile, Culture-Building Hacker: Advancing through uncertainty Patrick Macasaet RMIT University Melbourne ABSTRACT This paper aims to unpack how the COVID-19 pandemic catalysed the definition of a hacker mindset for architectural pedagogy. It examines the core values of expeditiousness, agility, action, and ambition to maintain a discursive culture of ideas at a time of uncertainty. The paper describes three constellations of pedagogic hacking that manifested as a swift transition from physical to virtual was actioned as the pandemic emerged in 2020, and the platforms that were utilised. It reflects on the importance of maintaining the immersive, didactic, discursive and collaborative culture of design studios and how this culture, in conjunction with a hacker mindset, led to new discoveries and trajectories for architectural research, design and education. KEYWORDS architectural design studio, gaming, videogame technology, hacker mindset, architecture pedagogy 77 | Charrette 7(1) Spring 2021 The teaching of architecture at RMIT focuses ‘on ideas-led, venturous design experimentation and exploration that aspires to contribute to the future of the discipline and an increasingly complex world’,1 relying on a ‘brave’ and open to risk approach to design and learning. Design studios are arenas where we encourage students to be bold, to experiment and to wander through unknown territories within a strategically curated curriculum. But what about when uncertainty strikes, and the refined over the years face- to-face teaching modes become dismantled and, almost instantaneously, challenged by the imposition of a highly digital and virtual environment? How does one deliver a traditionally face-to-face learning practice in a virtual dimension? This question is by no means unique to RMIT and architectural courses globally have by now executed this in more or less successful ways. What is different in the period of time examined in this paper, are the circumstances and context of the speed with which this shift occurred and how it catalysed the consolidation of a hacker mindset for architectural pedagogy; one that values expeditiousness, tactical agility, action, and the ambition to maintain a discursive culture of ideas whilst foregrounding transformative student experiences and surfacing a heightened engagement with digital and virtual space. This paper will critically reflect on a Master of Architecture design studio at RMIT University’s School of Architecture & Urban Design that unexpectedly transitioned to online delivery three weeks into the semester due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper attempts to unpack the following questions: how does one rapidly adapt pedagogical approaches and transformative student experiences, from real to virtual, almost instantaneously, through a time of uncertainty? How does one simultaneously deliver a pre-curated curriculum whilst exploring projective alternative pedagogical approaches and maintaining a discursive culture of ideas? And most importantly, what affordances can a hacker mindset provide as a framework for design studios as key sites of architectural education? RMIT Docklands Media Precinct The RMIT Docklands Media Precinct2 was a Master of Architecture industry- partnered and research-led design studio that ran in the first semester of 2020 – led by myself, in partnership with RMIT’s Policy Strategy Impact Team. The studio sought to concurrently explore two primary areas of investigation, a research interest in ‘typological procedural experiments’ as a design method and an exploration on speculative propositions and alternative prototypical spatial and formal models for tertiary learning environments. These two axes were brought together to open up design discourse for the development of RMIT’s Media Building in Docklands, an inner-city suburb in Melbourne, Australia. The studio population comprised of twelve students at varying stages of their education,3 of which nine were international students and three local and, all of which were based in Melbourne at the time of the pandemic. Charrette 7(1) Spring 2021 | 78 project In early 2020, as news of the COVID-19 pandemic progressively worsened globally, universities in Victoria were preparing for a potential lockdown in line with the State Government’s developing guidelines and policies. RMIT Architecture commenced a rapid transition of all courses online on 18th March 2020 (the middle of the third week of the first semester) and by 24th March 2020, the transition was complete, providing students and staff with resources to commence online delivery from remote locations. Hacking, architecture and education The stereotypical image of a hacker in popular culture has been a figure shrouded in secrecy attempting to illegally destabilise some sort of electronic authority. Hacking has had a negative connotation associated with it due to its portrayal in the media as a covert, illegal activity, however, it also foregrounds characteristics of creativity, resourcefulness, experimentation and discovery.4 The definition of ‘hacking’ has numerous interpretations in different disciplines; this article frames hacking as the mindset to expeditiously and specifically absorb and abstract a particular subject matter from a larger whole; to re-appropriate (or mis-appropriate) that matter through action and testing to meet requirements and enable a divergent approach to doing or making – in this case the approach to architecture education in the virtual turn. The emergence of this nebulous definition is from my own reflection and experience of delivering a pre-curated design studio curriculum through a pandemic and draws parallels with Michiel de Lange and Martijn de Waal’s definition of hacking as [the] process of clever or playful appropriation of existing technologies or infrastructures or bending the logic of a particular system beyond its intended purposes or restrictions to serve one’s personal, communal or activism goals.5 In this perspective, hacking can be considered as a type of ‘design research’,6 in the way that the pursuit of knowledge is carried out through a process of creative production where the research occurs through the ‘medium’.7 However, whereby some position hacking as a deep examination of something in order to creatively manipulate tools (in this case the potential digital tools for pedagogy), my own interest is not concerned with one’s ability to command superior knowledge of a particular device but with knowing enough to creatively manipulate and translate the purpose of existing digital technologies for architectural pedagogy and design. This was certainly the case during the pandemic where our studio imaginatively manoeuvred across multiple online platforms not originally intended for an architecture design studio culture and made them fit for purpose albeit to varying degrees of success. Literature around pedagogical hacking in architecture is surprisingly limited given the prototyping and experimental nature of design. However, examples 79 | Charrette 7(1) Spring 2021 exist of how a hacking practice is implemented by educators in different educational contexts, particularly at secondary school level. Educational institutions such as School Retool, created in collaboration with IDEO and Stanford School, implement principles of hacking to redesign school cultures.8 They describe the core principles of a hacker mindset as ‘developing a bias towards action, starting small and failing forward’.9 Similarly, Hacker High School also integrate hacking practices at a high school level.10 Dr Maya Wizel, a prominent researcher creating new paradigms for learning and self- proclaimed ‘educational hacker’, proposed the term ‘teachers as hackers’, to describe the actions of teachers in the K-12 public system who reform and act innovatively in their practice.11 Wizel’s research unearthed consistent personal traits and habits of teacher-hackers such as being risk-takers, embrace uncertainty, adaptive and reflective. The hacker mindset that the studio discussed here adopted, certainly embraced uncertainty: placing an emphasis on the rapid abstraction of possibilities emerging from varying digital platforms, pursuing integrative experimentation through doing and prototyping, commanding agility on what could perform well, letting go of the baggage of previously established patterns of behaviours of teaching and exploring what could be formally executed. It did this while taking big risks by prioritising progress rather than perfection. March to the beat of your own drum As the studio transitioned to online learning, the tools we were provided with were largely typical videoconferencing platforms with screen-sharing capabilities (such as Zoom, Collaborate Ultra and Microsoft Teams) to allow the presentation and discussion of projects. These platforms were not explicitly designed for architecture or other designed contexts such as Prezi or Miro for instance, which have more explicit affinities to design and creative contexts. This posed new challenges that primarily related to the physical and spatial character of not only the subject matter of the projects but also of the output and the established modes of engagement. In normal, pre- pandemic conditions, architectural design work produced by students, could encompass multiple sheets of printed drawings pinned up on a wall (mostly to scale), physical models, and, most importantly, the discourse and social interactions that further ideas and critique. A large part of my concern