Charrette:essay
Tales and tools: the Design Studio Brief in Architecture’s expanded field.
Suzanne Ewing. Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of Edinburgh.
ABSTRACT This essay argues that the Design Studio Brief establishes tacit disciplinary practices of architecture, as well as more explicit pursuit of topics of formulated relevance or concern. A series of tales of Design Studio Briefs from the fourth year of study at one UK Architecture School are sampled at dates which coincide with significant moments in Scotland’s recent constitutional history: the 1979 devolution Referendum, the 1997/1999 establishment of the Scottish Parliament, and the 2014 Independence Referendum. The tales are followed by a discussion on tools: towards means and practices which might inform the re-tooling of the Design Studio Brief and its ends.
KEYWORDS design studio brief, disciplinary practices, architectural education
Over the past forty years the field of global Higher Education economy. Allied to Architecture has expanded in scope and in the funding conditions which redefine national and potential of architectural design as subject and transnational educational responsibilities, what practice.1 Focus has shifted from site to field, educational capital is and what it is for, from static object to moving project.2 requires a refreshed ethical position.5 Preoccupations of Design Studios in architectural education have shifted from Euro- Architectural Design Studios are often known centric sites and artefacts deemed worthy of through their best student project achievements study, to a global field of competing and in professional body awards. There is less contested urban futures.3 As a discipline understanding of how they work: as collective defined through practice, it is increasingly at dynamic practice, as curricula narrative, in play in inter-, trans- and multi- disciplinary honing disciplinary skill and repertoire through domains.4 At the same time, architectural iterative and accumulative pedagogical tactics, education has expanded in scale as an as incubators and armatures of design research. attractive and profitable constituent of the Design Studio Briefs are rarely exposed, Charrette 3(1) Spring 2016 6 ISSN: 2054-6718 consistently archived or researched, yet are at The University of Edinburgh, and as Head fertile evidence of intended ends and means of of Architecture at Edinburgh College of Art, Architecture.6 Educators, as brief writers, where Architecture students had been taught establish both implicit and explicit fields of since the late nineteenth century. In 1955 he focus. While the conversational and de- split the posts, focusing on the Department of contextualized tone of many written briefs can Architecture at the University. He raised be dismissed as anecdotal, this essay proposes funding for a Housing Research Unit, that they are the thick data of architectural developed postgraduate work and attracted education and its scholarship,7 material excess international visiting lecturers such as Louis which bridges and reveals knowledge gaps Kahn, Nicolas Pevsner, Max Fry and Lewis between the big data fields of architectural Mumford.11 He continued to lead the School history, technology and visible products of until 1968. architectural design. They are generated by and for particular production practices: from T In 1958, Basil Spence’s office had plans on the square alignment to scale ruler measurement to drawing board for high rise housing at digital software. Further research into these Hutchestown, Gorbals Area C, Glasgow (built situated material practices might shed light on 1960-6, demolished in 1993). Robert Matthew the Academy as a site of emergent practicing Johnson Marshall’s Turnhouse Airport of architecture in its broadest sense. building outside Edinburgh had been completed in 1956. The 1950s were a busy era Tale: 0 (1958) for infrastructure construction in Scotland: Kincardine Power Station (1958-60); The 1958 Oxford Conference on Architectural Hunterston ‘A’ (1957-64); Rothes Colliery, Education is often used as a datum for Fife (1957); the Forth Road Bridge (1960-64). accounts of architectural education in the UK.8 A Comprehensive Development Area, This event institutionalised the education of an envisaging a megastructural redevelopment for architect in University, over the pupillage the whole of the University area was planned model of apprenticeship at an established for Edinburgh from 1962, prepared by Percy architectural firm. The Conference sought to Johnson-Marshall.12 More publicly consolidate a means of producing scientific disseminated architectural histories foreground research in architecture and the built autonomous jewels such as St Peter’s College, environment to advance theory in the subject.9 Cardross (1959-66), currently in ruins and the This predominant retreat into the Academy locus of a highly publicised 2016 site-specific aligned with a particular model and body of public art project.13 research which solidified UK postwar professional practice. Tale 1: +21 (1979)
Preoccupation with inter-disciplinary design John Hedjuk and Roger Canon published dialogue and discourse was a thread of the Education of an Architect: A Point of View in ‘Conference on Design Methods’ held in 1962, 1971, based on a decade of work of the US focusing on systematic and intuitive methods Cooper Union School, as a catalogue for an in engineering, industrial design, architecture exhibition of student work shown at the and communications, launching design Museum of Modern Art New York. Education methodology as a field of enquiry, with an of an Architect Volume II consolidated another emphasis on civilian research, decision-making decade of work, as framed by John Hedjuk, techniques, and teachable doctrine about the Elizabeth Diller, Diane Lewis and Kim design process. In defining what he means by Schkapih in 1988. Peggy Deamer notes that design as a discipline, Nigel Cross notes, the weighty and voluminously illustrated ‘there are forms of knowledge special to the volume ‘displays a pedagogy that is, despite awareness and ability of a designer, its visually powerful projects, largely opaque independent of the different professional and unexplained’.14 Deamer notes the domains of design practice’.10 singularity of the pedagogy of Volume I with origins in traditions of European formalism, From 1953 to 1955, Robert Matthew (1906- but detached from European cultural 1975) held posts as the first Professor of embeddedness and social origins, and later Architecture in the new Department of from the currents and debates of postmodern Architecture/ School of the Built Environment thought. A relatively hermetic positioning Charrette 3(1) Spring 2016 7 ISSN: 2054-6718 towards developing self-critical, reflective practice, at MIT’s Study and Research in Education 1968-1992. His oft-cited work on the Design Studio was published by the RIBA in 1985. In considering design as a discipline, Nigel Cross describes Donald Schön’s work as seeking ‘an epistemology of practice implicit in the artistic, intuitive processes which some practitioners do bring to situations of uncertainty, instability, uniqueness and value conflict’.16 The limits of Schön’s model, heavily based on cognitive theories of learning, have been observed by Helena Webster, who suggests ‘educators need to engage more with other theories of situated knowledge, action and learning’ such as those promoted by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger.17
A 1979 Edinburgh University Experimental Design Workshop, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, took place with nineteen architecture students (four female, fifteen male) returning to their final (fourth) year of undergraduate education after a year out in practice.18 They were joined by six architect practitioner group leaders, including architect, Isi Metzstein, three consultants drawn from Department staff, critic Alan Colquhoun, and a group advisor/ facilitator.19 The resulting Figure 1: The Anatomy of a Teaching Experiment document carefully describes the pedagogy, (1980) Printed publication. Now housed in the elevation, plan and section propositions and University of Edinburgh Art and Architecture Library, reflective evaluations by participants of this Edinburgh. ten day exercise to design an Extension to the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh. The focused on ‘abstract design operations’. For ‘Design Programme’ for a contemporary Deamer, Hedjuk’s pedagogy offered a museum, specifically the Decorative Arts paradigmatic line of architectural resistance to Department included a full schedule of the functionalism of modernism. quantitative accommodation required for
Galleries and Storage, Laboratories, Education In the Fourth Year Design section of Volume Areas, Library, Staff Rooms, Catering, II, Diane Lewis introduces the studio as having Services and Administration, with Drawings to ‘…entered the subject of the City with be at 1:200 scale. determination to arrive at an architecture embodying the essence and possibility of A motivation for this workshop was stated as Place, challenging convention with new the erosion of ‘the effectiveness with which programs, new conceptions of site, structure, learning by doing is conducted in schools of and materiality, with a re-commitment to 20 15 architecture’, cited as stemming from the Social Contract’. A series of projects, detachment of practitioners from the academy. working with the laboratory of the ‘Island of Workshop leader, P.G. Raman, notes that the Manhattan’ are presented through carefully field of Design Methodology, aiming to make crafted line drawings and choreographed the process of design as explicit as possible, photographs of models. had been discredited as difficult to achieve due
to the near impossibility of separating skills Donald Schön (1930-1997), informed by John from action. He promoted this workshop as an Dewey’s pragmatist theory of inquiry, exercise in ‘expert teaching by demonstration’, undertook research and collaborative work ‘the dynamic process by which knowledge is with Chris Argyris on professional learning, acquired and ability is developed’, and Charrette 3(1) Spring 2016 8 ISSN: 2054-6718 response to changing demands from a disorderly world’.22
Between 1969 and 1983, Guy Oddie (1922- 2011) held the position of Robert Adam Professor of Architecture at the Department of Architecture at the University of Edinburgh. He identified his hero as Sir Edwin Lutyens. From previous employment, he knew Robert Matthew’s partner in RMJM, Stirrat Johnson- Marshall. Stirrat’s brother, Percy Johnson- Marshall (1915-1993) was Professor of Urban Design and Regional Planning in Edinburgh between 1964 and 1985. He believed that
architects could do the greatest social good by working in the public offices of counties and cities.23 Isi Metzstein (1928-2015) became Forbes Professor and Head of School at Edinburgh in 1984. Isi, was partner in architectural practice, Gillespie, Kidd and Coia, designers of innovative and influential buildings in Scotland and the UK in the 1960s -1980s. He noted shifts in underlying architectural ideologies, ‘…there were people who didn't believe in modernism but by […] middle 80's, … debate that was more or less over. Still, there were still residual people who believed in, I'll call it, neo-classicism, […] or what you call Scottish architecture..’. He positioned himself as working towards a Figure 2: Practical Exercises in Computing for ‘modified Modern architecture’ not Scottish Architects (1981). Typewritten publication. Now housed architecture’.24 in the ESALA Archives, Edinburgh.
A referendum was held in Scotland in 1979, indicates the influence of thinkers Michael which posed the inauguration of a Scottish Polanyi and Thomas Khun on the activation Assembly.25 In the referendum, just over half and acquisition of explicit and implicit of all votes cast were in favour, but this was knowledge. Other reference points included not brought into being as under a controversial the pupillage systems of the nineteenth rule, this was less than 40% of the electorate. century, ‘Design Fêtes’ at Rice University, There was much debate in architectural circles USA, and ‘Models and Metaphors’ workshop about Scottishness and Scottish Architecture. for teachers of design at Cranbrook College, Relatively little building construction took USA. place in Scotland. A design competition for a museum building for The Burrell Collection, Edinburgh Computer Aided Architectural Glasgow, was held in 1971. It was won by Design (EdCAAD), a research centre at the Barry Gasson and Brit Andresen and Department of Architecture, presented eventually opened in 1983. In 2013 it was architecture students with ‘Practical Exercises 21 awarded ‘A’-listed status, and is seen as one of in Computing for Architects’ in April 1981. Scotland’s finest examples of 1970s design.26 In the annual Research Report by Director, Aart Bijl, the complexities of design as a stable discipline are noted: ‘Designers, […], are answerable to a public who make demands which break the bonds of any defined discipline. […] designers have to operate with building models which vary over time in
Charrette 3(1) Spring 2016 9 ISSN: 2054-6718 as the development of new planning frameworks…the use of environmental education to remedy the alienation of many people from the places they inhabit…drawing new boundaries of civic and national life.29
In the UK context, the early 1990s were a period of highly politicised Higher Education. The cessation of grants for Diploma students, and frequent government interventions unsettled architectural education, which was seen increasingly in economic terms as useful for the production of national and global real estate. Necdet Teymur notes that this crisis had as much to do with the contradictions of professionalism and the ‘limits of vocationalism’ as governmental strategy. Differences between architectural academics and practitioners were exposed.
The first step for academics could be to reclaim the educational high ground by changing the very terms of the debate: that is, rather than discussing how many years should the courses in architectural education be, they should probably be asking what sort of education should we be developing in the 30 context of a fast changing world.
Figure 3: 1998/1999 Design Studio briefs, photocopies In Edinburgh, after Isi Metzstein retired as of Word documents. Now housed in the ESALA Professor in 1991, Robert Tavernor (1954- ) Quality Assurance files, University of Edinburgh. led the school for three years between 1992 and 1995. Work on Alberti and digitisation Tale 2: +20 (1997/1999) shifted research activity from an urban and housing emphasis building on the growing In 1999, Scottish based historian Miles presence of architectural history staff and Glendinning and architect David Page curricula. described the Scottish city in this ‘Postmodern Space’ as ‘An Empty Vessel’, which they dub 27 In the two academic years 1997/98 and 1998/9, Clone City. They called for a a number of design studios were run in Junior reconceptualization of the possibilities of Honours (Year 3) and Senior Honours (Year 4) ‘Clydeforth, Conurbation in landscape’, and of the Undergraduate Architecture degree, for ‘Eutopian Cities of Tomorrow’. Their position 20-30 home and 7-9 Erasmus students.31 The explicitly responds to the pre-legislative projects were all sited in Edinburgh or Scottish referendum vote on 11 September 1997 in rural areas, with clearly defined programmes support of the establishment of a Scottish and an emphasis on responding to and Parliament with devolved powers, which led to resolving a specific building brief. The the establishment of a new Scottish umbrella course themes describe a scope of government. The authors expose the new focus work which a practitioner at the time might be on democratic identity at a time of global trend engaged with. toward less government and declining materialist ideas of progress attached to An extract from the brief of one-term project 28 nationalism. Building Type 1 1997/98, explains, ‘Although we have a detailed brief from our client…we …a radically different vision of how will not jump in straight away at the deep end architecture can help build a new Scottish and design the school. We will approach it identity…through calls for practical acts, such through a series of graded exercises…’32 Charrette 3(1) Spring 2016 10 ISSN: 2054-6718 These exercises progress from Reading the site: deciphering, recording the ‘presence’ of the site, survey- factual and felt; to Developing an Iconography of Learning environment, to Precedent studies [“Of course the process of construction is best learnt in practices and we in university should concentrate on theoretical and intellectual matters.”], to Field trip to Hampshire, to Design of the School [“The brief from our client is given at the end but it is important to stress that we in the University are expected to base our design on a degree of research and an appreciation of the state of the art in our chosen building type.]”, to Constructional and Environmental case study for a Primary School, and Design Elaboration.
The exercises did not instruct ‘how to design’, but set out research, production, and fieldwork, brought to bear on specific design tasks. Shadowing a real brief enables a positioning of pedagogic purpose in the Academy in direct relation to a professional practice brief.
The Old Town and New Town of Edinburgh were listed together as a World Heritage Site in 1995. After a contested discussion about the most appropriate site, and a publicly debated design competition, June 1999 saw the start of the construction of the Scottish Parliament building, designed by Enric Miralles, in collaboration with RMJM, opened in 2004. Discussions focused primarily on the representational or symbolic role and site of the Parliament building, with much controversy and criticism in the media about the economics and management of its design and construction. It won the Stirling Prize for Architecture in 2005, and has become a landmark for visiting international architects. After many years as a vacant site, the Museum of Scotland Extension building designed by Figure 4: Lost Spaces 2013/2014 Design Studio brief, Benson and Forsyth Architects opened in pdf publication. Now housed in the LEARN Virtual 1998, following an international competition Learning Environment web portal, and controversial verbal interventions by https://www.myed.ed.ac.uk Prince Charles criticising the decision of “so- called experts”.33 Buildings and People, Refurbishment and Evidence Based Education, Research into Tale 3: +25 (2014) Teaching Courses, Buildings and Cities, Schools and Professional Views, Materials and In 2008 the Oxford Conference was revisited Renewable Energy, Virtual Building and under the banner ‘50 Years On: Resetting the Generative Design, Design Research. Much Agenda for Architectural Education’. Invited was presented, perhaps realising some of the presentations and forum sessions were grouped promise of the production of theory through around a series of topics: Buildings and the research from 1958. However, changes to the Environment, Studio Culture: Sustaining funding of Higher Education in England and Studio Education in a Climate of Change, Wales implemented in 2010-2011, have Charrette 3(1) Spring 2016 11 ISSN: 2054-6718 perhaps had a more significant resetting effect, The Historic Environment Strategy for with students on Architecture courses carrying Scotland published in March 2014 prior to the significant individual debt. In contrast, Historic Environment Scotland Act 2014, and Scotland retained public funding for Scottish the Scottish Planning Policy issued in June students under the devolved powers for 2014. This cluster of policies and related Education of the Scottish Parliament in the guidance documents are connected with UK. National Outcomes and a National Performance Framework38 but detached from In 2009 the Edinburgh School of Architecture detailed strategies and agencies of and Landscape Architecture (ESALA) was implementation, where design knowledge in established and in 2011 Edinburgh College of practice might be played out. Art formally merged with the University of Edinburgh. In line with UK policy, rising The Referendum question on 18 September undergraduate student numbers since the 1990s 2014 was ‘Should Scotland be an independent established a cohort of around one hundred and country?’ It was responded to with the highest twenty undergraduate students, including a record for an election or referendum in the UK, large proportion of international students with a majority of ‘no’ voters at the final graduating in 2014. count.39 National construction projects included the Queensferry Crossing bridge over Four parallel studios were offered to Year 4 the Firth of Forth, the de-commissioning of students in 2013/14 and 2014/15.34 The overall Dounreay Nuclear Power Station, Scottish emphasis was architectural tectonics, ‘… there Power Renewables Tidal Stream Energy Array has been a gradual erosion of Architects’ on Islay, and the Beauly-Denny Electricity expertise and competence in the fields that are Network Project. In Dundee, the V&A the main definers of tectonics (such as Museum of Design, designed by Japanese construction, structures and environment), architect Kengo Kuma was being built as a resulting in a lack of integration of them within new ‘living room for the city’. The University the design/building process.’35 of Edinburgh was progressing its ambitious Capital Projects scheme ‘Working to provide A sense of architecture’s diminished relevance and enhance an estate capable of supporting occurs in Culture and Crisis, ‘Certainly the world-class academic activity’.40 recent economic downturn has had major repercussions across all sections of society…It Future tales: +21 (2035) does, therefore, beg the question: Why bother with architecture?’ Grappling with issues of a What of the institutionalisation or de- sense of place communicated through institutionalisation of the next generation of architecture in Civic Fabrications, where the architectural education and practice? The studio aimed to ‘…articulate civic presence in relationship between sheltered academy and a depressed context, void of coherent windswept practice? Reflective practice which identity’.36 is not self-referential but able to work across disciplines, generations and political Appearances and essences invited a wide persuasions, open to redefinition through interpretation of comprehensive design designing in and with the public? The proposition, ‘…might range from radical reimagining of vocational limits? The performance art to the social performance of navigation of global commodification and individuals in diverse forms of public space, legislation? from the pub to the city square to the debating chamber.’37 This pervasive sense of What are the clues and prompts for focused yet architecture’s lost ground on one hand tactical design operations and design thinking positions architecture’s meta-project as one of towards what architecture can do in future recovery. On the other hand, it opens new tasks and projects that matter? In the context of fields, studios structured for individual Scotland’s increasingly solidified governance navigation and construction, rather than a path of outcome measurability, situated in a world cleared in advance by the tutor. of elusively asymmetrical economic and political tensions, what is the role of the Scotland’s Architecture and Place Policy was qualitative architectural imagination in launched in June 2013. Our Place in Time – architecture’s expanded field? How can Charrette 3(1) Spring 2016 12 ISSN: 2054-6718 architecture participate in identifying, He decries the notion that Architecture Schools strategizing and implementing cultural and should follow professional practice. Instead, he social ‘tasks’ which are overlooked or not yet argues for praxis, where both technical means fully articulated or imagined? and values are attended to, and the architectural imagination cultivated. Following a historic drive towards democratisation, devolution and latent To teach the poetic utterance, the point of independence, what is going to be built over departure itself needs to be poetic. This should the next twenty five years in Scotland? Who be the nature of course and project statements. will steer the expectations and potentials of … The questions are more important than the this? Will there be commitment to interrelate possible answers that may emerge during a rural and urban land economics and particular design exercise, or through oral development strategies? The 1950s extensive communication in a class or seminar….We infrastructure implementation and innovation, need to abandon our quest to simulate projects of complexity and extended duration - production, with supposedly finished hospitals, school building programmes, public “buildings” as the ultimate objective. The housing- took place in politically and educator must cultivate a vigilant openness economically aligned frameworks. Since the and critical acumen, coupled with a passionate 1970s, Architecture’s professional scope has commitment for all that has truly moved her’.43 been privatised, effectively devolved to cultural, institutional, conservational, domestic In the history of architectural education, ends work. Matters on the horizon need much or oppositional, corrective positions have often practical intelligence, wisdom and skill in driven the modes and content of what has been dealing with the full complexity of the tasks, taught. The Académie Royale d’Architecture cognisant of global and national of seventeenth century France, a group of disconnections: Scotland as a Hydro Nation, advisors to the king were asked to ‘bring forth the National Grid’s adaptation to peripheral a more exact knowledge and a more correct generation patterns, environmental adjustments theory’ to offer an alternative to the then in an era of climate change, which all affect powerful trade guilds.44 Blondel’s École possibilities for and limitations of inhabitation. included public lectures on arithmetic, What is an architecture of a world that might geometry, mechanics, military architecture, be driven by ethical economics, resilient fortifications, perspective and stone cutting dwelling in shared environments, and land- clearly having national applicability. The roots and urban- scapes that are hospitable, uplifting of modern instrumental education have been and more than nationally branded tourist traced to late eighteenth century France, with J. backdrops? L. Durand’s positioning orienting a positivistic architectural theory, against architecture as an Tools : ends and means art form, “in which the value of architecture could be judged from its pragmatic utility and Architectural educator and thinker, Alberto efficiency”.45 This overrode the previously Pérez-Gómez, following Giambatista Vico, dominant model of apprenticeship. “The suggests that the primary contemporary notion of a progressive history of “works” challenge and potential for the discipline of became dominant in 19th century architectural architecture in a world driven by reason and discourse, and despite recent critical instrumentality, is the pursuit of “imaginative arguments, probably remains the dominant universals”, ‘an in-between the universal foundation of architectural education”.46 world of ideas and the concretely specific stuff of things...’.41 The pedagogic drive of the Bauhaus with its theoretical and craft teaching was seen as We know buildings allow us to think and critical in an age of industrialised mass imagine…How is it possible to practice production. Counter to production in ethically, reconciling the individual contemporary professional practice, imagination and its real cultural values, with reactivating threads from the 1960s discourse the imperatives of production in a world on design methods, the Design Studio, as a site defined by technological universals?42 and activity at the core of learning and scholarship in design disciplines, has more recently been suggested and tested as a very Charrette 3(1) Spring 2016 13 ISSN: 2054-6718 particular academic space which may generate follow real briefs in practice, to those that offer or be evaluated as design research: as a site for more speculative points of departure. education research; as part of a larger research Understanding design briefs in professional programme; as theorized creative works.47 practice is articulated in ARB General Criteria for Prescription as an Architect in the UK. Mark Wigley notes that the possibility of an These include General Criteria (GC)7 Architecture School emerged in the US ‘Understanding of the methods of investigation because of the expansion of the university and preparation of the brief for a design through the addition of both the sciences and project’, with GC7.2 ‘the need to appraise and the fine arts. prepare building briefs of diverse scales and types, to define client and user requirements The institution had extended itself into the and their appropriateness to site and context; traditional gap between liberal and practical GC3 ‘the contributions of architects and co- but redefined this territory to preserve its basic professionals to the formulation of the brief, (architectural) principles. This disruption of and the methods of investigation used in its the traditional limits of the university created a preparation’. This emphasis on circumscribed double opening for architecture: first, to join professional action does not offer orientation the sciences, […] and second, to join the fine to working on the imaginative universals and arts…48 concrete specificities of architecture’s expanded field. In what ways might shadowing He describes William Ware’s establishment of a real brief with imaginary ends not only the principle that ‘original design’ could fulfil constructively interpret and multiply projected the requirement for a university thesis, the first possibilities, but also productively interrogate one completed in 1973 and entitled “Design the dialogue between practice and Design for the Buildings of the Water Works of a Studio? City.49 Design Studio Briefs in the Academy often Helen Armstrong, writing about architectural remain in the closed loop of institutional studios run at RMIT, Australia, notes a Quality Assurance, reduced to summary titles paradigm shift from modernist ‘cause and in end of year School catalogues. Much that is effect’ Design Studio Briefs of the 1970s to communicated in pedagogic documentation is those with more speculative, open inquiries.50 inevitably complex and contingently situated. The tales from Edinburgh echo this. She notes Design Studio Briefs embody both explicit and a ’shift from training to critical inquiry and implicit knowledge and are primary evidence scholarship. […] The structure of a design of interpretation of the subject and approaches studio involves a high degree of intellectual to ‘doing design’. These tools of architectural rigour and research, both in its design and education have capacity to both focus implementation’.51 Where student work is architectural endeavour, and to enable work in often seen as the end point of the studio, so the an expanded field. intellectual and creative input of staff tends to fade away and move on with the students. The Tools: practices interplay between student and tutor complicates authorship issues, which may also We have neglected the pedagogy of include the formulation of individual, architecture and the way in which the responsive design briefs within the pedagogic architectural imagination has to be toned, studio brief, asking ‘how does one refined, developed through working lives….I acknowledge the significant role the tutor think there is an urgent need for giving plays in the design outcomes?’ 52 architectural teaching much more honour in our programme, not by separating it from the Design Briefs and briefings can range from rest of the profession, but by weaving it into tightly structured instruction to open research. the rest of professional activities, by increasing Well-pitched, judged and rehearsed briefs have the discourse, making the discourse more scope to cultivate collective, collaborative and alert, more available, more challenging to transdisciplinary work, as well as to pursue more architects, all of whom are part of this ‘imaginative universals’. The University of educational programme one way or another. 53 Edinburgh Architecture Design Studio Briefs expose a typological range which closely Charrette 3(1) Spring 2016 14 ISSN: 2054-6718 This essay has argued for more attention and techniques and practices be adapted, rigorous probing of the practices, rather than rediscovered, improvised as means of the theories of architectural education. navigation with critical traction? Are Design Practising architecture in the Design Studio, Studio Briefs written to open up this potential? with Studio Briefs re-tooled to work in an Stan Allen comments on competing architecture’s expanded field may offer clues categorisations of practice- discursive and to inter-disciplinary practice, yet still be material- and argues for a pragmatic, but not attentive to disciplinary position and skill. conservative approach which is agile and Recent interest in the transdisciplinary studio attentive to its own rules. in art theory offers a refreshed view. Alex Coles argues that ‘artists and designers are ‘…Material practices unfold in time, with a now defined not by their discipline but by the full awareness of the history of the discipline, fluidity with which their practices move but never satisfied to simply repeat, or to between the fields of architecture, art and execute a system of rules defined elsewhere. design’.54 Does preoccupation with fluidity of Architecture’s limits are understood practices (what they can do) overlook the pragmatically – as a resource and an acquiring, honing and mastery of skill of opportunity- and not a defining disciplinary methods and techniques? Do boundary…Under the pragmatics of material shared aims have common means? practice, the fixed structure of the discipline is Transdisciplinary work is work situated in time neither rejected or affirmed.’55 and place, is work of exchange. This essay has exposed the Design Studio Following art theorist, Rosalind Krauss’s Brief as a litmus of values and approaches to conceptualisation of the expanded field as a doing architecture over the past forty years. It condition of the hybridisation of art, sculpture has argued that the Design Studio Brief’s and land-based practices which emerged in the specificity enables creative and open, tactical 1960s, architecture has been argued to have and strategic routes through complexity. It may been hybridised, to be defined more by the be a significant tool in a critical re-shaping of adjacencies of its edges than the specificity of pedagogical and other practices in and of its core. Anthony Vidler in his 2004 essay in architecture. There is a need to discuss what ArtForum set out some of the emerging might be taught in this context, and for disciplinary edges pertinent to architecture. architects, politicians, and the public to refresh Expansion has opened horizons to new what it is that architecture can – and cannot - intellectual fields, to new knowledge, to new do in, for instance, shaping Scotland’s future. ways of thinking and researching, and to new Awareness of critical relations, position and practices. It is a mode of exploration, of disposition are needed in an expanded field, appropriation, of colonisation, also of potential towards sophisticated (and communicable) intermingling, mixing and re-formation. In design thinking, design knowing and design some ways Architecture is at ease with this acting. Perhaps most significant is the expanded condition. As a discipline defined nurturing of an expanded architectural through practice, it has always navigated many imagination over expanded activity: an knowledges and discourses. argument for expansiveness of the mind focused on imaginative universals and specific If architecture’s overarching ends are the clarity of action brought into focus through pursuit of ‘imaginative universals’, then how is concrete specificity, rather than looking to this pursued in an expanded field or as an claim lost ground for architectural education expanded discipline? How can existing tools, institutionalised only as professional activity.
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REFERENCES 10 The conference was held at the Department of Aeronautics, Imperial College, London, UK 1 Anthony Vidler, ‘Architecture's Expanded from 19-21 September. Cross, p.1, 4. Field’, Artforum, vol. 42.8 (April 2004), 142- 147. 11 Dictionary of Scottish Architects; DSA Biography Report, Robert Hogg Matthew. 2 Stan Allen, 'From Object to Field', in DSA, 2014. Practice: Architecture, Technique and
3 Suzanne Ewing, ‘Coming and going: 13 NVA, Hinterland, a curated light and sound itinerant education and educational capital’, in event to launch Scotland’s 2016 Festival of The Oxford Conference 2008: A re-evaluation Architecture. of Education in Architecture, ed. by Sue Roaf
6 A rare reflection is Anthony Vidler, ‘Toward 16 Nigel Cross, ‘Designerly Ways of a Theory of the Architectural Program’, Knowing: Design Discipline versus Design October vol. 106 (Autumn 2003), 59-74. Science’, Design Issues, 17:3 (2001), 49–55.
7 A recently coined term, an ethnographic 17 Helena Webster, ‘Architectural Education concept and tool following Clifford Geertz. after Schön: Cracks, Blurs, Boundaries and Tricia Wang (2013) ‘Big Data Needs Thick Beyond’, Journal for Education in the Built Data’ Ethnography Matters (2013). Environment, Vol 3, Issue 2 (2008), 63-74: 72
Charrette 3(1) Spring 2016 16 ISSN: 2054-6718 of the Diploma. Subsequently, the 29 Glendinning and Page, p.219. undergraduate degree incorporated a placement 30 Necdet Teymur, Architectural Education: period. Years 5 + 6 Bachelor of Architecture Issues in educational practice and policy, were introduced in 1997/8 replacing the (London: ?uestion press, 1992), p. 86. Diploma, with the first term a period of placement. 31 These 1997/8 studios were led by: P.G. Raman, Martin Birkhans, Clive Albert, Fiona 19 P.G. Raman, ed. The Anatomy of a McLachlan, Richard Coyne, Roger Talbot, Jim Teaching Experiment. Report on an Lawson. Topics included a Kindergarten based Experimental Design Workshop, (Edinburgh: on Midlothian Council Education Brief for University of Edinburgh Department of new primary School; Heart of Midlothian Architecture publication, 1980), p. 80-832 for stadium; new paper, printmaking workshop in brief schedule. Dean Village; A Foyer for Edinburgh; Beyond Skye. Topics in 1998/99 included: Conversion 20 Raman, p. iv of a Brewery to health club, restaurant, retail, Soundscape, study of coast opposite Bass Rock 21 EdCAAD, Practical Exercises in Urban Park, Forth and Clyde Canal; Computing for Architects, (Edinburgh: Containers. Source: Minto House archives. EdCAAD, 1981), p.10. Source: Minto House Archive, University of Edinburgh. 32 Brief by P.G. Raman.
22 EdCAAD, (1978), p.1. 33 ‘1991: Prince quits in museum design row’, BBC News, 13 August 1991. 23 Dictionary of Scottish Architects; DSA
27 Miles Glendinning and David Page, Clone 36 Mark Cousins, Culture and Crisis Design City. Crisis and Renewal in Contemporary Studio Brief, p. 2. Source: University of Scottish Architecture, (Edinburgh: Polygon, Edinburgh, LEARN vle site. 1999) p. x. 37 Alex Maclaren and Fiona McLachlan, Civic 28 Glendinning and Page, p. 217. Fabrication Design Studio Brief, p. 2. Source: University of Edinburgh, LEARN vle site
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38 ‘Scotland’s Future’ The Scottish 52 Armstrong, 1999, p.18. Government White Paper on Independence, 53 Frank Duffy, ‘Education in Architecture, in November 2013, Part 3. Educating Architects, ed. by Martin Pearce and
39 For context see The Scottish Government, 54 Alex Coles,The Transdisciplinary Studio, ‘Scotland’s Future: From the Referendum to (Sternberg Press, 2012), cover, 17. Independence and a Written Constitution’ (February 2013). 55 Allen, p. xv, x.
40 University of Edinburgh Estates.
41 Pérez-Gómez, p. 15.
42 Pérez-Gómez, p. 17.
43 Pérez-Gómez, p. 21.
44 Broadbent, p. 13.
45 Pérez-Gómez, p. 18.
46 Pérez-Gómez, p.18; Allen, p.xiii. See also Mark Crinson, and Jules Lubbock, 1994 Architecture- art or profession? Three hundred years of architectural education in Britain, (Manchester and New York, 1994).
47 Helen Armstrong, ‘Design as Research: Creative Works and the Design Studio as Scholarly Practice’, Architectural Theory Review, 5:2 (2009), 1-13 (p.5, pp.7-10).
48 Wigley, p. 12.
49 Wigley, p. 20-21. The topic was specified by the school, aiming to exhibit architecture’s role as both science and art. The defence was through a number of drawings and associated ‘Explanations’. “Architecture...fills all the gaps that once defined the outer limits of the university but now inhabit and divide its core.”
50 Armstrong, 1-13.
51 Helen Armstrong, ‘Design Studios as Research: an emerging paradigm for landscape architecture’, Landscape Review, 5 (2) (1999), 5-25: (p.9).
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