WARPED EDUCATIONAL STRATEGIES IN SIMULATION OF PRACTICE

Abstract

The following paper is an account of an experiment in architecture
pedagogy and urban design undertaken at Tampere University of Technology
from 201012. The students involved were misled into believing
they were partaking in the reconstruction of a design studio project
made originally in 1978 at the University of California under the direction
of Christopher Alexander. Alexander had used the project, set on a
waterfront site in San Francisco, to demonstrate what he termed a «new
theory of urban design» based on bottom-up incrementalism rather than
a top-down master plan. In the reconstruction, however, the students
were not explicitly being taught the method or theory, but rather were
being tested in their attitude towards their own role as decision makers.
If it can be argued that first and foremost architects should be concerned
with the skilful realisation of buildings, how does education deal
with the question of ideology as raised by David Harvey in relation to the
right to the city within the current neoliberal urbanisation process? Do
students internalise the idea of their own right to design? The experiment
showed the students that irrespective of their grand architectural
ambitions the outcome on the waterfront site had degenerated into artless
urbanism because they did not have the overall control they expect
just like in the real world.

Architects and city planners suggest many different, sometimes ingenious,
solutions to perceived problems, but it is the marketplace that
decides which will succeed and which will fail.
Witold Rybczynski (2009, p. 95)