Why do you teach like you do? Teaching by design

Architectural education has been, and still is, a pedagogy driven by design – a creative process leading to innovation. The design studio is the backbone of the programme. Design is seen, by a growing amount of professions, as the means of dealing with complex and ill-defined problems. What values do we target when teaching by design? What does the design studio offer to the studio’s protagonists – students and teachers? Is the studio “the best way for students to learn, and not just the best way for schools to teach”*? What are the responsibilities of each of the protagonists in this context? The Bologna reform has (over)emphasized the independent student. Qualification has become a matter of collecting competences. Teaching is driven towards achieving pre-specified outcomes. The question of value is skipped. The increased emphasis on learning overrules the concerns of the educator, and targets towards a product.

Education, however, is not merely an economic activity, supplying for a need. It does not just provide courses as a commodity for students’ self-learning. Education addresses and enhances values. What is one’s teaching supposed to bring about? What is good education in architecture? What are architectural education values? Which manner of education will contribute the most in conveying these values? Why is design the best way to teach (in) architecture? Who is educating? What we value as ‘good education’ relates to context and time. Therefore, these questions are an inherent part of any discussion about architectural education, and need to be posed again.