Architectures for Care,
language and pedagogyThe fifth year of architectural education at the Iceland University of the Arts IUA is devoted to further explore and expand both the meaning and scope of architectures and architects’ multiple societal agencies. It does so through collective reflection and research during the first term followed by a student driven design project which represents the MArch final design work.
The goal of the final year design studio is to support students developing knowledge, skills, traits, attitudes, and behaviours necessary for becoming critical and caring societal agents, that is cosmopolitan citizens. The task of the design studio is to open possibilities to envision the wonderous possibilities that the field of architectural research can generate.
Together we speak of architectures rather than architecture, emphasizing therefore their collective and collaborative nature.
Architectures are:
[1]- processes of exploration aimed at learning to see, listen to, and engage in dialogue with the world that surrounds us.
- about learning to describe the world and critically interpret it, so we might imagine a preferable one.
- devoted to thinking of the political, social, and ecological consequences of our design choices.
- plural, heterogenous, common, and shared.
- always in relation to places, communities, and people, and yet influenced by global forces.
- interconnected with their ecological and social systems which form them.
- inclusive & diverse, contingent & holistic, collaborative & civic-minded, speculative & action oriented.
Architectures are about the social and ecological relations involved in their practice—a practice that transcends the design of buildings to include processes of thinking, theorising, and writing that relate humans and their environment (Tharp & Tharp, 2019; Harriss, Hyde, & Marcaccio, 2021).
This is a practice that is holistic and receptive of arts and humanities, science and technology, and new social, technological, and ecological challenges (Rendell et al., 2007; UIA, 2011; UNESCO-UIA, 2017).
Architectures’ practices can be used in multiple ways: as a critical process of enquiry (Ockman, 2012); as a vehicle for raising social awareness (Cruz, 2014, p. 51; Yaneva, 2017); as a tool for imagining and advancing agendas of social justice (Cruz, 2014, p. 51; Hyde, 2012); and as a collaborative project aimed at living together harmoniously (Fitz & Krasny, 2019; Sarkis, 2021).
Care is a practice.
Care is everything that is done to maintain, continue, and repair ‘the world’ so that all can live in it as well as possible in a complex, life sustaining web (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017, p. 161).Care is our individual and common ability to provide the political, social, material, and emotional conditions that allow the vast majority of people and living creatures on this planet to thrive – along with the planet itself (Chatzidakis, 2020, p. 6).
Cosmopolitanism
is a multidimensional societal project of redefining who we are and how we relate to each other, as diverse and equal beings who live in a common world. “Cosmopolitanism is a world view that celebrates human diversity and equality and recognition of the interconnectedness that exists among all humans, beyond humans, and our environment” (Osler & Starkey, 2005, p. 24).Cosmopolitan citizenship education
helps educators and learners to understand more about themselves, to develop an inclusive language receptive of multiple and often contradictory standpoints. A language that helps people connect more profoundly with themselves, with the Other, and with the world, as precious, diverse, collaborative, and unique parts of an inextricably interrelated system that constitutes the web of life on Earth. UNESCO explains cosmopolitan citizenship education as the acquisition of the knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, and behaviours necessary to become active promoters of more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure, and sustainable societies and to form collaborative individuals who have sense of belonging to the worldwide community of human and more than human beings. This type of education emphasises political, economic, social, and cultural interdependency and interconnectedness that exist between the local, the national and the global and the shared responsibilities that each individual carries as a distinct yet equal citizen of a shared and common world (UNESCO, 2015).[2]Becoming cosmopolitan citizen-architects
means understanding and using architectures as practice for care, as political tools to shape our environment and society. Politics must be understood as the way we want to live together—who we want to be and how we want to relate to the Other—in our local places that are never dissociated nor dematerialised from their global context (Plumwood, 2008). Politics and design are linked, as they both necessitate collaborative processes inclusive of different voices, interests, and multiple standpoints if they aim to support and advance social justice.Becoming cosmopolitan architects means becoming critical, informed, empathic, and socially active individuals. It means becoming architects capable of imagining and designing not only new spatial configurations but also exploring architects‘ multiple societal roles. Cosmopolitan architects use architectures as collaborative projects aimed at caring for and repairing the spaces of common good.
Becoming cosmopolitan citizen architects means developing both a language and a pedagogy capable of supporting this process. Language and pedagogy are linked and indissolubly connected. Yet it helps to speak from these two perspectives: that of a formulation of a language capable of addressing the challenges of today’s world, and that of a pedagogy capable of guiding design studios into learning platforms more receptive of diversity and more inclusive of different epistemologies and ontologies.
The language for cosmopolitan citizenship in architectural education
A language for cosmopolitan citizenship in architectural education helps students acquire a larger vocabulary of concepts and ideas that can be used to expand the architectural discourse “beyond form,” redefining what architectures are and can do.A language for cosmopolitan citizenship in architectural education validates students’ different voices, different methods of learning, and different ways of practicing architecture. It explains creativity as a collaborative project based on thinking together, among peers and people outside university. It invites students and their teachers to consider education not as a rehearsal for future practice, but a time to challenge the status quo and forge the conditions for civic engagement between academia and the Other. It encourages the creation of a caring learning environment that empowers students in developing their architectural practice as well as their societal agency to contribute to much-needed social and ecological justice and to make a positive difference in the world. The purpose of this language is to empower students to imagine and enact their own way of becoming political agents who bring positive societal change; by doing so, its purpose is to advance the societal relevance of architectural education.
The pedagogy for cosmopolitan citizenship in architectural education
aims to transform schools into inclusive, diverse, collaborative, socially aware and active platforms receptive to different ways of being, thinking, and making architectures. Such pedagogy aims at exploring the design process as a means to advance social and ecological justice. Such education is related to lived experiences; it is about understanding that ongoing climate crises, social inequality, and spread of zoonotic diseases need to constitute the premise and scope of scholarly investigation and design solutions. These global challenges reflect in fact not our lack of knowledge but our inability to relate harmoniously to one another and our inability to care for each other and our planet as a whole. They reflect the way we have been designing the world, but not the way we should be designing the world.A pedagogy for cosmopolitan citizenship in architectural education is committed to honouring the two fundamental purposes of architectural education, to educate ethical professionals and world citizens (UIA, 2011, p. 7). It aims to equip future architects with the skills, attitudes, traits, and behaviours necessary to move away from current destructive practices and towards the environmental, social, and economic justice necessary to protect life on our planet. This pedagogy helps us “to be in the world,” which implies both “being with the world” and “with others” (Freire, [1997] 2007, p. 33). Pedagogy is therefore a complex and multidimensional practice of redefining who we are in the world and how we can relate with the world, as diverse and equal beings who live with Others. This practice has social and spatial implications as it shapes the way we want to live together.
A pedagogy for cosmopolitan citizenship in architectural education collectively raise the following questions concerning the nature of the design studio:
1- Diversity & Inclusion
Is the design studio open to the diversity of the world?Who is present and who is missing in the design studio among our students, teachers, textbooks, references, guest teachers, voices, perspectives, epistemologies, and methodologies of learning? What are students allowed to do and not do? Are students empowered in the pursuit of their own architectural agency? Does the design studio recognise the variety of the practice of architectures beyond building design alone? Does it consider other-than-human points of view, or other standpoints besides the dominant one?
Schools are communities of thinkers. Good and healthy communities are vibrant and diverse. In the design studio it is important to understand that “our capacity to generate excitement is deeply affected by our interest in one another, in hearing one another’s voices, in recognizing one another’s presence” (hooks, 1994, p. 8). The voices of the students present in the design studio must be listened to and empowered, and educators must make sure these voices are as diverse as the society they intend to serve (Braidotti, 2013; Sutton, 2020).
The presence in the design studio of different voices—especially those most marginalised—is essential for making palpable different realities. They contribute to imagining more inclusive, objective, and significant perspectives than those that would come exclusively from dominant conceptual standpoints (Harding, 2015, p. 30), where dominant refers to those frameworks that mainly serve “the values and interests of the most powerful groups” (Harding, 2015, p. 34). A plurality of sources of experience, knowledge, ideas, and research methodologies enriches the design process. It expands and celebrates the multiple practices of architecture beyond building design alone; it incites future architects to work more empathically and collaboratively for social and environmental justice and for the care of Others. Diverse and inclusive design studios empower students to find their specific inner compass, their interests and aspirations, and frame those considering both their civic responsibilities and possible societal agency.
2- Critical Thinking & Problem-Posing
Are critical questions asked in the design studio?Does the design studio provide the learning environment for students to make use of their experiential knowledge? Does the design studio leave students sufficient time for self-reflection? Does the design studio allow students to formulate their own design brief? Does the design studio allow students to challenge the status quo? Is the design studio equally interested in the process and the product?
Each design is an enquiry: a research process to raise awareness, unveiling hidden realities and mature judgements on the state of the world, and to collectively imagine how will we live together without occluding other possibilities. This process starts with critical thinking and self-reflection, that is, by allowing students to pose problems of societal relevance, exposing situations of injustice or pain they have experienced or are interested in as the foundation of the design process. Problem-posing means initiating the design process from what students perceive to be unjust: the climate crisis, social inequality, human rights violations, a noisy street, the lack of connections between two areas of a city, unfair public transport. Problem-posing is the practice that allows students to initiate the design process by critically thinking about what matters to them and why this is relevant to the local and global community.
3- Place-Based & World-Related
Is the design studio engaged with its community?Does the design studio allow students to have experiences of the place? Does the design studio allow students to reflect on how we are all deeply interconnected? Does the design studio allow students to think in systems? Does the design studio support comprehensive solutions? Does the design studio allow community-based design, urban advocacy, and other participatory design services?
Each design studio should be an occasion to bring students and teachers together with their own community and circumstances of their own place, which most likely is the one they know best and feel most attached to as the primary source of learning (Jónsdóttir, 2017).
Place-based education means learning to relate to people, facts, local processes, and practices, therefore understanding how architecture is always “intertwined with the experience of a place” (Holl, 1989, p. 9). A place-based design studio understands that no place is dematerialised nor dissociated from the world (Plumwood, 2008) and that “a place is not just a thing in the world, but a way of understanding the world” (Jónsdóttir, 2017, p. 224). A place-based education always considers its larger, global context, and as such it is always world-related. A place-based and world-related education is a process that brings teachers, students, and their community together in dialogue aimed at understanding their relationships, responsibilities, and accountabilities towards not just their own community but the world. Understanding how everything is interconnected is at the base of a place-based and world-related education which helps students and educators operate as cosmopolitan citizens (rooted in a place and yet connected to the world), promoting the relational competences that are at the base of collaboration and creativity. A place-based and world-related education helps us better relate to our own local environment and to the world, promoting civic responsibility and participation necessary for collective action.
4- Dialogues & Collaboration
Does the design studio encourage dialogue and collaboration among students, teachers, and the Other?Does the design studio encourage participatory learning? Does the design studio support team play and collaboration across different disciplines and with other citizens? Does the design studio create the conditions necessary to establish meaningful conversations among students and their educators?
Dialogue is the pedagogical foundation of a design studio that aims to pursue a cosmopolitan education. Dialogue must be understood as “the capacity of members of a team to suspend assumptions and enter a genuine ‘thinking together’” (Senge, 2006, p. 10). It can lead to profound and insightful conversations: it is a process for becoming more socially aware, for creating and recreating multiple understandings and discovering new truths (Wink, 2000, p. 48). Dialogues exist only in the presence of love for the world and its people, where “love is at the same time the foundation of the dialogue and dialogue itself” (Freire, [1970] 2017, p. 62). Dialogue and collaboration are at the base of any creative process interested in activating the social and political role of architects, that is, the ability to work in a group, consider multiple standpoints, and consequently assume moral responsibility for the impact of architectural performance on society, on natural-ecological systems, and on the Other.
5- Imagination & Activism
Does the design studio lead to action?Does the design studio promote creativity and civic engagement? Does the design studio leave time for students to participate in extracurricular activities? Does the design studio create the conditions for students to transgress the boundaries of the design studio and act?
A pedagogy for cosmopolitan citizenship in architectural education supports imagination and activism. Imagination is not a solitary activity, but a process based on multiple dialogues with everything and everybody (Cuff, 1991). The imaginative process of “creating” happens in a dialogical way between participants of the design studio and beyond. This dialogue involves many counterparts: physical, societal, economic, ecological, and past and present considerations and the intention to design a future. Creativity comes from personal curiosity, humility towards learning, a sense of social and environmental responsibility, and the willingness to suppress individual needs for the greater good of not just our community but the world (Sergison, 2018). This definition of creativity does not fail to recognise personal talent nor try to prevent radical innovative design work to happen. What it does is to position creativity not just as the obsessive search for original exploration of form but as a research process finalised for the greater good, to care for Others. Without this intention creativity is a personal vanity.
Activism in architecture means using “the power of design for the greater good for humankind and nature” (Fuad-Luke, 2009, p. xxi). This means starting the design process from a “situation of discomfort of pain, perceiving that something is unjust or dangerous” (Fuad-Luke, 2009, p. 20)—that is, problem-posing—and consequently using the design process to elicit social, cultural, and political transformations. “Design activism is ‘design thinking, imagination and practice applied knowingly or unknowingly to create a counter-narrative aimed at generating and balancing positive social, institutional, environmental and/or economic change” (Fuad-Luke, 2009, p. 27). Activism means empowering students to pursue their ideas beyond the physical and conceptual boundaries of the design studio (Resnick, 2016, p. 137). It means forming socially active students who will develop into socially responsible architects (Røstvik in Lorentsen & Torp, 2018). Imagination and activism work to transform the design studio into a forum for communication—to disseminate design outcomes to a larger audience, helping citizens think in what-if terms and make informed decisions.
A pedagogy for cosmopolitan citizenship in architectural education envisions the design studio as a platform that supports sharing of knowledge, cooperative work, testing of ideas, empathy, and mutual support. Each studio embraces three aspects of the design process: Thinking, Making and Engaging.
Thinking Architecture
deals with critical questioning of important local and global systems and challengesresponsibilitiesand role of architecture in that context. Thinking architecture brings a diversity of thinkers andinstitutions into dialogue with students and teachers for a collective reading and discussion. Diverse analytical tools, design research methods, and theories that are at the base of the architectural practice are being explored in the studio.Thinking Architecture provides a contextual framework that can feed-inform-and-challenge the entire design work.Making Architecture
is about translating theories, knowledge, and suppositions into an informed-informative-reactive sensitive design work.This translation includes writing, strategizing, storytelling, diagramming, mapping, drawing,model making, digital visualization. Making Architecture is supported by radical thinkers, professionals’ practicingarchitects, specialists in the fields of built environment and beyond.Engaging Architecture
is a critical reflection of the studio's research work within a larger context and thetranslation and dissemination of the body of work towards a broader audience. This is done by exploring differentmedia and settings as public events, exhibitions, and publication series.A cosmopolitan design process
is one which aims to care for the world. It is an inclusive and collaborative process which requires self-reflection, critical thinking, social awareness, imagination, and action.Self-reflection
is about acquiring increased cognition of ourselves through the eyes of the other, by listening to different voices, as well as the understanding of how our choices affect people and places, therefore creating a culture of personal accountability.Critical thinking
starts by asking questions about knowledge, justice, and equity, starting in the design studio, and then going out into the community to make life a little better (Wink, 2000, p. 123).Social awareness
is about acquiring many types and sources of knowledge to formulate a more accurate, complete, and nuanced understanding of reality. It starts by making pertinent social issues and shared concerns at the centre of design studio discussion, making them immediately palpable among students and teachers to develop shared concern and commitment to solve them. Social awareness is further developed when different voices, standpoints, perspectives, and sensibilities enter the classroom, therefore becoming part of the learning process. Social awareness means collecting data, voices, knowledge in a process of analysis that is a process of investigation leading to new insights and perceptions that then need to be effectively shared, and a process of synthesis which is about connecting and composing different information, knowledges, and points of views into a coherent story/design/presentation.Imagination
is about designing different societal possibilities and ways of living together. It is the ability to think and represent what is not there yet. It is a collective effort aiming at care.Social activism
is about recognising that the ultimate focus of a school is to educate students to display civic courage by stimulating “their passions, imaginations, and intellects so that they will be moved to challenge the social, political, and economic forces that weight so heavily upon their lives” (Giroux, 1980, p. 357). Social activism is about making shareable and presentable to a larger audience the entire research project.A cosmopolitan design process is iterative, non-linear, relational process of enquiry and speculation. It is a process built on dialogues among students, students and teachers, and stakeholders outside the school’s context. A cosmopolitan design process enquiries on —
What are the Politics of your Design and What is the Design of your Politics?
— and it does so by exploring the following questions:What and who is there?
(which voices, standpoints,
conditions are present?)What is the
problem?
(what is the pain, the issue that you want to
investigate and work with)Why is it important?
(you need to justify its
relevance)What do you need to know &
How are you
going to find out?
(what are you researching and how?) What is your project?
(what is your response to the
problem that you have presented?)What is your
project made of?
What are its social
and environmental relations?
What power
relations are entrenched by your project?
What could
the long-term consequences be?
What other
options could be there?
(Instead of your project) How do you
envision your role in this process?
(what
societal role do you intend to assume?)How do my
personal biases affect the project?
These are the questions that each design process must answer constantly and iteratively throughout the entire design process.
Architectures for care is our chance to care for the world, by designing a healthier, safer, and fairer community. To do so we must become cosmopolitan citizens architects that is critical thinkers, socially aware, active, and caring individuals who understand that architectures are political processes with social and ecological responsibility. We are always responsible for what we put into the word and for the effects that our ideas have upon it.
Massimo Santanicchia
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[1] Santanicchia, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c, 2021, 2022.
[2] UNESCO 2015: https://en.unesco.org/themes/gced
Texts by AQQ