Pursuing resilience in architectural design through international experimental projects: Exploring New boundaries in the design studio pedagogy

Abstract

In response to the current global crisis, there is a growing demand for responsible behaviour in designing and building that can accommodate user needs through the design process. This chapter describes an innovative approach to the design process aiming to generate a model adopted by an international collaboration who are reconsidering the traditional design process and addressing a new paradigm of the thinking process. The project is experimental in nature and discusses the educational frameworks in architecture. It optimises a model, which demonstrates breakthroughs and trend-setting educational approaches and is potentially transferable to a range of other professions. The chapter argues that the educational ethos of ‘ethic of resilience ’ should be pursued by pushing the boundaries of the conventional Design Studio towards the formation of adaptive system settings. All the participants at the various stages of the innovative educational framework, named Build Our Nation (BON) and its first application Taifa Letu Tujenge (TLT), have already demonstrated, on one hand to be able to learn from the experience achieved from various stages undertaken in the past, and, on the contrary, to be flexible enough to proceed with changes reflecting on the external conditions. The vision is that the Higher Educational Institutions and, especially, universities must become more co-productive actors in society. It can be useful to think of a university as a manufacturer; and subsequently, a manufacturing company as an advanced workshop; a workshop as a real-world project; therefore, a real-world project connoted back to the meaning of university. This vicious cycle of pedagogy embedded in learning and teaching should be central to any higher education focusing on design and research aiming to inform each other through the values of social capital.