Some steps towards a more inclusive architectural pedagogy
I am a straight, white, 31-year-old man. I come from a middle-class background, not wealthy, but never impoverished. I went to a private liberal arts college, worked for four years in art museums, and then got an M.Arch from UC Berkeley. I didn’t have much trouble fitting in in architecture school - academic architecture is geared towards people like me. Recently I have read a lot of proposals for ways to make architectural practice and education more inclusive for minority populations. These proposals most often target barriers to entry in the realms of admissions, faculty hires, institutional policy, and professional accreditation, but I haven’t seen much being written specifically about the many inequalities embedded in architectural pedagogy. I don’t teach at the moment but I plan to when the time is right, so I began to write the list you see below as a set of reminders to myself. I don’t think of it as a manifesto (see point 4) - though despite my best efforts I sometimes take that tone for the sake of brevity and clarity. It is very much a work in progress, and has benefited greatly from the comments and suggestions of my peers. Please feel free to contact me to discuss these proposals further.
1. Listen to and amplify minority voices
Architectural discourse and practice are dominated by affluent, straight, white men. Class, race, gender, sexual orientation, and educational privilege have consequences in academia and the workplace right now. Listen to your minority peers and students, learn from them, and bring what you learn to bear in your teaching, your practice, and your institution. Use your position to be an advocate for justice and equity.
2. Have conversations, not lectures
Invite your students into the process of your class. Ask them for their feedback on assignments, workloads, and use of class time. Get to know your students as individuals, especially those who do not seem to fit conventional expectations. Vary the scale of these conversations. Speak to the whole group, in small groups, and one-on-one. Try to understand the circumstances in which each student feels comfortable. Be honest and vulnerable.
3. Eliminate jargon
There is a difference between technical terminology, like grade beam, and architectural jargon, like edge condition. Pare down unnecessary terminology. Jargon hinders communication at all levels of academia and practice. Valuing insider language inherently devalues those who are not fluent. Be an advocate for clarity. Speak up when peers say things you do not understand.
4. Replace declarative statements with nuance
The manifestoes of the 20th century are written in unequivocal voices steeped in privilege, and it seems we have learned the wrong rhetorical lessons from them. The language of the manifesto implies that if you speak with enough vehemence, force, and volume, you need not pay attention to dissenting opinions. Show in your writing and speech that you value opinions other than your own. Express doubt and question your assumptions.
5. Build Bridges, not dissent (aka: lead the horse to water, help it decide to drink)
It is mostly impossible to change someone else’s views by force. Develop practices that encourage students to counter their own views, whether you agree with them or not. Help them to think out both sides of an argument. Reproaches mostly go in one ear and out the other; what a student discovers for themselves becomes part of them. If they express an opinion that is hateful or flagrantly out of line, take appropriate disciplinary measures. If they merely say something you disagree with, challenge them to argue for the other side and help them develop those arguments, but don’t brand them with their ideology. They are your students; help them learn.
6. Make studio tasks and resources simple, cheap, and plentiful
Let the student guide the articulation of a project, and listen to concerns about time and money. Don’t require the entire class to buy expensive software, equipment, or materials. Consider using digital presentation methods to reduce material use. Value process over product. De-fetishize models and drawings. Treat schoolwork as rehearsal, or as thinking in action. Encourage institutions to support or subsidize production costs. Put process ahead of product.
7. Have conversations about workload and wellbeing
Undermine the production of workaholics. Do not implicitly or explicitly condone late hours or overwork. Ask students about their physical and mental health. Learn if they have commitments outside of school such as childcare, part-time jobs or commuting. Be accommodating about deadlines. Talk about your experiences with work-life balance. Don’t save these conversations for the day before a big deadline. Help your students to become good people first and good architects second. Remember: it’s only school: the stakes are low.
8. Diversify canon and references
The world of buildings and architectural discourse is far larger than we commonly acknowledge. Do the work to give voice to unfamiliar references. Acknowledge your blind spots and ask for assistance in filling them in. Be vocal and critical about minority representation in accepted canon. Understand that everyone has their own view of history, which may differ from your own. Make the world about more than masterpieces. Can you teach a history of design without reference to traditional canon?
9. Value the different branches of architecture equally
There are many disciplines and practices under the umbrella of architecture, and architectural practice is often less siloed than its academic foil. Value social responsibility, environmental responsibility, and aesthetics equally. Acknowledge the blind spots of your own niche. Don’t use intangibles like taste, aesthetic appearance, or representational style to dismiss projects whose goals lie elsewhere. Express disagreement with respect, rather than disparagement. Ask what you can learn from projects that don’t match your own preferences. Encourage your students to find their place within practice or academia—there is a place for everyone.
10. Vary media and methods
Students work, learn and communicate in many different ways. Some will prefer making models, others making drawings; some students speak fluently in a critique, others will express their thoughts better in writing. Vary the media you require from assignment to assignment to allow your students to find what suits them. Do not instantly dismiss unusual presentations or methods. Question conventional modes of presentation which prize confident, cultivated, fluent talk – these are often markers of privilege. Do we have to have a final review or are there other ways of culminating the process of design?
11. Teach locally
The world of buildings is large and diverse - find ways of teaching that are based in the local built environment. Give your students the chance to see the buildings they experience everyday in a new light. Locate projects nearby so that students can easily visit the sites and communities in which they will be situated. Understand that some students may not have cars, or may have difficulty going to remote locations. If appropriate, encourage students to meet residents or members of local community leadership or government, or invite community members to your class. In practice, architects are always working in a network of local contacts, from people within government, to utilities, to contractors, to clients and neighbors. Question the value of travel within a studio, particularly international travel - does it exoticize the location? does it place an undue burden on some of your students? will international students need a visa?
12. It’s not about you
Your students are not a source of labor or design iteration for your own projects. Their work is their own. Don’t make them copy you. Don’t use reviews as chances to show off to your peers. Put the focus on the students and their achievements. Don’t make a student change their work so that it fits in better with everyone else’s. Challenge your instincts for conformity and uniformity. If you’re part of a jury, make your comments for the student’s benefit; don’t pander to the other jurors.
13. Give constructive criticism
Help students to understand what they did well and what they did badly. Don’t be hard on students just because your teachers were hard on you. Don’t finish a review without giving every student some encouragement. If the work before you is underdeveloped, try to understand why the student did what they did and work to give them tools to be able to succeed next time. If the work disappoints you or doesn’t seem to address the prompt, examine the student’s response, the prompt, and your own response as well. Were your expectations clear, or were they merely implied? Consider giving your students written feedback or hold formal follow-up meetings. Put time and effort into making sure your students know how you think their projects turned out. Don’t forget to ask questions.
14. Show them how
When requiring specific techniques for a project, give your students instruction on how to do what they will be doing, rather than leaving it up to them to figure out. If they need lots of technical support, that should be written into the syllabus for the class and handled appropriately, for instance with a lab section. Encourage your institution to develop formal programs for learning tools and techniques.
15. Create good teachers
Have conversations about teaching with your students. Encourage them to question the instruction they receive from you and others. Some of them will end up teaching someday. Pass your priorities and philosophies on to them. Help them to find their own voice and pedagogies. Treat teaching assistants with respect and advocate for improvements in their employment conditions.
16. Teach your institution
Have conversations about teaching with your institutional peers. Speak up about departmental practices that you feel are exclusive or harmful. Advocate for the hiring of diverse faculty, and more generally, for faculty who are effective teachers and mentors, rather than publicized names. Push back against colleagues who are dismissive of change or the concerns of students. Put your principles before your position. It isn’t easy, but your peers and higher-ups need to see the will to change modeled from the inside.
17. It needn’t be that way
Don’t fall into the trap of the status quo. Reject the idea that architecture or architecture school needs to persist in any way in the form that it is currently, or was when you were in school. Teach towards a better practice and discourse of architecture as it could be, instead of mirroring the problems of how it is now. Question the idea that 'that’s just the way it is.' Why does it need to be that way?
- Michael Beggs, Berkeley, CA, July 2020.