EXPLORING ALTERNATIVE TERRAIN - Architectural Education Comparison UCT vs The Bartlett School, London.

UCT Architecture Undergrad HOD Dr. NIC COETZER explores the pedagogy of the Bartlett School (at the University College London) as a way to open debate within the Architecture Department at the University of Cape Town on what constitutes good design education.

ABSTRACT

My main focus is on the different approaches to design teaching that the Bartlett employs compared to what is briefly presented here as an ‘essentialised’ UCT model. The three sections that deal with these differences move from terrain that is seemingly quite familiar to UCT teaching – site analysis and deductive research – to terrain that is much more unfamiliar, namely, loose/ inductive processes and non-critical critiques, and finally to non-building and gadget projects. Each section critically investigates the potential pedagogic value of these different approaches by referring to examples of student work. The fourth section looks at the limited and ambivalent role that computers play at the Bartlett and how their potential can be unlocked in ways that are not restrictive of creativity. I end this paper by making the case for a greater balance between the somewhat normative pedagogy of UCT and the more process-oriented and creative (albeit, less rigorous) Bartlett approach. I suggest that UCT’s admirable building-oriented design-teaching strengths and normalising datum of defined teaching outcomes needs to be balanced with a pedagogy that simultaneously promotes risk-taking and encourages unforeseen outcomes.

Architectural design education: Exploring alternative terrain

Between October 2007 and January 2008 I was afforded the opportunity to conduct research at the Bartlett School of Architecture [1] at the University College London (UCL). The impetus for this research stemmed from two basic questions: How different is design teaching and research at the Bartlett compared to UCT? And, How extensively is digital design and research integrated into the design curriculum? These questions only make sense when set against the broader differences and similarities between the two departments. Consequently, my initial programme of tracking one design teaching ‘unit’, Unit 20, and of auditing the Bartlett School of Graduate Studies’ Adaptive Architecture and Computation (AAC) MSc had to be broadened to include other units and teaching areas. The need for a more generalised scoping was reinforced when it became apparent how diverse teaching within the Bartlett itself is.

The Bartlett has a reputation for being one of the best architecture schools in the world. [2] Indeed, if one takes the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) as the global benchmarking agency it purports to be then certainly the Bartlett’s strong showing in the RIBA’s President’s Medals awards over the past few years [3] would seem to hold that reputation up. [4] Two other schools in London have also featured strongly in the President’s Medal awards, namely, the University of Westminster and the Architectural Association (AA), and consequently they also formed a small part of my ‘scoping’ research. Whilst it is vital to be suspicious of ‘the colonial centre’ especially as UCT’s context is very different to London’s, it seems important to engage with these world-leading institutions to understand why they are so highly regarded. Moreover, it is clear that no postcolonial condition can escape the centre-periphery nexus. Acknowledgment of this is necessary even if the simple (wistful?) aim is to disentangle our educational models from our former colonial centre; a look to the centre is at the very least helpful in marking out differences and maintaining and strengthening them where appropriate.

In fact this paper, in following theorists like Leslie Lokko (2000) and Darell Wayne Fields (2000), suggests that South Africa, grappling as we are with a peculiar postcolonial condition, has a lot to learn from the kind of non-normative teaching that the Bartlett embodies. As we shall see, difference, individuality and diversity are actively encouraged at the Bartlett which is an approach that should, it would seem, resonate with our extraordinarily diverse student body. This, then, is what this paper is about: an exploration of the design pedagogy of the Bartlett School of Architecture as a way to open debate within the Architecture Department at the University of Cape Town on what constitutes a good design education within our context.

Research method

There are obviously limitations to this research based on the short duration and the fact that most teaching happens over a year cycle. Similarly it takes a full-time academic arguably a few years to understand the workings of their own department and its pedagogic structure and content; a few months visit can be very impressionistic. On the other hand an outsider may uncover many hidden or obvious conditions that might be obscure to those embedded in the practice. Aside from a close affiliation with design teaching Unit 20 and Unit 11 and auditing the MSc in AAC there were other opportunities for engagement such as being a critic on several other units’ end of term reviews [5]. Attending interim reviews and tutorials in a more informal manner proved vital in gaining a more general overview as did having access to the Bartlett’s RIBA / Architect’s Registration Board accreditation documentation. [6] Finally, informal and formal meetings also helped unlock otherwise opaque pedagogic structures and differences.

Such an immersive approach to research runs the danger of being too anecdotal. However, it would be fatal to limit this paper to strictly ‘scientific’ research and exclude anecdotal accounts, especially if it is realised that most of design teaching is by nature discursive and conversational. Hopefully, the value of this paper is in interpreting and laying bare some of the seemingly obscure pedagogic devices and teaching approaches employed at the Bartlett.

Background, descriptions, structural differences

Like UCT, the Bartlett architecture degree is split into two parts namely the three year undergraduate BSc and the two year postgraduate Diploma. Admission to both the BSc and Diploma is through an interview offered on the basis of a portfolio (prescribed tasks for BSc and creative work for Diploma) and previous academic grades. Admissions to UCT’s BAS and postgraduate studies are solely on the basis of a portfolio and previous academic grades. In recent years there have been over 1,700 applications per annum to the 100 or so places on offer in the Bartlett’s BSc compared to over 500 applicants for the 65 places in UCT’s BAS degree. Each year over 400 applicants to the BSc are interviewed for a place in the School. There are over 500 applications to 100 or so available places in the entry-year of the Diploma at the Bartlett, whilst at UCT there are roughly 65 for around 40 places. BSc students do not have automatic entry to the Diploma and make up approximately 25% of the Diploma cohort. BSc students who do gain above a 60% credit-weighted degree-pass are normally accepted to the degree. Overseas students make up about 25% of the Diploma students and the split between male and female in both degrees is similar to UCT at around 50% each.

There is approximately the equivalent of 25 full-time lecturers teaching in both the BSc and Diploma units at the Bartlett, with most of these 60-or-so teachers on 25% appointments. This compares to approximately 13 equivalent full time employees and 35 part-time studio staff at UCT. At the Bartlett the approximate ratio of overall staff to students is about 1:17 with seven lecturers, two senior lecturers, and five professors teaching in various units on a full-time basis. This is more favourable than at UCT where the overall ratio is 1: 23. Moreover, most of the staff contingent at the Bartlett is focused on design teaching and this is largely due to the minimising of support courses compared to UCT where support courses make up a substantial part of the curriculum (Figure 1).

The single obvious difference between the Bartlett and UCT is that the former runs design teaching ‘units’ of about 17 students taught by two tutors. This occurs in every Bartlett year except Year One which is a single class of over 100 students. In UCT’s undergraduate Bachelor of Architectural Studies (BAS) degree individual staff members can land up coordinating a group of students but this is normally under the guidance of the year convenor and all students follow the same brief. In UCT’s postgraduate programme design is taught through ‘units’ but these are normally only for the duration of a six week elective as opposed to the full year at the Bartlett. Indeed, apart from undergrad units in the Bartlett where students are required to change to a new unit at the end of Second Year, students in the Diploma units may stay with the same Unit and tutor for the two-year duration of the degree. In the BSc and Diploma the units are mixed with Second and Third year students and Fourth and Fifth Year students respectively whereas at UCT this happens only in the first six weeks of the postgraduate degree when returning students were mixed with those registered for the final year.

Teaching at the Bartlett happens once a week in a tutorial session, often in the evening, and usually in the cramped space of a unit room. Apart from a few interim group pin-ups and end of term crits, students’ only input on their work is from one of their tutors for 30 minutes a week (except for Year One students who have two tutorial sessions a week). Whilst this limited engagement – compared to UCT’s three-mornings-a-week – might be on account of the majority of the tutors being practising architects, it seems to have had a positive effect on students’ intellectual independence and the ability to invent their own research agendas and conduct self-guided work.

Competition is fierce between the units to secure the best students. Prospective students apply to their ranked list of three units (as at UCT’s postgraduate electives) and are then interviewed by the unit tutors who make their selection based on this interview and the student’s portfolio (unlike at UCT). In theory, students who are not chosen by the units they have chosen are prone to being excluded from the academic year. This does not happen in practice with these ‘undesirables’ being spread through all the units and concentrated in whatever new unit might be starting that year. [7]

Some units gain a reputation for a particular kind of work with a particular kind of outcome from the students, for example, Nic Clear and Simon Kennedy’s Unit 15 consistently produce filmic narratives based largely on photo-stills. Career shifts into animation and film are obviously possible for students in this unit. [8] On the other hand, Unit 20 has gained a reputation as a somewhat computer-friendly unit, whilst Unit 11 largely deals with landscape architecture issues. These reputations no doubt influence students’ interest and application to particular units. Unit themes for the year also play a part in securing student interest. Unit themes (Appendix A) are published on the internet the week before the beginning of the academic year and are then presented altogether at a large meeting before unit selections take place. Themes are extraordinarily diverse from unit to unit and are driven by the interests of the tutors of the unit. The theme is normally associated with a field trip abroad that is partly subsidised by the university. Unit themes change from year to year which suggests that most units do not explicitly pursue a research agenda through the unit itself.

Notwithstanding the unit reputations for particular kind of work and the setting of seemingly definitive themes for the year, what is remarkable about the Bartlett unit system on the whole is the diversity and range of projects and outputs from within the units themselves. This is partly because there is much variation in how strictly Units stick to the theme for the year. Even if the theme is adhered to the programme and site of student’s work and the overall research agenda is largely left to each student which again produces much diversity in outcomes. This is true even in the undergraduate BSc where one might expect to find more guidance and discipline from the tutors.

Consequently, a unit theme does not necessarily translate into a research agenda and a coherent body of work produced by the students as a whole. In fact, as the following sections will show, most units use the unit theme simply as a starting point to enable students to rapidly produce copious amount of work. This approach to rapid production seems to be a key technique shared by most units and is generally taken as a key to the Bartlett’s success. In other words, the unit theme is a teaching aid rather than a research area investigated by postgraduate students under the guidance of an academic. Ultimately the approach generates a huge body of work that is then assessed as a portfolio without the presence of the student except where the external examiner requires an oral exam to ratify particular results.

It is interesting to note that this final assessment is not of a ‘building’ as proof of professional competence – this is adjudicated through course work – but as a body of work demonstrating an intense and creative investigation into a set of ideas. These portfolios are marked as pass/fail with some being awarded commendation; a positivist-determined percentage grade does not make sense in this situation because there is no final thesis ‘building’ to evaluate and rationalise whether it ‘works’ or does not ‘work’ as ‘building’.

How then, does one make sense of such diversity between units and within units? I have ordered the following sections as a way in which one might categorise general pedagogic moves or techniques in relation to the approaches that UCT tends to employ. [9] In other words, the following sections move (from a UCT point of view) from familiar terrain to unfamiliar terrain, whilst discerning key approaches along the way that might be unusual or contrary to a UCT ‘approach.’ A close reading of particular units within each theme brings to light general observations through specific examples.

Before proceeding with this analysis it might be helpful to define what this UCT ‘approach’ is. Obviously, such a characterisation is very reductive, and it should be taken as intended, namely, as an aid in exploring ideas rather than an all-encompassing review of the ‘truth’ of our teaching methods. Nevertheless it will be helpful in defining some kind of position to measure the Bartlett against even if it is a ‘straw man’ with little of the complexity of actual teaching approaches. At UCT most projects proceed with each student being given the same brief that is expected to be adhered to. Normally this involves a programme and a site and perhaps some issue that needs to be dealt with. For example, the projects are framed to teach students to design specific typologies such as schools, libraries or housing, and often have a theme such ‘public space’ to add complexity and direction to the project. Projects proceed deductively from analysis of precedent of the typology (the canon of what is a good library is already defined by the lecturer who is taken to be an expert) and of programme (how exactly a library works or more philosophically, what exactly a library is).

The project then proceeds with a careful and rigorous site analysis that follows the strictures of the ‘problem-solving’ ethos of modernism: forces acting on the site such as solar orientation, weather, pedestrian/vehicular movement, and local building context are all evaluated to the point where the possible ‘solutions’ are narrowed down almost to where the building designs itself.

Orthographic drawings then render the ‘truth’ of the building in its scientific measurement whilst the real and yet abstract ‘general user’ is imagined within the work and forms the cipher of a humanitarian-based critique. Projects are evaluated not as processes (the educative value of uncovering unknown territory) but as products that are generally taken to be representations of real buildings. In effect this is how the average professional architect proceeds with a project and thus teaching is clearly normative. This approach helps students become inducted into the accepted disciplinary requirements of the profession. It should be noted, however, that at UCT an ethos of ‘critical difference’ prevails, where, within the parameters of site, programme and design-project as building (not process), individuals are called upon to motivate their projects according to their own critically-located values.
How then, does the Bartlett differ to this – admittedly somewhat crude – characterisation? The following sections hopefully help make the fairly obscure terrain of the Bartlett more accessible, firstly by starting with approaches that might seem similar to the description above before moving on to more elusive methods.

Vaguely familiar terrain (site analysis, deductive research)

Various units at the Bartlett follow an analytical and deductive research method, yet produce unique and unusual work that is unpredictable and not normative. Here, research and analysis opens the possibilities for design rather than honing them down. This section recounts some of the work produced through these methods and tries to point to techniques in teaching that shift the work into sites of intense thinking, creativity and unknown worlds.

Figure 2. Unit 11. Folly & Naval Battles in Regent’s Park. Source: Author
Unit 11’s theme of ‘Second Nature’ began with a site visit to the 1790’s era Norbury Park and conducted an analysis of its context and conditions. All the students’ design projects were engaged with some aspect of landscape design and architecture but the year’s theme was not explicitly addressed. The unit had been set a particular problem related to dealing with the legislative classification of landscapes such as Area of Natural Beauty; the challenge was to develop new landscapes that would require imaginative new classifications. Only one student dealt with this issue directly by analysing the classifications and finding the gaps in the legislation, and then using those to design a visitor’s art centre located in Norbury Park. For the rest of the unit the analysis of Norbury Park was used as starting point to generate conceptual thinking about the specifics and generalities of landscapes. In the crits, this departure from the strictures of the brief was not considered an issue – tutors actively supported the possibilities of a project on its own terms and where it might lead rather than discipline the student into following the brief.

Most students simply engaged directly with the site or a site of their choice and used the local conditions and history as the generator for the project. For example the project Folly and Naval Battles in Regents Park (Figure 2) developed from the idea of a train interrupting the solitude of Norbury Park and the fact that naval battles were re-enacted in country estate lakes during Norbury Park’s era. A shift to Regent’s Park in London revealed how World War Two V2 bombs had destroyed one of Nash’s villas in the park. This recreated and re-imagined ruined villa became the backdrop for a festival site in Regent’s Park where naval battles could be re-enacted against archetypal landscape conditions of beach, hill, cave and lake.

Another example of this approach was the project titled Amphibian Confusion: Canvey Island Sea Defence Wall (Figure 3) which looked at a piece of 1600s Dutch-reclaimed land along the Thames River. The new sea wall radically isolates each world on either side of it. However, the student’s analysis identified an ‘amphibian confusion’ that locates boat-like structures on the land and land-like structures on the sea. The project revolved around employing sextant-inspired devices to visually overcome the barrier between the two worlds, with an (unresolved) hybrid laser-cut sextant-device the centre of the project’s presentation. Exactly how the sextant device was an architectural entity did not emerge as a critique. The focus in Unit 11 was much more on the emerging object or representation and where it could be taken in terms of inventiveness.

In both examples the analysis was not focused on reductive site conditions such as orientation, wind, or sun movement, but rather discerned a conceptual condition at the centre of the site – a sort of conceptual-genius-loci reading and interpretation. The projects had to invent new typologies (a spatialised sextant, a festival ruin) that were largely without precedent in the ‘real’ architectural world. Similarly, the unit tutors could only assist in pointing students in more meaningful directions; under such a teaching model they cannot be the experts transferring knowledge to students.

There are other units that use the ‘research’ and ‘analytical’ mode. For example the undergrad Unit 1 developed the theme of déjà vu by engaging with Venice through pre-existing creative works or ideas such as film, literature, and myth. In other words, the idea of déjà vu was prompted by the idea of ‘already knowing’ Venice prior to visiting it on their field trip. Thus the site analysis was very conceptual and referred to the cultural constructs of Venice rather than its literal or material conditions. Students were required to explore the ideas inherent in creative works on Venice they identified such as ‘The Merchants of Venice’ or the film Death in Venice. As such, this process is clearly research-based in that each student had to engage with ideas of Venice before proceeding with design work. These ideas were then translated into a specific site in London. These initial projects were then filmed into a London site-specific filmscape the students had recorded. This filmed London landscape was quite simply projected across the space of the model during re-filming.

The results were quite startling. For example, a powerful project took the film Death in Venice as its starting point (Figure 4). The dream-like and elusive character of the city in the film was transposed into a small, subterranean hotel off Regents Canal. Here dream pods produce a mist at city ground level onto which cinematic images of water are projected. The large scale model of the project was then filmed showing the arrival of passengers to the hotel via a small rowing boat. Like the movie, the project was startling in its evocation of fact and fantasy, dream and reality. Even though they began through analysis, the projects in Unit 1 then, are not ‘real’ buildings but occupy a strange place between fact (the physical model) and fiction (the filming of a film projected over the model) and as such trigger questions on meaning, reality, and cultural production.

Unfamiliar Terrain 1: loose/inductive processes, non-critical critiques

A somewhat disturbing trait of Bartlett teaching has already been identified above, namely, the willing suspension of critical judgement in favour of the possibilities of what the project might become. This is in strong contrast to UCT where students are called upon to answer for the gaps between their words and the work, and the gaps in logic or reasoning as the design work proceeds. Although such intense critique is essential in any education, it is worth understanding what a more generous and forgiving approach might hold in educational terms; the examples given in this section might elucidate the value that a looser approach can have for students.

Unit 20 students at the Bartlett (and Unit 10 students at Westminster who are taught by the same tutors) are encouraged to start with a quick making exercise – a sort of form-finding project that is based on intuition and ‘taste’ and what they are generally interested in. For example, the project described as Trade in Eels at Billingsgate Fish Market started with the enjoyment of objects that seem embedded in their environments, especially trees. Images of trees and their snaking circular above-ground roots led to modelling round pool-like shapes that were laser-cut into a collection of intersecting vessels to no scale. These gaps in logic and reason – logically the formal-functional nature of roots should not translate into drum-like spaces – was not flagged as an issue in discussions. Yet with this formal lexicon and the location of Billingsgate in east London as a place of fish trade, especially the dying trade in eels, led to a very evocative set of ideas of the sound eels make swirling and swarming in earthen-ware pots. The project had very quickly gained a programme, site and most importantly, a distinctive character through not having to go on a detour-lesson in logic and reason. Yet, as crucial as it is in developing an inventiveness and imagination, this looseness with regard to form and process carries with it the danger of a lack of rigour and lessons in disciplined work that more traditional ‘problem solving’ or critical approaches might engender.


This formalist approach works well in allowing the student to develop a personalised figurative device through which to approach, read, or develop the project. However, this method does potentially put a distance between the student and the unit theme. It is not surprising that seven out of 16 students in Unit 20 were notionally exploring anything programmatically to do with the unit’s theme of ‘trade’ – although this might be explained by the Fifth Year students continuing with the theme they explored the previous year. In fact, only two out of 16 students made reference to written texts that they were exploring in relation to trade, namely, Jean Cocteau’s Opium, Diary of a Cure and Jessica Warner’s Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason. One student made reference to Deleuze’s ideas of ‘Bodies Without Organs’ (Figure 6) but, without Zizek’s (2003) insights mistakenly titled and themed the project ‘Organs without Bodies’. Clearly intellectual and theoretical rigour was not prized especially at this early stage of project development.

In another example of this, a project described as Leyton Marsh Jellyfish (Figure 5) proposed floating jellyfish-like recording devices aimed at measuring pollution in the environment, especially noise from the flight path above. When the jellyfish’s diaphragm measures destructive levels of sound it releases a red ink into the marsh ‘bleeding’ its response to the pollution. The obvious disjuncture between a device that measures pollution and then causes more pollution on account of that measurement was ignored in favour of what these evocative, poetic and beautiful jellyfish-like devices could become as the project proceeded.

Another unit that explicitly uses a device to start students working and producing rapidly is Unit 17, one of the longest running units at the Bartlett. The unit theme for the year was ‘The Absence of the Architectural Object.’ Here students were each given a particular literary text that was chosen for its peculiar architectural interest. For example James Joyce’s Ulysses was included on account of Dublin as a recurrent figure, or Laurence Sterne’s Tristam Shandy (Figure 7) on account of the character Uncle Toby and his garden. Students had a week to come up with a set of architectural ideas, drawings or models that responded to the identified architectural content inherent in the book. Obviously, as each student had a different novel and trope – and without initial input from the tutors– there was a great range of projects, themes and outputs. Fidelity to the novel was not required in subsequent work which was re-read on its own architectural terms. In other words, research in this case is not deductive but rather inductive and moves from the particular and peculiar initial work into a more reasoned project that eventually makes sense of these formative gestures. The projects work on a combination of identifying key conceptual devices in the text and then using an amalgamation of intuition and reason to develop the drawings. Most precedent referred to is from the art world because the conceptual depth of art-installation projects can be accessed without being limited by predetermining built architectural work. In this way the project gains its own internal logic where the architectural drawing is not a ‘factual’ orthographic description of a building but rather contains inherent characteristics and ordering that leads to a translation into architecture (Evans, 1997).

Unfamiliar Terrain 2: non-buildings and gadget projects

While it is clear that most Bartlett projects do not operate from a typological basis, some teaching specifically engages students in designing and making gadgets or devices. Clearly, any project that has design at its core – whether designing a piece of typologically-predefined furniture as Second Year UCT students do – will contain lessons for a future architect. However, these ‘gadget’ or ‘device’ projects offer quite surprisingly specific lessons about architecture.

For example, the Year One students spend three weeks near the beginning of the year making a public installation in – somewhat unwieldy – groups of 13. The project is very site-specific, requiring students to make careful observations of the immediate and local context, as well as the flow of people through the site. The project for 2007 was located in east London, in and around Bow Church, Bow Creek and the Limehouse Cut canal. Due to this area’s historical association with porcelain making and Thames-related industries, each group was randomly assigned two key words such as ‘canal’ and ‘fish,’ or ‘soap’ and ‘dock’ to frame their investigations into their assigned site. Not only did these words offer an exercise in research, but also in how to turn seemingly unrelated ideas into strong conceptual devices. The projects also had an emphasis on highly-skilled crafting in the workshop, and on public and environmental engagement. In other words, whilst clearly not a building-design assignment, these small projects contained a disproportionate number of key architectural lessons: site analysis, research, concept development, structural and material knowledge, ergonomics, public space and events. In fact, my impression was that this learning was all the more powerful because it was precisely not about buildings; from my experience, most First Year students have a priori ideas about what architecture is and how buildings should be. This project clearly de-familiarises those preconceptions whilst instilling creative and critical thinking when dealing with these key architectural concerns.

One of the most powerful installation (all eight were excellent) was a device that dealt with the words ‘canal’ and ‘fish’ (Figure 8.1). The project hugged a wall to allow delivery vans and passage through an ally. The piece invited a user to sit back into an orange rubber bag which pumped water into a nose-level Perspex ‘canal’. This then created a new view down the ally focusing on the sky and roofline which was understood by the group to be the key conceptual and architectural condition of the ally itself. When the user eased out of the installation the water flowed back into its orange bag and hence equilibrium was restored. Another poetic piece was called ‘tide-writer’ (Figure 8) that harnessed the rising tide of the Thames estuary to make marks on a slab of soap – a letter from the moon. Although its structure failed due to the over-eager investigations of an environmental protection boat, the project had a great poetic quality that in the end overpowered this structural failure.

Unit 4 in the BSc also set their students a ‘device’ project but this time it was over the full ten weeks of the first term. This project, with ‘food’ as the theme, was set in groups of four. Students first visited Borough Market to get a sense of the space of food selling and consumption, and food products that intrigued them. They then chose one food type and documented making a meal of it. This then became the group project where they each had to construct devices to be used as part of that food-making process but to be enacted in this case in public space. One of the key learning ideas was to make the physical apparatus first and then try and adapt or adjust it once the errors were noted rather than construct a beautiful piece immediately. The other intention was to engage students with learning about social space and the public space of the city; the fact that most of the ‘public’ space of London is highly controlled and largely private meant most of the performances were stopped by security guards before they could be recorded on film. The brief anticipated these problems and the groups were able to reformulate the design idea through a short film in which editing played a big part in rendering the essential ideas in a convincing way.

One group performed making mulled wine, and played up the idea of performance by locating all their objects in a string quartet’s musical instrument cases. Each process in the making of mulled wine was handled by a different device – first the orange zester (Figure 9), clove and sugar dispenser; then wine heater; and ending with a cello case becoming a seat with a place for the wine glass. In another film, a group of suit-and-tie city workers arrive with briefcases that unfold to make bacon sandwiches: a bread cutter and butter dispenser; then a tomato selector and cutter; then a bacon fryer (using the briefcase as a braai; and finally a sandwich cutter and dispenser. Whilst these projects had real functional problems such as not slicing the bread properly, or squashing the tomatoes rather than slicing them, they were excellent learning exercises in other ways. Here students engaged with the 1:1 problems of making, structure and materials, whilst considering the relationship of each food-making component to the next has clear architectural concerns at its core. And although Unit 4’s projects carried some of the inefficiency and absurdity of Heath Robinson inventions (Beare, 2007), their intentional fetishising or estranging of the process of production and consumption ultimately worked as a critique of social conditions of exchange. As indulgent and whimsical as some of these ‘device’ or ‘gadget’ projects seem, they do, in fact, contain enormous learning potential in familiarising undergrad students with architectural concerns whilst de-familiarising them of their preconceptions and prejudices as to what architecture is.

Digital Terrain

The Bartlett has a surprisingly lax attitude towards digital technology and digital design. Algorithmic design processes, parametrics and data-scape design techniques (Kolarevic, 2003) have not gripped the Bartlett as much as they seem to have done at the Architectural Association (AA) (Ainley, 2007). In fact, Unit 24, which arguably dealt with these processes directly, had a tellingly short-lived stay at the Bartlett from 2005 to 2006. (Allen et al, 2005; Borden et al, 2006). At the AA it seems increasingly difficult to differentiate units largely on the basis that a specific digital design technique is being taught and specifically through Generative Components (Microstation) software; design is conducted through form-finding algorithmic digital processes. Here, design tutors are playing the role of experts who help students access this particular design process and technique. This seems antithetical to the Bartlett’s current ethos which requires design tutors to be partners in a process of discovery, creativity and invention.

Although key leaders in digital design have been invited to the Bartlett’s public lecture series, [10] computers are largely used at the Bartlett as representational tools rather than generative devices. They are used more occasionally for the animation possibilities that applications such as Maya, Rhino and 3D Studio provide. For example, in Unit 20, opium smoke was animated to enshroud the smoker in cocoon-like form. Another student animated the dynamic nature of flowers, plants and seeds. This latter project did not instrumentalise any of the physics of the processes (as these new sophisticated software applications can do), but simply used the computer as a representational tool symbolising these events. This limited use of digital technology is not surprising given the only official teaching of software at the Bartlett is to Second Year students and involves a semester long course in basic 2D drafting using Microstation – as part of the skills a job-seeking graduate might need to be employed in an architect’s office in the UK.

The most explorative, rigorous and unusual use of digital technology is taking place at the Bartlett School of Graduate Studies through the Adaptive Architecture and Computation MSc course. Here students are given extensive lectures in theory (generative design, digital space and society) and use a freeware software application called Processing to write a visually and spatially responsive computer code. This software was developed by Casey Reas and Ben Fry at MIT’s Media Lab, and is based on Java code and thus has its origins in C++. Whilst students quickly learn to use the code to create visually dynamic and explorative effects, the Processing platform can lead to more spatially generative and responsive architectural forms. A good example of this is the research done by Przemyslaw Jaworski (2006) on ‘Using simulations and artificial life algorithms to grow elements of construction.’ (Figure 10)

Accommodation boxes were initially located on the ground and were literally raised – using gravity and calculated material strength – through the growth of the lightweight structures below. The resulting project is somewhat clumsy, showing the lack of creative control in the digitally-driven emergence of the project. Nevertheless, the scheme maintains its integrity through its unique and yet efficient evolution of a structural and formal language.

The most effective use of the software however, seems to be when it is used in conjunction with an Arduino board to create variable physical effects in response to environmental inputs. A good example of this is Carolina Briones’ (2006) project ‘LEDs – Urban Carpet.’ The project was developed as part of the ‘Cityware’ research project in the city of Bath and used a bespoke LED [11] embedded carpet to generate public interaction. The carpet – not unlike disco-floor lights – worked off a feedback input from people’s location, movement and co-presence to generate a swarm of LED boids [12] (Figure 11) to playfully draw strangers together. Research was then done on the carpet’s effectiveness in different locations in Bath.

The conundrum is that whilst learning computer programming can free any architectural and urban designer from the limitations of proprietary software, it is a demanding and disciplined engagement that at first consideration seems quite far removed from any architectural learning potential. However, programming has the potential to engage students with the discipline of logic that seems to be a crucial skill to develop when studying architecture. [13] Software applications such as Processing, the scripting in 3D Studio Max, or the parametric functions of Revit, offer students the ability to engage with architectural projects whilst developing the intellectual and analytical discipline that the logic-based language of computer programming requires. In other words, there seems to be room in UCT’s undergraduate BAS for courses that can deploy architectural software applications such as Processing, 3D studio, or Revit as part of design learning and have the discipline of logical thinking instilled as an after-effect. This limited engagement might help UCT avoid the potential problem the AA faces of a similarity in teaching procedures and outcomes across units, and the re-instatement of the lecturer as an ‘expert’ rather than a co-explorer in an evolving design process.

Conclusion

A summary of the differences between UCT and the Bartlett can be somewhat crudely characterised in the table below. Obviously, such a generalising move cannot account for the particular instances which are quite contrary to the prevailing norm.

This is not, by any means, to suggest that the Bartlett is the apotheosis of architectural education (the table above suggests crucial limitations) and should thus be transported voetstoets from the ‘metropolitan’ centre to the ‘provincial’ periphery. In fact, it seems impossible to imagine the Bartlett anywhere else except in London where the flux of people and other city-wide activities adds to its logic. Similarly, it seems obvious to say that UCT’s context should logically demand a different approach. Besides, there is much to be admired in UCT’s teaching, particularly in the way it takes its role in preparing socially-responsible future professionals very seriously. Furthermore, in the undergrad BAS there is a policy of not leaving anyone behind, of making clear the intended outcomes of each project and what in effect the ‘answer’ to a ‘problem’ might be. But this in itself tends to create a culture of safety and a lack of risk taking. Unlike the Bartlett, this outcomes-based approach also creates a norm against which every student is judged; this can have the exact opposite of what is intended by effectively disempowering students who might otherwise gain confidence through more personal and individual processes and outcomes. This process of defining clear outcomes and goals has the potential to reduce all difference and undermine originality and creativity where our diverse student body is possibly shoe-horned into a ‘one-size fits all’ box.

The Bartlett, on the other hand, allows students and staff to explore unique and student-generated themes and ideas where there is no normal architecture and no normal student. Each project invents and tells a particular and peculiar story. This collaborative searching through a process that only starts to make sense once it is underway can, however, absolve the tutor and student of the responsibility of critique and of working through multiple versions of a particular task; projects easily change programme and site to suit the discovery revealed in the process. Whilst this focus on process, discovery and invention is highly desirable in educational terms, it does seem to allow students to avoid the disciplined work at the core of the architectural profession. The trick is to maintain a tightrope walk between the normative dictates of the profession with its disciplining and disciplinary requirements, and the individually enriching and inventive processes that empower students and future architects to articulate and change their world and the disciplinary strictures of the profession. Rather than wondering if we should be educating future architects who are either ‘problem-solvers’ or ‘story-tellers’ perhaps we should strive to educate ‘problem-solving story-tellers’.