Architectural Education and Community Power

Architectural Education in the UK has drifted toward an esoteric preoccupation with style and artistic production and is ignoring important issues of society and urban change. Techniques of user participation and involvement of students in real life social problems is on the agenda in only a few schools of architecture. Yet in the real world more emphasis is being placed on tenants and resident participation in social housing programmes. The Community Technical Aid movement is going from strength to strength. However UK schools of architecture are not preparing students for work of this kind. In this paper it is argued that architectural history and theory is largely to blame for placing too much emphasis on precedent studies divorced from social and political context. Progressive movements in CIAM and radical social programmes are ignored in favour of pre-occupation with fashionable but content free stylisms.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.Intl.1995.53

Volume Editors
John K. Edwards