108th ACSA Annual Meeting Proceedings, Open

Decolonizing Studio Pedagogy Through Critical Theory and Integrated Research Methods -- A Curriculum Reimagination

Annual Meeting Proceedings

Author(s): José Galarza & Lisa C. Henry

The School of Architecture at The University of Utah has engaged in curriculum reimagination for the last three years. At the heart of this faculty-wide effort is the mission to make architects civic entrepreneurs and socially responsible global citizens. In response, we have sought to broaden our disciplinary horizons. Our collective has envisioned an integrated curriculum in which research methods and critical theories from many disciplines such as literature, queer theory, ethnography, or indigenous studies become the primer for design. Students learn that research is a systematic inquiry directed towards the creation of knowledge and that each method produces different ways of knowing. Our primary aim is to disrupt the notion that the acquisition and application of knowledge is somehow universal, as opposed to the result of a particular set of cultural constructs. The “integrated model” with research methods at its base allows us to move towards a larger project of decolonizing design pedagogy. By decolonizing we mean braiding together Western and other ways of knowing to transform the imagination and structure of design practice and the academy. The metaphor of braiding in this case maintains the identity of each mode of knowledge, while strengthening the whole by introducing different critical views of land and property, design and project delivery, plus client and community1. Placing diverse critical theories as well as both western and indigenous research methods as the foundation of the curriculum allows us to ask difficult questions about how architecture can contribute to the cultural survival, resilience, and healing of cultures devastated by European Enlightenment, the foundation of modern education, with its roots in racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, and economic exploitation of the colonized world.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.108.108

Volume Editors

ISBN
978-1-944214-26-5