Seven members of the Academia Working Group, who organize ABC School, present on a collective book project they have been developing over the last 18 months.
The Organizers Guide to Architectural Education, builds on our experiences with the ABC school and distills our findings for others. Through the efforts of planning and hosting ABC School, the Architecture Lobby’s Academia Working Group has realized that addressing shortcomings of architecture education requires revisioning education as a forum for teaching organizing skills that empower architects to address the needs of our global present and future.
In all areas of curriculum – studio, structures, history, theory, professional practice, environmental systems – the need for architectural education to put issues of environmental and social justice forward is clear. But more than thinking through specific thematic urgencies from within pedagogical siloes, students must learn to think systemically, across boundaries, in order to disrupt capitalism’s exploitations and imbalances. Power-mapping and organizing training are essential in that re-education.
The Architecture Lobby academia working group increasingly understands itself as a collector of organizations fighting for architecture’s relevance and a forum for learning and teaching organizing skills that can and must re-envision architecture education. It is establishing a public resource of organizing how-to’s.
The authors are Kirsten Day, Peggy Deamer, Andrea Dietz, Tessa Forde, Jessica Garcia Fritz, Palmyra Geraki, and Valerie Lechene, supported by Renzo Dagnino.
