BUBBLE UP: ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO RESEARCH IN THE ACADEMIC ARCHITECTURE STUDIO

Increased connectivity among the design disciplines has radically transformed the nature of building today. Architectural education must accordingly adapt to the emerging needs of our changing built environment by providing vital, flexible, and open learning environments. Pedagogies in the academy have typically been rooted in practices that are both reluctant to change and slow to address transformative forces in an honest and open manner. Regrettably, the resilience of such top-down methods continues to bias the lens of learning toward natural performers and the notion of singular genius. Authentic attempts to react to new demands and to introduce change are all too often met with both strong resistance and profound contempt by conservative critics. Mainline architectural academia continues to project a deep ambivalence to new methodologies, alternative approaches to context, broadened conceptual practices, and advanced visualization techniques. Yet such means provide a responsive and resilient structure to re-frame content, expedite delivery, and update pedagogical objectives for the next generation.