Architecture Live Projects provides a persuasive, evidence-based advocacy for moving a particular kind of architectural learning, known as Live Projects, towards a holistic integration into current and future architectural curricula. Live Projects are work completed in the borderlands between architectural education and built environment practice; they include design/build work, community-based design, urban advocacy consulting and a host of other forms and models described by the book’s international group of authors. Because of their position, Live Projects as vehicle for simultaneously providing teaching and service has the potential to recalibrate the contesting claims that both academia and profession make to architecture. This collection of essays and case studies consolidates current discussions on theory and learning ambitions, academic best practices, negotiation with licensure and accreditation, and considerations of architectural integrity. It is an invaluable resource to current and future Live Projects advocates – whether they aim to move from pedagogy into practice or practice into pedagogy.

50 years after the first Oxford Conference on Architectural Education, the 2008 conference brought together over 500 people from 42 countries to share best practice, discuss how, when, where and why we teach architecture now and in the future.

Dr Peter Milton, Director of Programme Review, Quality Assurance Agency I am grateful to the authors for giving me the opportunity to write this foreword, mainly because it represents the first occasion that the Fund for the Development of Teaching and Learning (FDTL) has led directly to a pUblication such as this. In my former capacity as Director of Quality Assessment at the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), I chaired the FDTL Committee during 1996/7 and am delighted to see the projects which were selected so painstakingly leading to successful outcomes. Assessment of the quality of higher education (HE) was introduced in 1993 and was intended to improve public information about what was on offer in British universities and colleges, as well as to assist in the enhancement of educational opportunities for students. This was part of a larger agenda in which educational quality and the standards achieved by students have come under increasing scrutiny, with a long-term objective of linking funding allocations to the quality of the provision. It was in this context that the FDTL Initiative was launched in 1995 to support projects aimed at stimulating developments in teaching and learning and to encourage the dissemination of good practice across the HE sector. Good practice is identified through the process of quality assessment and bids for funding can only be made by those institutions which have demonstrated high quality provision. To date, the programme includes 63 projects drawn from 23 subject areas.

Design education in architecture and allied disciplines is the cornerstone of design professions that contribute to shaping the built environment of the future. In this book, design education is dealt with as a paradigm whose evolutionary processes, underpinning theories, contents, methods, tools, are questioned and critically examined. It features a comprehensive discussion on design education with a focus on the design studio as the backbone of that education and the main forum for creative exploration and interaction, and for knowledge acquisition, assimilation, and reproduction. Through international and regional surveys, the striking qualities of design pedagogy, contemporary professional challenges and the associated sociocultural and environmental needs are identified. Building on twenty-five years of research and explorations into design pedagogy in architecture and urban design, this book authoritatively offers a critical analysis of a continuously evolving profession, its associated societal processes and the way in which design education reacts to their demands. Matters that pertain to traditional pedagogy, its characteristics and the reactions developed against it in the form of pioneering alternative studio teaching practices. Advances in design approaches and methods are debated including critical inquiry, empirical making, process-based learning, and Community Design, Design-Build, and Live Project Studios. Innovative teaching practices in lecture-based and introductory design courses are identified and characterized including inquiry-based, active and experiential learning. These investigations are all interwoven to elucidate a comprehensive understanding of contemporary design education in architecture and allied disciplines. A wide spectrum of teaching approaches and methods is utilized to reveal a theory of a ’trans-critical’ pedagogy that is conceptualized to shape a futuristic thinking about design teaching. Lessons learned from techniques and mechanisms for accommodation, adaptation, and implementation of a ‘trans-critical’ pedagogy in education are conceived to invigorate a new student-centered, evidence-based design culture sheltered in a wide variety of learning settings in architecture and beyond.

This book has arisen from a Higher Education Academy funded workshop, held in October 2012, to bring together academics who regularly use team projects in their teaching in higher education. The attendees at the workshop were all devoted to using team projects in some form or other, and at the event they shared best practice. In closing the workshop there was agreement that the reported good practice and ideas could be shared more widely, so the concept of this book was born. Many ideas in the book may not be new, but this is the first time descriptions of a wide range of activities and effective practice has been put together in one volume, together with discussion of the issues that commonly arise, to offer suggestions for avoiding or reducing the impact of difficulties for learners. In making the volume free to read online, we hope to reach a wider readership, including those short of resources, who may obtain ideas and insights into the practice of using team projects in their discipline, from which they can develop new activities, with some justification. Contributions were sought from further afield than the workshop attendees to also allow for effective practice to be shared from those unable to attend the workshop. Many of us in higher education use team projects in our teaching, with varying degrees of success, in that the many issues that may arise often prevent the activity from being completely successful. Professionals in Higher Education, who teach or who support learning, often achieve success in some areas and can be said to be applying effective practice; it is by bringing together cases that present good or effective practice, that potential solutions to issues arising in others’ implementations may be found.

An accessible resource to develop authentic learning and teaching in higher education, this book challenges conventional teaching practice and presents meaningful and impactful alternatives across disciplines that are research informed, student-centred and achievable. Bringing together a wide range of contemporary examples, this essential text shows how academics from an increasing range of disciplines and fields have shifted their attention away from the restrictions of campus-based education. Using engaging case study material, underpinned by cutting edge research, the text shares innovations from over 50 different institutions, offers practical advice on how to facilitate authentic learning in real world contexts and examines the range of alternative assessment techniques available to the contemporary teacher. A Handbook for Authentic Learning in Higher Education is ideal reading for early career academics exploring approaches to learning, established academics searching for practical guides to emergent pedagogies and all those responsible for leading teaching and learning practices within their department or institution.

The book that you hold in your hands is a treasure trove of ideas to set into motion a new generation of learning for architects. As the author is a practitioner of this technology called architecture, he have often felt that globally it is the last field of knowledge that still displays vestiges of a holistic, renaissance attitude of mind. It has not fallen victim to our global love for economic development above all other considerations, and is not always a handmaiden of consumerist culture. Architects are somewhat obsessed with form. Despite this, or inspite of it, the combine and harmonize the field of applied arts with the sciences, the attitudes of engineering optimization with the expression of the visual arts, covering subjects as diverse as chemistry and history! India is possibly the world's largest future market for private sector architects today. If we do not adapt our archiectural practice, starting with our architectural teaching practices, we run the clear and present danger of becoming extinct in the race for economic development and urbanization which is truly sustainable: resilient, sufficient, and equitable. In reading this little gem of a book the author would urge the reader to look beyond formulae and descriptions, and generatean agenda for reform; beyond just the curriculum and towards transformation. As Indian society struggles to understand its architects, the profession owes a duty to itself to remain relevant to social needs and aspirations to create a nation of our dreams. And the author hopes that the beginning of that agenda can befound in the pages of this book, interpreted by every reader individually.