Outside the School: a Review of the Non-Formal Short-Term Architectural Workshops

Abstract

Over the last fifteen years, apart from compulsory curricular studios, extracurricular intensive studios in architectural design (ISAD) have become a mainstream educational environment worldwide. ISADs cover an actual weight in non-formal architectural education. However, to date, there is no review on the methods, processes, or implementation of extracurricular ISADs. The field needs to enhance the visibility of workshop results with regular reporting of workshop activities to raise awareness among future professionals and the wider public. This review aims to make visible existing learning-teaching-experiencing environments and pedagogical conditions, practices, tendencies, and implementations in ISADs. The study follows three stages. It first conducts a scoping study to examine the research outputs on ISADs indexed in SCOPUS and Web of Science from January 1975 to September 2020. Second, it expands the workshop pool by including past ISADs reached via websites/papers. It codes each workshop with the codes and themes determined through the scoping study. Finally, it creates an interactive mapping detailing the following analysis: (1) Quantitative analysis of ISADs (Geographical distribution; outputs; principles, as elements creating the atmosphere and tactics); (2) Qualitative analysis to reveal the impact of workshop outputs on the interested stakeholders. The review suggests that ISADs, including their processes and outputs, contribute to the knowledge triangle in architecture by serving two fundamental roles: (1) A research-by-design activity to address socio-economic-ecological problems caused by the built environment; (2) A pioneering venture in improving the curriculum and practices of teaching and learning. Within the scope of the exigencies of the education field, this review uncovers the potential of ISADs in overcoming time-related, geographical, economic limitations; providing fresh perspectives on content and methods concerning architectural education; expanding the intellectual resources of students; enabling international collaboration between HEIs; breeding an experimental/flexible learning and research environment in the 1st and 2nd cycles to absorb ever-changing tools/methods promoted in professional/research sides of the field. This review provides the reader with an array of diverse teaching and learning practices on these non/informal grounds. The number of workshops included in this study is relatively small, therefore, researchers are encouraged to expand the number of workshops for further analysis.