Education: The Latest Architecture and News

If you’re reading this right now, or have read an article on ArchDaily, it’s because you were in a place that enabled you to connect to the internet. Think about a time when you found yourself in a dead zone, where the internet was lagging and you were unable to connect your computer to WiFi to finish an assignment or even without the ability to connect your phone to quickly Google something. You likely dashed to the nearest coffee shop, or place where WiFi was more reliable, just to have the feeling of being online again. The internet, in an ideal world, is equally open to all providing access to knowledge and the ability to easily connect with others. But what happens when you don’t have internet? How is your life impacted if you’re on the wrong side of the digital divide and live in an area without broadband access?

Architecture practice Grimshaw has revealed designs for the Futures Institute at Dollar Academy (FIDA) in Scotland, UK, an open-access learning platform developed by the Dollar Academy, one of Scotland’s leading independent schools. The Institute’s new building will receive the country’s first Living Building certification.

FIDA was launched in May 2021 to tackle fundamental challenges in education: providing equitable access and closing the poverty-related attainment gap; finding compelling alternatives to traditional teaching and exam systems; and addressing sustainability. The initiative invites young people across Scotland to participate in innovative projects rooted in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. These challenges include workshops, skills-based courses, design challenges, and competitions, all offered in-person and via an online platform to enable the broadest possible participation.

The School of Architecture, founded by Frank Lloyd Wright as the Taliesin Fellowship in 1932, is undergoing significant transformations. Two years after separating from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, TSOA landed at Arcosanti, an experimental desert community in Arizona owned and operated by The Cosanti Foundation. In line with the school’s values, the program at Arcosanti seeks to provide students with a contemporary design education based on immersive, experimental, and experiential learning. The curriculum offers 2 and 3+ year NAAB-accredited Master of Architecture degrees and a 1.5-year Master of Science in Design-Build.

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The architectural practice OPEN has revealed the design for the Shanfeng Academy, a project currently under construction that topped out at the end of April, marking the completion of its highest point. The new campus center, located in a new district of Suzhou city, will host a K-12 international school while also aiming to act as a cultural hub for the local community.

Surrounded by canals, the city of Suzhou is known for its historical gardens with temples, bridges, pavilions, and rock sculptures. These, along with traditional Chinese architecture sites, offer a counterpoint to the city’s active social life and fast-paced business sector. The challenge for OPEN architects was to create a large-scale urban project whilst being sympathetic to the heritage of the city.

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Led by architectural designers Khensani de Klerk and Solange Mbanefo, Matri-Archi is a collective based between Switzerland and South Africa that aims to bring African women together for the development of spatial education in African cities. Through design practice, writing, podcasts, and other initiatives, Matri-Archi — one of ArchDaily's Best New Practices of 2021 — focuses on the recognition and empowerment of women in the spatial field and architectural industry.

ArchDaily had the opportunity to talk to the co-directors of the collective on hegemonic space, informal architecture, technology, local idiosyncrasies, and the future of African and global cities. Read the full interview below.

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The Second Studio (formerly The Midnight Charette) is an explicit podcast about design, architecture, and the everyday. Hosted by Architects David Lee and Marina Bourderonnet, it features different creative professionals in unscripted conversations that allow for thoughtful takes and personal discussions.

A variety of subjects are covered with honesty and humor: some episodes are interviews, while others are tips for fellow designers, reviews of buildings and other projects, or casual explorations of everyday life and design. The Second Studio is also available on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube.

This week, David and Marina are joined by Sarah Whiting, Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design; Co-Founder of WW Architecture to discuss her early interests in architecture, communicating the value of architecture to the public, the GSD, social and environmental issues in architecture, the future of architecture practice, movements in architecture, and more.

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The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) released a short educational film meant to teach young students aged 13 to 16 about the relationship between climate change and the built environment, exploring notions of sustainable design. The film introduces concepts such as embodied carbon, brownfield, green infrastructure, sustainable mobility and explains ideas such as adaptive reuse, retrofit, and the use of local materials. The scope of this learning resource is to empower young people to think creatively about how to address the climate crisis through design, helping raise a generation well versed in sustainability principles.

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Auckland in New Zealand has topped the ranking in the 2021 EIU's annual world's most liveable city survey. Classifying 140 cities across five categories including stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure, this year’s edition of the review has been highly affected by the global pandemic. Australia, Japan, and New Zealand took leading positions, while European and Canadian cities fell down the ranking.

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This article was originally published on Common Edge.

In this week's Common Edge piece, Duo Dickinson explores his personal journey from teaching to practice to teaching again, and the differences he perceived. Stating that "no one today believes that school can fully prepare students for what architecture will become in 10 years", the author explains how architectural education has been evolving and questions what could be the best ways to ensure that education remains relevant.

Miralles Tagliabue EMBT, directed by Benedetta Tagliabue, has won the international competition to design the Shenzhen Conservatory of Music, one of the city's 10 new era cultural buildings. Characterized by the dialogue generated with its surroundings, the complex integrates music and art in nature with a proposal of organic and sustainable architecture.

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Emmi Pikler was a Hungarian pediatrician who introduced, in the years after World War II, a new philosophy on early childhood care and learning for children up to the age of 3. It was after the birth of her first child that she began to question: what happens when a child is allowed to develop freely? The observed results culminated in the introduction of a new methodology.

The Pikler approach facilitates the free development of children by caring for their physical health and providing affection but largely respecting their individuality and autonomy. Following this logic, intervention by adults becomes mostly unnecessary. Rather, for the child to experience space while moving freely, certain care must be taken in the preparation of the environments themselves.

Salon has created a new type of campus building, bringing together education and industry. Located between two buildings of the Yıldız Technical University in Istanbul, the textile academy and a teaching block, Ecotone includes learning, flexible co-working, and meeting spaces.

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The Reggio Emilia Approach was created in the post-WWII period at the initiative of widowed mothers and under the coordination of journalist and educator Loris Malaguzzi. In a time of postwar urban reconstruction, the group's primary concern was the formation of new schools, where they wanted to create a peaceful, welcoming, and cheerful environment, with a domestic atmosphere where children could stay while their mothers worked. Understanding the children's interests and providing a suitable environment for exploration and experimentation is one of the focal points of this pedagogy. The creation of a safe and stimulating environment is so fundamental that, in much literature, it appears as a third teacher.

This article was originally published on Common Edge.

In March 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic shifted our university—the University of California, Berkeley—totally online, along with the whole of education from childcare up across the country and most of the planet. In the wake of this forced and unprecedented experiment, debates about what it means remain ongoing. Will the episodic dream of a placeless university, or at minimum a hybrid place/placeless one, come true? Millennia of experience argue for giving higher education a local, physical anchor. And most universities and colleges have this anchor as their starting place, even as they consider what their ongoing experience with virtual teaching, research, and administration means.