Are we architects? — Johan De Walsche

The Faculty of Architecture at the Brno University of Technology, in cooperation with the Brno Gallery of Architecture and the Student Organization of the Faculty of Architecture, cordially invites you to attend a lecture “Architectural Design Education, Questioning the Research Teaching-Nexus” held by an architect and educator Johan de Walsche which is part of the lecture series “Are we architects? On Educational, Architectural Profession and Institutional Critique”.
JOHAN DE WALSCHE: ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN EDUCATION, QUESTIONING THE RESEARCH-TEACHING NEXUS
Academic higher education legitimizes itself by its close entanglement with research, the so-called research-teaching nexus. But although there is a widespread belief in the educational benefits of the nexus, it is still unclear how such nexus actually works. Particularly when taking into consideration that science is increasingly fragmented into a splintering of subdisciplines, leading to endless specialization, it is difficult to understand the edifying capacity of such a nexus.
For the case of architectural education, the question is even more complicated. The Bologna reform has put an increasing emphasis on the establishment of a proper research-teaching nexus. But for architectural education, instead of research, its teaching is based upon design. Instead of the lab or the library, the studio is its backbone. Instead of researchers or academics, it is practitioners that take care of this educational backbone.
This lecture will critically question the rationales behind the research-teaching nexus, will demonstrate how a principled adherence to this nexus may lead to difficulties, and how a simplified adoption to architectural education is problematic and may lead to perverse situations. But the lecture also argues that, in contrast with a risk of over-academizing the educational programme, there is still a huge problem of under-academization of professional practice.