Insights from the NTNU Live Studio

Three members of NTNU's department of architecture, Elenar Archipovaite, Hans Skotte and Steffen Wellinger, explain the educational basis of the Trondheim school's Live Studio programme.

This paper is part of Fourth Door Research's guest research section

Introduction

This paper presents the approach and acumen of the NTNU Live Studio:beta at the Faculty of Architecture and Fine Art, a program recently granted the 2015 Quality Enhancement Award from the Norwegian Ministry of Education & Research. The program emerged both in response to teachers looking for more relevant and thus more efficient approaches to learning and to the energy and engagement of students circumventing the limitations of the traditional studio. There is a tradition and culture for Design & Build and live projects in the NTNU curriculum as well. This paper, however, concentrates on the co-curricular student initiated projects and program. NTNU Live Studio is organized as a dual model with a mentor hub and the student hub www.studiobeta.no, hence Live Studio:beta

The paper is based on written reflections from participating students over the last 5-6 years and our own experience as teachers. It ends up through an analysis of the student feedback in a set of new questions. These drive at the institutional challenges relating to mainstreaming this approach both in educating professionals in general, but specifically in how to generating relevant insights and strategies for future architects to actively engage with the economic and social challenges we all face.

The pedagogical-didactic approach in architecture education has for a long time been dominated by so-called 'studio teaching', i.e. simulation of architecture and planning projects in controlled learning environments sheltered from the social and material realities that confront all projects that are to be implemented. This approach is rooted in the Beaux Arts tradition, and deeper down in the mind-body dichotomy. Weaknesses in studio teaching have been acknowledged and discussed for many years. Bauhaus, for instance, was established in reaction to this approach. Frank Lloyd Wright, in 1931, openly warned against entering architecture school “except as the exponent of engineering” (Kaufman & Raeburn 1931/1961, p. 249). Fifty years on Peter Buchanan  wrote, “What is Wrong with Architectural Education? Almost Everything” (Buchanan 1989). He sluggishly followed up 20 years later  (Buchanan, 2011; 2012), so did Till (2009) and Skotte (2009; 2014) – and many, many others. Still, very little change has taken place. The reason for this institutional inertia may rest in the nature of academia and its power structures, but also, as Ivison and Vandeputte (2013) claim, in the present utilitarian, or neo-liberal nature of higher education.

The proposals by writers and alternative practices already applied at many schools all suggest that the present day challenges require not only new skills and knowledge, but also a new understanding of our professional role, a new concept of knowledge and new methods. It requires active dialogue, real interdisciplinary and empowerment of users and citizens based on what Salama (2015) would label ‘trans-critical pedagogy’. This is what we humbly have been trying to abide by.

I - Underpinnings

We have to be honest, not merely academic. The NTNU Live Studio:beta program evolved over time, not as a resolute decision grounded in theoretical speculations. Several contingencies overlapped in time to ground the program within the faculty. New staff conceptualising architecture in a more practical sense. Staff realising the deficiencies in ‘studio teaching’ setting up alternative workshops.  New and existing faculty programs adapted, or demanded, a more pragmatic and socially responsive academic approach. All this was taking place against the backdrop of students eagerly exploring the fields outside the ‘academic box’. It has been a reflexive process where insights gained through experience have affected subsequent strategies. Beneath it all was the realisation that architecture constitutes a societal strategy, and ‘what’ students learn depends on ‘how’ they learn.

Since 2013 research on our Live Studio:beta experience  is a work package in Transark, www.ntnu.edu/transark the centre for transformative learning in architecture education at NTNU.

Of course, we did not start from scratch. We were well aware of the extraordinary work undertaken by students at Rural Studio (Oppenheimer and Hursley, 2002; 2005), and the design-build programs already established at many architecture schools worldwide (www.liveprojectsnetwork.org) We had read some of the writings of Donald Schön (1987, 1993) and were at the time working with Nabeel Hamdi (2004). But most importantly, we were through reflections on our own architectural and planning practice drawing guiding insights onto our teaching. We were, in our humble way, trying to be ‘dual professionals’ where reflective practice modulated our academic contributions.

Juhani Pallasmaa representing the phenomenological movement in architecture (Holl, Pallasmaa and Perez-Gomez, 1994) has been a guiding thinker in shaping our approach. His wonderful The Eyes of the Skin (2005) andThe Thinking Hand(2009) highlight the role of our senses in understanding architecture. This bears heavily on the ‘how students learn’. Dagur Eggertson of Rintala-Eggertson Architects confirms having said that “only when you have carried stone, do you understand how to use stone in your buildings”. This leads us on to the power of embodied cognition. Picture below of working with hands, feet and bodies relates to this section T Neuroscience has uncovered how our senses generate understanding, i.e. affects our cognition directly without filtering or abstracting it through our brain (Skotte, 2009; 2014). It is a discovery especially important in architecture in that its very nature is material yet experienced and appreciated through our senses (Mallgrave, 2013; Robinson and Pallasmaa, 2015). This is actually how the built environment makes sense to people, if not to architects. Because, as the Chilean Architect Alajandro Aravena says,”Nobody cares what architects do, only other architects” (Aravena 2011, p. 278).

This sensory experience is at the core of John Dewey’s approach to education, or rather, the transformation of the experience into insight or knowledge. The process of transformation is hinged on reflections. Dewey never propagated a ‘learning-by-doing’ approach. What he claimed was ‘We do not learn from experience... we learn from reflecting on experience.’(Dewey 1916, pp. 30-31). Not reflecting is not experiencing. It is like being drunk on sensations. Reflecting represents ‘slow learning’, according to Archipovaite (2015). It takes time to reflect on what you have been through, on what you have learnt or understood, not least in relation to other people and society at large. This is where Dewey links education to democracy and thoroughly debunks the notion of education being teachers filling the empty ‘knowledge sacks’ of students. Instead, he sees education bringing about inquiring students. Much the way Hanna Arendt saw educational excellence, according to Richard Sennett, “A good teacher imparts a satisfying explanation; the great teacher – as Arendt was – unsettles, bequeaths disquiet, invites argument” (Sennett 2008, p.6).

The power of reflecting, or the effectiveness it holds on learning, is exhaustively presented in a recent Harvard Business School Working paper (Di Stefano et al 2015). The authors make due reference to Kolb’s (1984) four stages of learning grounded in 1) experience, 2) by reflecting upon it, 3) forming abstract concepts, and 4) building insights. They also refer to the efforts of codifying tacit knowledge through reflections, a hot issue within architectural circles. Architects, or any particular profession, it is often claimed, hold knowledge outsiders cannot fathom because it is non-verbal and belongs to the profession alone. Polanyi (1966), later also others, claim that reflective efforts of untangling tacit knowledge gives a deeper understanding of its properties. This claim is further strengthened through the findings of Daniel Kahneman and his two systems of thinking; the omnipotent System I (intuition, tacit knowledge, spontaneity) and the ‘lazy’ system II (critical reflection). We live by the first, but insights and knowledge necessary for societal progress stems from system II (Kahneman, 2011). Most significantly, the Harvard working paper, for the first time empirically, shows “that the capacity to reflect on action improves learning” (di Stefano et al 2015, p. 27). Formulated slightly differently, and based on qualitative investigations, Donald Schön set forth theories on how professionals, including architects and planners, reflect and thus learn in action as a matter of course, and how students may learn to by engaging with those more experienced (Schön, 1983; 1991). This leads directly to the notion of ‘communities of practice’, where “groups of people who share a concern or passion for something they do and learn how to do better as they interact regularly” (Wenger 2006, p. 1). Students and teacher can in the best of cases constitute such a community, the authors of this article definitely make up one, and engaged student groups do. The relevance to the Live Studio:beta program is that the intra-action of these communities, i.e. the engaged student groups, act as a living curriculum as it acknowledges the role social structures play in learning with and from each other. We may also see them as arenas for horizontal and thus extra-curricular or autonomous learning.

What characterises these communities of practice is that they acknowledge the plethora of components or properties a community consists of and depend upon, its complexity, so to speak. This brings us to our last and perhaps most important buttress of the Live Studio:beta underpinnings, that of the theory of simultaneities. The term refers to “events or phenomena that exist or operate at the same time” (Davis 2015, p. 14) better illustrated, perhaps, by conceptualizing the knower as inseparable from the knowledge he holds. Again, we are debunking the image of the ‘knowledge sack’ of the learner. Education, and learning, is thus always dealing with the knower-knowledge duality - simultaneously. Even though knower and knowledge can be considered separately, they cannot be considered separate. There are numerous claims in the complexity theory in which the notion of simultaneities is embedded, that point toward the NTNU Live Studio:beta praxis. The tension or balance between attention to and ignorance of detail echoes Nabeel Hamdi warning to our students “Don’t think too much before you do, and don’t do too much before you think.” Another one would be taking responsibility for the externalities of your doings, because these consequences are there – embedded as it were, in the project.

As we shall see in the next section, our empirical material and feedback from students is a throwback to the explanations given by the writers above. We are still in the process of distilling our experiences into theoretically grounded claims.. Remaining honest, methodologically we realize we are within the realm of Grounded Theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967), but it is an approach we have not yet pursued. We will.

II - What we do

NTNU has a long tradition of students undertaking ‘live projects’. Many schools of architecture do. What sets our projects apart is that they are generally initiated, organised and managed by students themselves, not faculty. The ‘live projects’ have varied from small traditionally crafted boathouses on the coast of Norway to large community development plans on other continents. Students apply a context-based design approach whereby they have to work closely with members of local communities, municipalities, professionals, contractors and other stakeholders. This collaborative nature is what allows the projects to take flight.

The organisation

NTNU Live Studio:beta makes up a common platform with two nodes, one for faculty and one for students (figure 1). 

This ensures the independence of the students, yet opens an arena for negotiations on academic, practical and social issues between teachers, students and involved partners, most notably through the monthly ‘Live Studio:beta Roundtable’ established for strategic discussions and exchange of experience and reflection. 

The student node, Studio: Beta, organizes students into what over time becomes a "community of practice" (Wenger, 2007) through joint discussions and guidance on each other's projects (peer discussion and mentoring). This also ensures stability and robustness through common social practices and recruitment.

The faculty node also forges a "community of practice" among engaged staff and external consultants by ensuring that insights, reflections and lessons learned are gathered, processed and relayed through learning materials, guidance, and coaching. Academic quality is secured by teachers and consultants acting as ‘mentors’ of the various projects. Over time, this has forged structures that ensure stability and thus enabled the participants to mature into "Dual Professionals" (i.e. simultaneously be and act as professionals and teachers). (Beaty, 1998)

Each project is organised separately defining participating students, engaged mentor(s) and consultants. Planning and the required measures to ensure implementation, i.e. cooperation with local suppliers, engaged interest groups, local and national public bodies – and often sources of funding, are all organised by the students and are seen and experienced as an important part of the learning process. Projects abroad are always undertaken in close cooperation with local organizations and/or authorities.

Emerging reflective practice

The reflective practice in learning entered the Live Studio:beta program from an international NTNU master course in ‘urban ecological planning’. Through regular reflection papers the students documented their growing insight both individually, pertaining to group work, but not least their understanding of the context. We have continued applying practices of students writing weekly feedbacks in the Live Studio:beta projects ever since. The importance of this practice cannot be overestimated as it gives us empirical evidence as to what students actually learn – which we all know is different from what the marks do. This section rests squarely on student reflections. We have grouped them under two broad headings, Mastering Constraints in and of Practice, and Social Sustainability.

Mastering constraints in and of Practice

Working with real people and real impacts bring all kinds of new challenges the students never have had to deal with before. “What we did was real, important and true. Unfortunately, this is a feeling I never have had at NTNU” (student, 2009). Reality calls for skills in communication, interpersonal trust, adhering to time schedules, funding limits etc. Even though students are exposed to and simulate some of these skills in their studio environment, they are now learning opportunities, not merely sources of despair or frustration. As one of the students stated:  “For me, it’s essential to be able to work ‘live’, in collaboration with others, and with high complexity and short deadlines. That’s how I become creative” (student, 2015).

Project Management

How much does a wall cost? What do we do first, the wall or the roof? How do you regularly inform your partners? These are the type of the questions students raise when leaving the studio and stepping onto the building site. When going ‘live’ they face challenges they did not even know existed, and that are not even visible in the finished project. Their notion of what architecture is gradually changes through the experience of practice:

“We spent all our time making phone calls, writing emails to manufacturers, negotiate with the municipality, do budgets and even talk to the local newspaper. We agreed that next time we had to focus on the “architecture”. Of course, now I know that the “architecture” was what we did. It’s worthless to have an idea or vision if you're not able to build it, negotiate it or finance it. And that’s why I think it’s extremely important to do projects live, because what we learn in studio projects maybe only make up 10% of our daily work” (student, 2014).

The crucial importance of budget limitations, building logistics and progress plans etc. suddenly opens up a completely different world for the students:  “A thin budget challenged the design of the project, but it generated innovation and creativity” (student, 2014). Others developed entrepreneurial skills:

“We needed to generate a project from the very beginning, coordinate all the involved disciplines, make all the decisions and adapt the project to the limited budget we had. In the end, we founded a non-profit organisation that took care of the operating expenses of the pavilion” (student, 2011). 

Again, we see students experience – and hence learn, that a problem and its perceived solution changes as they start working with.

“When playing along with the limitations, you're more likely to find a good answer. But this skill requires training, and I suppose that’s why we have architecture schools. If you go through architecture school without facing any real-life constraints or problems, you will base your choices of intuition only, and the designs will be artificial and lofty. They merely build up your ego” (student, 2015).

Communication

The studio environment does strengthen the students’ skill in communicating – but only to other students, teacher and examiners and hence tend to become tribal-speak. In a ‘live’ situation, the audience is much wider calling for a much wider communication repertoire. More like what professionals face in their daily line of duty. This is how one students comments on the issue:

“Why do we (architects) complain of not being taken seriously? Why blame the others? Have we forgotten that we should be communicators? Have we forgotten that we are translators? […] If there is a discipline that appeals to the general public, it must be architecture. And we remain the experts that no one understands” (student, 2014).

In preparing for presentations and negotiations with people outside our profession, eg. lay people from the community, the students also have to clarify the issues among themselves. No chance of using tribal ‘archi-speak’:

“When we had visually communicated the information we had gathered to the community, did it become clear to us what our project could become. We showed the barangay council something that proved we had invested time and efforts in understanding the area […]. I believe this was significant in gaining their trust and being met with enthusiasm in the meetings that followed” (student, 2014).

Handling Responsibilities

The students have to shoulder serious responsibilities when building real structures in an open society. As the students wrote in the NTNU Live Studio:beta Handbook: “Stepping on someone’s studio project model may cause some tears, but the outcome of the roof flying off a building during a storm is far worse.” Taking risks and responsibilities challenges the conventional students‘ role. The live projects represents a reality check on their decisions and their consequences, (and again we see the link to the notion of simultaneities):        

“I have gained a unique understanding of the gravity our choices hold once it will affect a building that will exist for years to come. How incredibly important it is to make right choices when the stakes are so high, not only for me, but for all the others. This is something we never experience in a studio situation”

Teamwork

In live projects students hardly make decisions alone. This will sometimes make things easier, but working in Live Studio:beta teams seem to require other sets of individual skills than those expose to or trained for in a studio environment. In live settings, the team has to deal with new complexities, personal responsibilities and the fact that other stakeholders are now part of the team. All this under the threatening time pendulum.

“We think that collaborating with a local carpentry workshop is very beneficial for architects. The fact that we could sketch a solution together, and go straight to the workshop and try to make it in full scale, was a liberating feeling for the whole team” (student, 2011).

Working in a live project team may expose the members to different perspectives. This may become its strength.

“The experience of building together, particularly with Intit (our hired ‘professional’) challenged our understanding on how they do things, and

equally challenged him to understand what we were up to” (student, Philippines, 2014).

Teamwork makes all collectively responsible for the result. This can also be threatening – and often frustrating. As one of the student demonstrates:

“One has not really experienced teamwork until, after ten days and 150 man-hours, we still argue about a window. Should it stand in the middle of the wall, or 10 cm off centre? One must, in a group, dare say what one thinks. One must stand for what one believes is right, but one must also endure compromises. When ‘in flow’ teamwork is a delight. In adversity it is hell”(student, 2014).

Any experienced architect would recognize the statement.

Participation and Ownership

Live Studio:beta project always involve others, not only students.

These are ‘real people’. They are in most cases ‘clients’ and will be the ones who will care for and maintain what the students leave behind. In order to make the projects long lasting, or ‘sustainable’, it is important to build a true sense of ownership around it. In order to achieve this, the students have to stand back. The locals are the ones who know what makes the community tick, a requirement for securing the future. Hence it is not about “letting” stakeholders participate, it is about aknowledging their insight and making sure it informs the project in order to make it ‘theirs’, and it must be theirs in order to make it last. One of the student state:

 “A question I think everyone has to ask themselves when working with so-called "participation" is whether one adheers to the call for participation and ownership in itself, or whether one also takes hold of the knowledge and experience that comes forward, and let it shape the project. Throughout the entire process this was a recurring challenge” (student, 2014).

Throughout the years, and particularly among the student working abroad, these questions are constantly raised in their reflections. Opening up, standing back, critically examine your own references, but relate to, and learn from local knowledge is part of the prescription the student give in realising and securing the future for their projects.  

“The open dialogue depended on trust and respect for each other. If I thought we could have done without their contribution, we would not have taken their input so seriously. But we depended on being able to transform their words into important factors for the project” (student, 2014).

Another group states a similar approach:

“As architects we tried to process the thoughts of the users into good and user-friendly architecture. It was important that people who were involved in the process could recognise that our discussions have had an impact on the finished project. […] Our work with FRIrom has made us see our discipline in a new perspective. In addition to being architects, we worked to inspire commitment, and give ownership to the leaders of the hospital, the clinics and the potential users” (student, 2011).

FRIrom on the roof of Trondheim St Olaf’s Hospital – Photo Pasi Aalto

The Learning Processes

“The main reason for going was the opportunity for learning. However, it was vital that our work was relevant for a society that is still recovering from the devastation caused by typhoon Haiyan. Learning and doing useful work were parallel throughout. We believed that more meaningful work would lead to better learning opportunities as well was helping people less fortunate than ourselves” (student, Philippines, 2013).

We have throughout subscribed to the notion of knowledge emerging from discoveries. As the following students did as member of a student group going to Port-au-Prince after the earthquake I 2010:

Learning new things often means jumping into deep water – trusting you will find ways of getting back up. You can always prepare yoursel better, you can always seek more information, study and learn more before you jump, but when is the right moment to jump?”(student, Haiti, 2010).

It is to be noted that he made a first-rate return to dry land. This is at the same time an exquisite presentation of the notion of liminality in learning. i.e. passing through ‘uncertainty-phase’, a liminal zone that once passed have generated new understanding (Meyer & Land 2003).

III - Contributing towards Change

When the Ministry of Education & Research gave us the 2015 award for Norway’s best university program, they also forecasted its educational potential being applicable to other disciplines. They did not, however, give us the answers on how to transfer and transform its qualities.  The biggest challenge now is how do we adapt and implement this educational approach to other fields of the university and how this may affect its teaching and learning environment. To respond we have to dig further into the students’ reflections above.

What emerges is the notion of ‘negotiation space’, a fusion of context and content of the ‘Live Studio:beta projects. This discussion is meant to map the space that NTNU Live Studio:beta holds between students and university.  How is this space formed?  What impact does it have? How may it influence and contribute to the broader university-learning environment? These question marks indicate the uncertainty of our position as this space is not given or defined by any rule. When re-examining the student reflections, four main domains shape our experience: Practice, Ethics, Society and Theory. These four domains hold the negotiation space of the projects (figure2).

The negotiation space of the platform or the program holds a different set of domains as experienced students, now members of a true community-of-practice, are drawn into the negotiation space of the platform. These negotiations take place between mentors, the Faculty and experienced Studio:beta students. Student, Learning, Education & University are the active domains creating another set of simultaneities and (fruitful) tension (figure3).

This culture of constant negotiations work is a key characteristic of the NTNU Live Studio:beta approach. There is adaptable space for negotiations in every project and within the organization as well, all defined by a given context and its given limitations. All in line with Alejandro Aravena’s claim that creativity sparks from constraints, e.g. where “there are rules, you have freedom” (Aravena, 2011, p. 180) These negotiations create the unique type of ownership that has proven to be such a central part in formulating future scenarios of Live Studio:beta.

Independence and Ownership

Community of practice (Wegner, 1998; 2011) is embedded in the nature of all live projects. The students are bound to find ways of helping each other and work together. This sense of mutual trust - and constant negotiations - also include the mentors. This ‘responsible independence’ creates a sense of ‘ownership of process’. It has come to be the very keystone of Live Studio:beta.

Live projects attract particular kinds of the students. Even though self-confidence is at the heart of the Nordic democratic (school) system, live projects are not the main choice for all. The ones that join are driven by curiosity of the process and the project and are willing to take the risks and responsibilities this entails.  The acquired sense of ownership cultivates not only independence, but also demands an ethical stand towards the third person or to greater society. These are powerful learning processes and it is obvious that they will affect the students’ understanding of their future role as professionals.

Extra- or co-curricular projects represent a major institutional challenge. It has to do with funding. Projects undertaken outside the regular curriculum do not generate ‘financial faculty credits’, on which basis funding is disbursed within the university. Yet, the faculty covers the salaries of mentors and fees to consultants and sometimes give financial support to projects. They still do so because of the proven learning efficacy of the Live Studio:beta activities. To proceed we have to resolve this issue – most likely on a university level.

Learning through Reflections

The sense of ownership does not stop with projects and processes. The students start to take ownership of their own learning processes.  Reflection processes have come to take an important role in the Live Studio:beta learning program. Reflections require ‘concrete experiences’ according to Kolb (1984). The processes linked to projects and platforms are such sensory and cognitive processes where students through reflections go “from learning by doing to learning by thinking” (di Stefano et al, 2015).  At this point the role of learner and teacher becomes more interactive, communicative and collaborative. We are into the type of learning environment Ashraf Salama talks about where “Learners identify problems and resources with the aid of teacher-facilitators; they learn to develop problem solving tools and techniques as well as set standards for solution, and work with both the abstract and concrete.” (Salama 2015, p. 218)

Students reflections and observations by the staff and through the Transark research centre show that managing risk, taking responsibility and acknowledging being vulnerable are held as essential driving forces in the learning process. This also shapes the negotiation space of NTNU Live Studio:beta. Reflections are processes of abstraction, of theorizing, so to speak. Reflecting in a state of vulnerability or uncertainty is the start of theorizing, to understand the domain of Ethics/Bildung and Society. All the while getting closer to the core of architecture.

Through these learning processes the students start positioning themselves in the world of architecture, much in line with how Snodgrass & ‘Coyne (2006, p. 22): “architecture is interpretational in so far as it involves positioning. To position something is to invoke a primary architectural moment. To be positioned is also to hold a point of view, an interpretation, or is perhaps the start of an interpretation.”         

End Note

The overriding message rising from NTNU Live Studio:beta is linked to the ownership issue, the negotiation space, the mutual trust within the community of practice – and the embedded complexity (figure 5). The existing educational approach in architectural education (figure 4) will not be able to meet the challenges the future, not even today’s complex reality. The world will undergo dramatic changes and we have to focus on releasing the creative potential of our students. We have to ensure that their education will foster appropriate “knowledge for a better world” to echo NTNU´s vision statement.

Experimental education program are required to move into an unknown future, a claim supported by Ashraf Salama: “Effective learning - oriented towards collective problem solving depends upon reflections, discourse, and experimentation” (2015, p. 224).

The experimental nature of NTNU Live Studio:beta was given due recognition by The Norwegian Ministry of Education & Research by bestowing the award on the program. They acknowledged the value in its alternative approach in university education. In an interview with dezeen after receiving the Pritzker Prize, Alejandro Aravena elaborated on the education of architects and sums it ut by simply stating that "We're never taught the right thing at university." In our small way we try to do the right thing.

This is an edited version of the paper by Elenar Archipovaite, Hans Skotte and Steffen Wellinger , from the Faculty of Architecture and Fine Arts, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU, Trondheim. It was presented as part of the Participation at the Research Based Education AAE2016, conference at the Bartlett School of Architecture 08-10.04.2016

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