Pedagogy and Curriculum in Architecture and Engineering

There are two controversies besetting design education at the present time. The first controversy is the question of whether the goal of design education should be the development of individual talent or the development of cultural and ethical sensitivity. The second controversy is whether the methodology of design education should consist of the transmission of knowledge or the construction of knowledge. Indeed, constructivism, based firmly on the pragmatic philosophy of John Dewey, has recently become the standard paradigm for the delivery of education to architects. The “reflective learning” model of Donald Schön (1984, 1988) and the “experiential learning” model of David Kolb (1983) are exemplary, though both have had their critics. The principal criticism is that these constructivist theories are not academically robust, because they depend too much on tacit and evolving knowledge. Nigel Cross (2001) suggests that there is “a designerly way of knowing,” but he has not defined such an epistemology, though it might be found, as it was suggested in Chapter 3, in Frascari’s argument for Vico’s “universal images” as the language of design. It is possible, too, that positivism might be replaced by complexity theory in design education. Complexity theory has the advantage of relying strongly on autopoiesis as an integral part of the design process, thus making uncertainty more acceptable to academic accounts. The trouble with complexity theory, however, is that it eliminates individual imagination from the creative process, and neither architects nor engineers are prepared to make such a concession.