Design studio practice in the context of architectural education: a narrative literature review

This review aims to synthesize the current knowledge on the conventional design studio context. This is a narrative literature review based on articles published within the last ten years, while 60 articles were selected for the literature review following a rigorous filtration process. The final articles were selected by applying inclusion and exclusion criteria to the initially selected articles. This review has synthesized the current knowledge on design studio contexts and will review the conventional design studio context, design studio practices that take place within design studios and use of digital tools. The main aim of this study is to broaden the understanding of design studio contexts and to comprehend the types of design studio contexts available in architectural studies. Furthermore, it discusses the digital tools used in design studio practices in the last 10 years. A thematic analysis was conducted in reviewing the articles. It is to be noted that no research has been carried out except one on generating design studio context outside the conventional design studio set-up. This study aims to identify the potential research possibilities of context generated design studios to engage in design studies.

Entrepreneurial Pathways in Art

Art programs at the university level are often designed in a studio-based model where the curriculum objective is “high-levels of disciplinary expertise” (Hong, Essig, & Bridgstock, 2012). These programs graduate artists who, while highly proficient in creation and performance, must navigate a career market which is limited and highly competitive. This studio model is shifting. Many arts programs at the university level are now beginning to incorporate courses which help artists as they navigate the business of the art world, but these types of interventions still neglect opportunities to fully harness artistic skillsets of art students. Arts Entrepreneurship is an emerging discipline in post-secondary education. This discipline aims address the needs of the artist while also recognizing the unique habits of mind the artist might bring into enterprise. The scope of this discipline extends beyond studio practices by considering and measuring the impact of an artists’ work. “The unique mission of arts programs and therefore a unique of arts entrepreneurship education and a defining aspect of its signature pedagogy is the practice of making art work in and for the real world” (Hong, Essig, & Bridgstock, 2012). In this discipline, artists extend the scope of their “work” beyond creation and towards practices which can future sustain an artistic venture. Arts Entrepreneurship therefore seeks to graduate artists who are able to consider and measure the scope of external impacts. The proposal here seeks to address the need of graduates in art education to pursue meaningful employment while also generating new potentials the artist’s role in wider society.

Celebrating Neighbourhood Birds: Performing Equality in Avian-human Performance

Birds are messengers of climate change and loss of biodiversity. As a backdrop I use Henrik Ernston’s and Erik Swyngedouw’s suggestion of politicizing the environment in the era of the Anthropocene. Politicizing the environment is here fundamentally performative, which means that questions concerning environment are related to ecological understanding, egalitarian acting and respectful relationships. I argue in this text that considering and performing a non-human perspective is an equalitarian bodily practice of politicizing non-human beings around us. In this text I ask: how does avian-human performance practice politicize birds? I am interested in analysing what effects of differences are generated in the entangled relations of performance practice, and how do they relate to performative politics of equality. The concepts eco-justice, diversity, agential realism and Rancière’s performative politics, which are actualized in “distribution of the sensible”, are central in the diffractive analysis of non-human performance practice. In this pedagogically inclined artistic research project, I combined three bird discourses: the scientific, sentimental and “the reality-of-a-bird” discourses are embedded in performative avian-human performance inquiries. However, such studio practices are not enough. Scientific studies, combined with studies in indigenous knowledge systems and direct intra-action with diverse non-humans, can open deepened ecological understanding of the needs and desires of a more-than-human-world. Combining these aspects with performance practices may reveal more ways of politicizing non-humans and of voicing their needs and desires.

Studio Practices in Management Education: Creative Adventures in Aesthetic Formativeness

As collaborative artistic inquiries, studios challenge logical–analytical approaches to knowledge. Studio activities entail materializing artifacts to explore a range of management and organization issues. Theoretical references are currently needed to keep pace with the growing interest in studio-informed pedagogy. Inspired by organizational aesthetics, my article engages with Luigi Pareyson’s hermeneutic–aesthetic philosophy of production and theory of formativity for new understandings on the art of “learning-by-making” studio practices. Based in sensory knowing, formativity—conceptualized as aesthetic formativeness—denotes how artistic “making/doing” unfolds through trial and error, socio-material processes involving simultaneous invention and production. Building on previously established analytical distinctions for studying formativeness dynamics in practice, studio experimentations with two distinct MBA cohorts are explored. Excerpts from these studio accounts guide the reader through students’ creative formative adventures. Extensions to the initial conceptual framework are put forward with the aim of contributing more nuanced aesthetic insights on studio-based education. Practical implications and future directions are considered.

Authoritative discourse in advanced studio lessons

The purpose of this paper is to explore authoritative discourses in advanced studio lessons. Authoritative approaches have been described variously as systematic instruction, direct teaching and teacher-centred, and they appear to be widely accepted in music education, and sought by advanced students. Concerns have been raised in general education theory about the limitations of such approaches, but they have been little researched in the context of studio teaching. This qualitative case study seeks evidence of authority in advanced studio behaviour, through Bakhtin’s account of dialogism and authoritative discourse and theories related to direct instruction. Specifically, an analysis is made of a single studio lesson given by an expert saxophone teacher to an undergraduate student. The terms of inquiry are focused on features of lesson dialogue, including representations of others as emblems of authority, the teacher’s initiation of tasks, student responses and teacher feedback. The study identifies internally consistent patterns of behaviour that provide abundant evidence of teacher-centred approaches to advanced studio tuition, which draw attention to the teacher’s personal expertise, privilege her perspective and convey a sense of her authority. However, the observed studio practices are found to be complex and sophisticated, with features of cognitive scaffolding that are inconsistent with authoritative discourse. It is argued that authoritative approaches are contingent on the subject matter, with their productivity contingent on the balance and match between participants’ expertise, commitment and purpose.

How Do We Look?

ABSTRACT In South Africa under apartheid, portrait images displayed in private homes emphasised the dignity of their subjects and the stability of family life during a period of indignity and social upheaval. But when interviewing families about them, one often encounters sensitivity issues of the sort too often passed over by scholars and curators who valorise studio practices without consulting the actual subjects of the images. These include a range of anxieties about repackaging for display in new contexts and for broader audiences, as well as basic copyright and authorship concerns in common with other African and 'family' photographies. The particular anxieties themselves speak to the local histories of how these self-images were used and lived. This essay argues for a closer consideration and a new ethics for looking at and writing about these pictures. It is based on research since 2010 on family collections of photographs in South Africa's Black urban neighbourhoods.

Insights from studio teaching practices in a Creative Industries Faculty in Australia

Studio teaching is a long standing tradition and a signature pedagogy across a broad range of art and creative disciplines, from arts to architecture and design. However, the practice of studio teaching varies across disciplines and practitioners. Do these variances indicate different signature pedagogies in the creative disciplines? An exploratory study was conducted to examine how studio teaching is practised at a Faculty of Creative Industries in Australia, and whether those studio practices suggest distinctive signature pedagogies and creative transfer. In this article, we describe the study and offer insights into studio teaching practices in the creative industries disciplines. We argue that nuances and differences among studio practices in creative industries reveal different signature pedagogies. Our findings offer a unique lens on current approaches to creative disciplines education, where interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to teaching are encouraged in order to support and prepare a highly educated and flexible future workforce.

Issues of dissonance in advanced studio lessons

In recent years researchers have contributed a great deal to our shared understanding of the complexities of studio practices, which are widely regarded as a centre-point of higher education music. This article investigates an aspect of studio learning that does not lend itself easily to scrutiny, by drawing common issues from the cases of two students who, exceptionally, reported dissatisfaction with the approaches taken by their current teachers. These issues, loosely grouped under the metaphor of dissonance, are explored through interview and observation evidence, in terms of the balance of activity within lessons, turn taking, and encouragement. The study gives rise to questions that might be applied, arguably, in any studio setting.