Assemblage and Immersion in the Archive: New Formats for Architectural Education

The recently established Architecture Archives of the Future group at TU Delft explores new educational formats to activate architectural archives as sources of design knowledge and traditions. To this end, it collaborates with the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, which holds the Dutch national collection of architecture and urban planning. By combining methods of comparative plan analysis and digital VR and XR technologies, students learn how to operationalize historical data and knowledge, curate these, and present them to a larger audience. Two courses serve as examples: one is a history and theory course, and the other is an experimental research and design studio. Through assemblage (the history and theory course) and immersion (the studio), the students learn to synthesize their findings into a critical narrative, assessing data, cultural and social values, and speculative questions about future knowledge and design production