Adapting practice-based design research to a South African undergraduate architectural studio: Building a more conscious and critical practice among students

Practice-based design research methods developed internationally in postgraduate architecture programmes aim towards a more conscious and critical design approach. The question asked in this essay, however, is how such research methods can be adapted for undergraduate architectural students, using the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg as the testbed. Two practice-based design research methods at Wits University were thus adapted from the RMIT University and former Adapt-R programmes. The changes for South Africa addressed the disparities between postgraduate and undergraduate students in that country, as well as its complex post-colonial, post-Apartheid, and post-#FeesMustFall institutional context. These undergraduate students were encouraged to unearth their personal and local ways of seeing and knowing through collaborative social reflection, thereby developing a more self-aware form of practice. Conversely, at a contextual level, the students interrogated institutional influences and questioned established notions of mastery within a slowly decolonising university, critically situating themselves within this culture.