MAKING THINGS HAPPEN. A slightly mischievous practice

My pedagogic research stems from an ongoing interest in the progressive pedagogies of Ward and Fyson (1973), Illich (2011), Goodman (1971), Reimer (1973), Freire (2000) and Hooks (1994) that encourage ‘us’ to utilise the city as a place of learning and experimentation. City-as-school or in our case city-as-studio. This is exemplified through a long-standing Semester One studio brief, Wearable Architecture, where students are required to make a 1:1 enclosure. Up until recently, this was a collaborative endeavour between our BA(Hons) Architecture and Interior Architecture and Design students. Educated beyond the confines of the University, this situated project provides students the opportunity to speculate and to play, to imagine the city as an extension of the interior, challenging the narrow definition of what the interior might be. Avoiding any explicit reference to the domestic, enables students regardless of discipline, to explore the connections across alternate spatial practices, the ‘anatomy’, idiosyncrasies and ‘temperament’ of our built environment, the consequence(s) of architecture. To use the city as a testbed for contemporary spatial production, exploring; alternative or unorthodox forms of occupancy. To help inform constructions that might be considered, part model, part furniture, part interior, part garment and part architecture. Celebrating the exploration of the city through the performative and temporal, and being ‘slightly’ subversive, mischievous, disruptive and at moments absurd. Provoking students to engage with spatial design as agents of social, cultural, political, economic, and ecological change. This photo-essay showcases some of the explorations from over the last three academic years, 2021 to 2023, which demonstrate that our First-Year students continue to produce work that is challenging and ambitious from the outset.