Doing Autoethnography, Teaching Autoethnography as a White Woman Architect‐Educator‐Researcher in South Africa

Abstract This autoethnographic study lies at the intersection of architectural, teaching and research practice through the lens of an architect‐teacher‐researcher working in post‐Apartheid South Africa. The research traces a shift from unconscious design practice to a more conscious, critical and careful practice through practice‐based design research methods of drawing, photography and writing. Each method reveals a different tacit knowledge of design practice, including institutional influence and the role of past lived spatial experience. In doing so a feminist critical spatial practice was sought. Through doing and teaching autoethnography, the architect‐teacher‐researcher critically situated the self within a multicultural postcolonial educational context. Thus, the politics of whiteness was unpacked and pedagogical strategies of engaged listening, silence, collaborative, participatory and student‐centred learning were explored. Autoethnography validated diverse worldviews and ways of seeing and being in the design studio thus contributing to the researcher's and students' practice becoming more conscious, critical and careful within the post‐Apartheid architectural practice and education context.