111 r esea r c h sem i n a r
RADICAL PEDAGOGYâŠâ
radical PedagogyŠâFall 2010â
Research Seminar Fall 2010âongoing Professor Beatriz Colomina with students: Anthony Acciavatti, Juan Cristobal Amunategui, Jose Araguez Escobar, Joseph Bedford, Esther Choi, Gary Eversole, Daniela Fabricius, Ignacio Gonzalez Galan, Vanessa Grossman, Evangelos Kotsioris, Anna-Maria Meister, Federica Soletta and Federica Vannucchi. This class explored a series of pedagogical experiments that played a crucial role in shaping architectural discourse and practice in the second half of the 20th century. The central hypothesis of the class is that some of these experiments can be understood as radical architectural practices in their own right. To test this hypothesis, we compared a series of case studies and identify their degree of innovation, radicality and influence. Radical pedagogy disturbs assumptions, rather than reinforce and disseminate them. This challenge to normative thinking is a major but symptomatically neglected force in the field of architecture. Each experiment has a particular timeframe as the pedagogical techniques often generate a new set of norms to be challenged by another philosophy of education. As a collaborative research endeavor, the Radical Pedagogy project utilizes different formats to test assumptions, engage diverse audiences and refine the posed questions.
Clockwise from far left: Alvin Boyarsky, Cambodia Sit-in, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1970; cover of Architectural Design, April 1971; Buckminster Fullerâs Discontinuous Compression Sphere at Princeton University, 1953; students of Fullerâs with 8 ft. tensegrity sphere, Southern Illinois University, 1961; cover of Open Plan: Architecture in American Culture (Institute for Architecture & Urban Studies, 1977); students in the Milan Galleria from Giancarlo De Carlo, âHow/Why to Build School Buildings,â Harvard Educational Review: Architecture and Education, n 4 (1969) 12-34. Background: Giancarlo De Carloâs student conceptual models from Ricerche di metodo per il disegno urbano: programmi e risultati del corso di elementi di architettura e rilievo dei monumenti I e II nel biennio 1962-1964 (Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia, 1965).