3.CHALLENGES IN ARCHITECTURAL PEDAGOGY 3.1 What are the challenges that architectural pedagogy faces in recent times? In the last two decades, the profession of architecture has changed dramatically, but the process of architectural pedagogy has been slow to respond to this change. With changes in the structure of contemporary society, the emergence of housing problems squatter settlements, the deterioration of historic cities, and the emergence of large structures and new building types, new knowledge became necessary for architects and educators. This eventually set the standard for skills, architects need and the manner in which they should organize these skills. In response to this change, one can argue that architectural pedagogy should offer a wider knowledge base for students to become real professionals.
3.2 Commodity, Firmness, and Delight: The History / Theory Dilemma Architecture has been theorized and defined in the 1' century BC by Vitruvius, and restated in the 17th century by Sir Henry Wotton (Morgan, 1960). Three complex phenomena form the definition of architecture: commodity, firmness, and delight. Commodity expresses the functional aspects of architecture, the way buildings house human activities, and how people live and societies operate in the physical environment. Firmness represents physical strength and structural integrity. Delight exemplifies the aesthetic aspects since architecture seeks to express ideal concepts of beauty that emerge from symbols embedded in a particular culture. Each of the three phenomena has an interdependent relationship with the other two. The balance of these interdependencies forms a continuing challenge to architectural educators.
Examining the courses of history and theory of architecture and the way knowledge is transmitted in several schools of architecture reveals that functional and human aspects are not emphasized by history and theory teachers (Salama,
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