The Architectural Experiment as a Teaching Component in Professional Curricula

Abstract

This project will introduce a new teaching component within the first and second year design studio of AScAS that deploys the architectural experiment to enhance the student’s critical skills. This teaching component will be a three-day workshop that gathers all first and second year students of AScAS. The workshop will make use of large scale modeling to foster an open-ended, exploratory process of spatial reconceptualization. The execution of the workshop will be managed through on-site collaboration with experts in experimental architecture from the Swiss organization Research Institute for Experimental Architecture (RIEA). The collaboration with RIEA serves to contextualize workshop preparations, execution, and evaluations in academic discourse. This disciplinary affiliation will not only support the development of the PI’s own pedagogy, but also facilitate capacity building within AScAS and give standing to CityU within the global network of academic institutions recognized for their scholarship on experimental architecture.