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NTNU – THE FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE AND FINE ART
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There seems to be a great potential in a strengthened theory
element. The School should consider integrating research
in certain studios, as teamwork between students and re-
searchers in relevant fields.
Challenges for the leadership
The leadership has strong connections to the TRANSark
group. This may be a challenge to those who would prefer
a different pedagogic path, whose voices should not be
silenced. It is important that one is clear about what TRAN-
Sark is and its role in the institution. Will ‘one size fit all’?
Looking at the numbers, there seems to be a rather large
group of academic staff who have taken part in the process
and meetings only minimally. Can their concerns and views
be addressed, and the content of their role clarified?
Ideas for solutions/methods to develop
The content of the education of an architect is obviously not
a one way exercise. It should be developed from within the
organisation, but one needs a forum of discussion in which
one may suggest what are the existing strengths, which are
the new ones to be developed, and which fields of education
should no longer have a role in this School.
There seems to be a healthy environment in the Faculty
for this kind of discussion, and the process seems to have
started.
7.d. Pedagogy
STRENGTHS
The TRANSark project group have identified a set of valuable
pedagogical principles that might inform the education of a
future generation of architects who, at the same time as be-
ing technically, aesthetically and professionally competent,
might see beyond bureaucratic and regulatory procedure to
address the pressing social, environmental and political
challenges of our time.
These principles – eg a deep approach to learning, threshold
concepts, active engagement and critical reflection— and
imaginative teaching methods such as Live Studio, can form
the basis of a distinctive signature pedagogy in Architec-
ture at NTNU which will enable NTNU graduates to make
informed evaluative professional aesthetic judgements.
OBSERVATIONS and EVALUATION
An immediate question is whether the ‘TRANSark’ vision for
the future of the architecture curriculum is one that should
be adopted across the whole School. Should TRANSark
become a strong recognisable new ‘signature pedagogy’ for
NTNU? If so, then it will need to be expanded, clarified and
communicated more widely to all teachers and students to
create coherence across the programme and ‘buy-in’ from
those participating in the programmes. If not TRANSark,
then alternative visions need to be articulated and dis-
cussed.
The School should characterise what transformational
learning looks like in terms of a) overarching threshold
concepts (eg environmental sustainability, tectonics, com-
plexity and depth, the confidence to challenge) and b) the
distinctive pedagogies which will most appropriately help
students to achieve these threshold understandings (eg
‘making is thinking’, live studio, site field trips, placements,
case analysis). Through these approaches the core architec-
tural
knowledge
,
skills
and
values
that NTNU students will
need in future can be clarified, and also the ways in which
evidence of their achievement can be measured (see Section
5 e Assessment below). So:
• At B- and M- levels the conceptual lenses through
which architecture is analysed and critiqued need to be
made more explicit
• The critical framework needs to integrate theory and
practice more coherently and consistently across the
programme
• We move away from individual tutors working in
conceptually isolated ‘silos’ across the programme.
The purposes of the programme need to be defined and
articulated through course documentation (eg a course
handbook) that indicates learning outcomes and shows how
these outcomes are aligned with appropriate teaching meth-
ods and approaches to assessment.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The course documentation is also the means whereby the
knowledge, skills and values to be developed in the pro-
grammes can be identified and indicated.
Tolerating risk, uncertainty and occasional failure is a char-
acteristic of the TRANSark approach. Risk often produces
generative learning experiences. There is of course an obvi-