Charrette 5(1) - Spring 2018 - Call for Contributions - From the Global South: Pedagogical Encounters in Architecture

Guest Editor: Ashraf M Salama, Professor and Head of Architecture, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow
Editor: Ruth Morrow, Professor of Architecture, Queen's University Belfast
Assistant Editor: James Benedict Brown, Senior Lecturer, De Montfort University, Leicester

Charrette, the journal of the Association of Architectural Educators (AAE), first published in 2013, is now well established as a pioneering journal for academics, practitioners, and theorists engaged in design teaching practices and theoretical debates.  For this issue (Volume 5, Issue 1), Charrette invites papers and essays that address positions, experiences, and experiments which are undertaken in the Global South by either local or international academics or both.

Theme

The main body of literature on architectural education and design pedagogy is primarily produced in the English-speaking world and is interrogated, debated, and reproduced mainly in the larger context of Western Europe and North America. The architectural academic community in other parts of the world; the Global South, is deeply influenced by such a discourse as well as by various pedagogical trends typically introduced in Western academia to reflect the needs of budding professionals and the profession of architecture at large. In essence, these represent tendencies that are instigated and practiced within the contextual particularities of Western academia including the ambitions and constraints of academic institutions, the professional milieu, and the way in which architecture is practiced and produced. Classically, such an influence manifests itself in the fact that in any discussion about pedagogy in architecture in Global South’ academia the discourse which characterizes the Global North dictates and thus overshadows opportunities for developing another parallel, or in fact different but equally important, discourse which can be generated and developed to address other unique particularities that characterize the Global South. The thrust here is not to create a competing discourse but to complement what is already there.

The Questions

This call for Volume 5 Issue 1 of Charrette maintains that architectural education discourse can be enriched and its scope can be expanded when both historical and contemporary imperatives are clearly contextualized. Issues of tradition, identity, modernity, vernacularism, post-colonialism, poverty, globalization are a few to name in this context. How they derive within architectural curricula and how they act as drivers for studio projects are two important points that potential contributors are invited to interrogate and debate. The presence of international professional and ethical standards which must apply equally to both Global North and Global South raises a third point on how international accreditation approaches and processes address the particularities of the Global South. Other points may include issues related to the way in which international partnership can inform studio practices in different parts of the world, and the potentials, validity, and effectiveness of international summer schools.

Possible Topics for Articles

Underlying the theme of “From the Global South: Pedagogical Encounters in Architecture” and the preceding questions contributions are invited to address one or more of these topics:

• Tradition, Identity, and Modernity in Architectural Education
• The Impact of Globalization on Design Studio Teaching Practices
• Post-Colonial Discourse in Architectural Pedagogy
• Poverty, Community Building, and Community Development
• Virtual Design Studios and Global South/Global North Dialectics
• International Accreditation: Approaches, Processes, and Experiences
• Validity and Effectiveness of International Partnerships and Summer Schools