A point of view: the open door of pedagogy, legitimacy and architectural knowledge

Abstract

The following report aims to enquire into the complex relationship between the changing epistemologies of the architectural discipline and the establishments in which institute its practices. These pedagogical establishments serve to accommodate and represent the development and progress of architectural thought. However, there exists an inevitable conflict of epistemologies and ideologies within this model of education. The legitimation of architectural knowledge is based on the arbitrary authority of a given establishment's governing axioms. The following report works to the hypothesis that the development of architectural knowledge is never independent of the institutional forces that contain, protect and discipline architecture whether perceived as a trade, mechanical art or liberal art. As a result of this there exists an epistemological uncertainty about architecture's own disciplinary justification. This manifests itself as an anxiety that pervades the architectural enterprise. Whether located in the academy, technical training school or university, architectural pedagogy is identified as instrumental in this act of disciplining. Architectural pedagogy is explored for its philosophical, historical, cultural, institutional and political significance in the context of what is considered to be a crisis of epistemologies. Pedagogy is then proposed as a medium to question, administer and reinstate the ideas of value, justice and responsibility in contemporary architectural theory and praxis.