Journal: Cahiers de la recherche architecturale, urbaine et paysagère (Journal for the Study of Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape)
In recent decades, pedagogy in the fields of architecture, urban planning and landscape design has become increasingly internationalized, creating new tensions and competition between educational institutions, leading each to develop their own attractive programs. Indeed, it is hardly a coincidence that many universities and colleges, both in France and abroad, have recently sought to write their own histories, asserting their identities based on their professional or academic origins—such as the Ecole des Beaux-Arts—or on their influences drawn from engineering schools, the Bauhaus, and so on.
Internationalization has also enhanced pedagogical exchange and openness, further facilitating mobility. Since 1999, Europe’s Bologna process has led to the harmonization of higher education frameworks. So, given the specific national contexts and histories of each establishment, how are architecture, urban planning and landscape design courses adapting to these new conditions?
These courses have been integrated into higher education institutions, technical universities or as doctoral programs (the last of Europe’s three-cycle qualification system: Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctorate) with research centers; including in France, where schools have recently integrated them as "components." Furthermore, new qualifications expected of teaching staff, including doctorates, have become consistent on an international scale. In France, the recognition of architecture degrees by the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation—which oversees schools of architecture alongside the Ministry of Culture—represents a further move towards the university model.
Throughout these developments, objectives for professionalization have been upheld in all establishments specializing in architecture, urban planning and landscape design, as well as in their courses. Depending on the country, this has been done by preserving or reinforcing the link between training and professional activities. As the European market opened up during the last decade of the twentieth century, concerns emerged as to whether the professional skills of students and architects would be adapted to the new competitive environment. As a result, curricula have been designed to meet world standards and to embrace new architectural professions, offering a wide range of internships, specialized post-graduate courses and European-level licenses to practice.
While there has recently been a great deal of research into the teaching of architecture, urban studies and landscape design, little knowledge is available about the periods closest to today. Despite increasing pedagogical intercontinental circulation, few comparative studies exist. Further, there seems to be preference for national analyses over international ones, with many authors providing a historical perspective based on the twentieth century. Teaching has been addressed from a variety of angles: the socio-history of educational actors and institutions, the study of teaching facilities and resources, and the relationship between teaching and the profession. New teaching methods have also been studied, particularly those developed around 1968.
This issue of Craup does not seek to delve into new institutional frameworks, actors and teaching methods, but rather to highlight their effects on pedagogy. As “sets of interrelated pedagogical activities based on a representation of human beings, learning and society,” teaching models take place in multiple learning situations (amphitheaters, workshops, travels, etc.) with diverse outlooks on the technical, artisanal, social or artistic dimensions of architecture, urban planning and landscape (multidisciplinary approach). They are also articulated through the varying links between academic and professional knowledge.
Our aim is therefore to examine these models through contributions that answer the following question: in light of European structural harmonization, and even beyond, what are the various interpretations of these dual academic and professional contributions to pedagogy? We hypothesize that, while there are tensions between the two, the result is hybridization fostered by internationalization.
In addition to traditional sources used to explore the history of pedagogy and the sociology of actors—such as institutional educational archives, oral archives or the private archives of teachers and students—we also recommend drawing on original, cross-referenced materials, such as teachers’ curriculum vitae, research dissertations, habilitation theses (France), conferences, academic journals, institutional evaluation reports, data from alumni associations, websites, etc. In addition to testimonials from teachers and/or researchers, we welcome unbiased contributions on the analysis of French, European and international courses in architecture, urban planning and landscape design, as well as monographic approaches and international comparisons.
In order to consider pedagogy through the relationship between academic and professional models, we have identified three main lines of thought. Firstly, the protagonists’ adoption (or reception) of individual ideas; secondly, at the level of a courses’ organization; and thirdly, the reflexive, forward-looking vision offered through more-than-local networks to consider contemporary global issues. Each theme has its own way of exploring the dynamics that shape pedagogy. Articles may fall into multiple categories.
