EDUTOPIA – Utopia as Educational Practice in Architecture: New Methods for Envisioning Transformational Change

EDUTOPIA brings focus to the discursive aspect of the architectural discipline and its potential in tackling socio-spatial issues of today, by engaging with its experimental, artistic, interdisciplinary, and utopian side. Situating the research in the context of architectural education, the project develops novel methods for design studios, aimed at fostering a new generation of spatial practitioners capable of transversal thinking, and equipped to address contemporary issues by creating transformational change within the global environment. The methods, combining approaches and insights from architecture and urban planning, as well as those from literature, film, art, sociology, philosophy, and critical theory, will be taught and tested on different levels of architectural education, as well as with an interdisciplinary group of post-graduate students. They will teach students to problematize and offer new insight into today’s most pertinent environmental and societal issues, fostering an intersectional, holistic, and interdisciplinary understanding of the (un)built environment which will include and empower diverse actors and voices in conversations about our global futures. To further assess the potential and applicability of the developed methods within professional spatial practice, they will be tested through commercial strategic spatial planning projects during the placement period. The process of the research and its multifaceted results will be collected, analyzed, and shared through an open-access repository to encourage a broader discussion on the changes needed for architectural academia and spatial practice, with the aim of encouraging future spatial practitioners to go beyond the process of building or planning, towards envisioning and securing positive long-term change through projects, evident not only on the spatial but also on the wider societal and cultural level.