bz @AIAS

Celebrating art & architecture before the New Year! Heading to AIAS Forum 2016: Revolution where I organise an educational panel under the title Shaking (up) Foundations: The Art (re) Turn in Architecture. With Greg MacGlashing,  Charles (Jake) Rosenwald, Phoebe Novello, Panharith Ean Patrick Brady, and Sinead Parade. Forum lead organizer: Jared Guilmett 

See you there at 2pm!

Architectural Studio Tinkerings

Photograph by Eleonora Martinou

A is for...?

A is for...? STE-A-M and the Triad of Art, Architecture and Technology 

Abstract:

Globe with its urgent problems and inequalities needs not only great engineers, and mathematicians to save it, but also these individuals who have ethics and empathy to grasp the urgency and commit to the rescue. Do current higher education invests in this direction to create individuals that do not only perform greatly in assigned or given tasks but they are also determined to invent new methods to address emergent phenomena and unforeseen conditions?

As a president of RISD from 2008 to 2013, John Maeda, has advocated the “STEM to STEAM” concept to promote art and design in education for students to acquire skills in risktaking and creative problem-solving. Few years later, many schools in USA are in this process of adding the “A” in the curricula, however the transition takes a lot of time and has multiple challenges. The same applies in architecture higher education: the artistic experimentation has either moved away from the “object” to large-scale approaches (eg. landscape) or has limited itself to become a digital artifact.

There is not enough art, and when there is it is not critical enough. This talk addresses the challenges of emphasizing art within college/university as part of developing architectural education. In particularly it takes a Heideggerian approach to technology through the concept of the Greek technae and uses that to build a triad among art, architecture and technology, which can serve as a useful mechanism to bridge certain chasms in higher education. Through this process architecture education also redefines itself to become more relevant.

My contribution as part of HiSTEM panel [LINK]

bz @HiSTEM

Excited to present "A is for...?  STE-A-M and the Triad of Art, Architecture and Technology" in the Architectural Studio Tinkerings panel as part of HiSTEM 2016. 
16 Δεκεμβρίου 2016,  7μμ Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών (ΕΚΠΑ) Αμφιθέατρο «Ιωάννης Δρακόπουλος» (κεντρικό κτήριο, Πανεπιστημίου 30).

Architectural Studio Tinkerings: Workshop at the Hellenic Conference on Innovating STEM Education

This workshop brings the pedagogical practices of the architecture studio to center stage; we argue that introducing architecture as a subject in STEM-integrating school curriculums may result in substantial innovations within K-12 education. In our approach, architecture is not perceived as an added discipline, but rather, as a flexible platform for integrating STEM subjects through hands-on, project-based learning practices.

With contributions by architects and educators from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Dartmouth College and the National Technical University of Athens School of Architecture, we will explore different aspects of creativity, as experienced in the architecture studio, with or without the use of automatic machines. 

In the general objective of nurturing creativity, what makes the contribution of the architectural approach unique? In what ways do those particular pedagogical features enable the architectural studio to operate as the ideal platform for a STEM-integrating k-12 education?

Architectural Studio Tinkerings addresses everyone interested in exploring project-based learning practices for nurturing students creativity, in integrative, interdisciplinary, collaborative ways.

Contributors:

Saeed Arida, Architect MIT (PhD, ‘11), NuVu Studio Founder

Sotirios Kotsopoulos, Architect NTUA, MIT (PhD, ’05), MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate

Zenovia Toloudi, Architect AUTh, Harvard GSD (DDeS, ’11), Artist, and Assistant Professor at Studio Art, Dartmouth College

Dimitris Papanikolaou, Architect NTUA, Urban Scientist, Engineer, Harvard GSD (DDes, ’16)

Athina Papadopoulou, Architect NTUA, PhD Researcher MIT

Stavros Martinos, Architect, PhD candidate NTUA, ARKKI School of Architecture Academic Supervisor

Organizers:

Hara Gavra, Architect AUTh, MSc NTUA, ha.gavra@gmail.com

Stavros Martinos, Architect, PhD Candidate NTUA,  smartinos@gmail.com

Athina Stavridou, Assistant Professor NTUA School of Architecture,  astavridou@arch.ntua.gr

More information about the panel here [LINK]
More information about my contribution here [LINK]

why do you do what you do?

Why do you do what you do? [ link ]