Harriet Harriss Churchill Fellowship 2011

The Churchill Fellowship enabled ‘Live Projects’ visit to the US began on 15th June 2011.

The Churchill Fellowship is proving a critical catalyst in enabling my research into learning value of ‘live projects’ in architecture schools.

What we teach in schools, and how we teach it the subject of endless debate in both schools and in practice offices. With many architecture students graduating into a diminished UK construction sector, architectural educators are forced to rethink the education value proposition, looking enable aspiring young architects to define and even design the profession of tomorrow.

In critically examining the assumptions around what can and cant be learned within a placebo studio environment, the importance of developing collaborative and user engagement capabilities underpins all of the discussions and presentations I will be having in the USA.

Beginning with the ACSA conference on Performative Practices, I will be visiting the following schools ‘live projects’ programs over the next six weeks; Parsons New School NYC External Partnerships Program, MIT, Yale Urban Design Workshop, NYC Center for Urban Pedagogy, Virginia Tech’s Washington Alexandria Architecture Center, Cleveland Urban Design Collective (Kent State University), Archeworks in Chicago, Design Corp (University of Texas, Austin), Studio 804 University of Kansas, CCA’s Center for Art & Public Life, The Center for Landscape Interpretation and Sci-ARC, LA.

ON CHURCHILL…..

Thanks to the Churchill Fellowship, research into Live Projects is generating lots of exemplary case study material for my research. This blog will therefore be used exclusively to capture my reflections on Churchill’s many ideas on international dialogue and knowledge exchange in relation to the schools and educators I am visiting.

A separate, live projects blog is therefore available at:

liveprojectsarchitecture.wordpress.com

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June 18, 2011

“ . . . for the betterment of world peace and understanding, people in all countries should be able to get to know one another and trust one another.” Winston Churchill

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Harriet Harriss, a Senior Lecturer in Architecture at Oxford Brookes University, has been awarded a Churchill Traveling Fellowship for 2011 to visit the USA and Canada, where her aim is to share knowledge and ideas on how foster and develop Community University Design Partnerships.

During June & July 2011, I will be visiting a range of Architecture Schools who run community-engaged design projects. During the last few years, many Universities across the USA are pioneering partnerships with local community organisations that provide an enduring benefit to local communities. These partnerships mobilise students, faculty, and neighborhood organizations to work together to solve urban problems that revitalize the economy, generate jobs, and rebuild communities. This emerging practice is beginning to develop in the UK yet it lacks a much needed network strategy that would both support and nurture such initiatives.

The principal aim of this project is to visit a variety of community university partnerships (CUPs) in both the USA and Canada to explore how a successful CUP support network could be established in the UK.

As a senior lecturer in architecture I teach a community-linked design studio at undergraduate and postgraduate level, placing emphasis upon the importance of client and user interaction within the architectural design process. The experience has taught me the importance of such partnerships particularly in terms of offering students more a meaningful and responsive professional training experience and enabling them to become better skilled, more socially aware architectural professionals. My pioneering attempts to develop community University partnerships were recognized by my institution as worthy of an award for teaching excellence last year. I am now keen to explore how a CUP network could be established to link my projects to other UK institutions also keen to establish or develop their own CUPs.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the Churchill Trust for their tremendous support for this project. As Winston Churchill once said; “We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.”

For more information about the Churchill Traveling Fellowships follow this link: http://www.wcmt.org.uk/about/who-are-we-funding-of-travelling-fellowships-and-bursaries.html

Project Overview