Making the most of student-pupil collaborations in architecture schools

Making the most of student-pupil collaborations in architecture schools is the result of practical research combined with undergraduate teaching that was carried out by the Kent School of Architecture (KSA) at the University of Kent at Canterbury with Dylan Haughton, of Dylan Haughton Architects.Our aim was to investigate the feasibility and value of practical collaborations between schools of architecture that are university departments, and primary and secondary-age school pupils. The motivation behind this research was to provide some practical and theoretical advice to teachers in all architecture schools at a time

• when teaching practice is changing

• when the need to demonstrate ‘impact’ in different ways is growing

• when questions about the length and content of validated architecture courses are arising, and

• as architecture schools themselves re-form around research-based activities.

Some of these factors are responses to recent or current changes in the funding structure of architecture schools, but some arise simply from a greater awareness on the part of architecture school teachers to play a more active part in the communities in the region in which they are located, particularly with the aim of introducing more people to the work of architects and thus enriching the public response to it.