Starting an (Un)Learning of the Educational Canon from Feminisms. Narratives from Chilean Architecture Schools^*

Macarena Paz Barrientos Díaz

macarena.barrientos@usm.cl
Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Chile

Received: November 27, 2023 | Accepted: June 14, 2024

This article presents the preliminary results of a survey that begins the work of identifying initiatives that, from Chilean architecture schools, open up possibilities for unlearning the educational canon. Just as we need to rethink how we inhabit and design, we must also review how we teach and learn architecture. The emphases of feminisms offer us some evident clues in two currently active initiatives identified in regional universities. The case of Mujeres Autoconvocadas FARCODI (MAF) encourages collective and interdisciplinary reflection, while the feminist initiative ProfesorARQ reclaims the narratives of female teaching, motivated by the concerns of current generations of students.

Keywords: Feminisms, architecture schools, professional education, critical pedagogies, educational communities, universities.

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introduction

Education involves, more than a responsive relationship with the demands of the profession, the opportunity to test a critical and forward-thinking perspective (Schweitzer 1990). However, although there have been instances aligned with critical pedagogies at certain historical periods,¹ there are few systematic studies that focus on teaching and learning architecture. The disciplinary inertia in education, linked to on-site practice and professional work since its origins (Masdeu 2017), has implied that, within the Humboldtian university framework, the transition from a practice-based discipline to one based on knowledge is particularly "painful" for architecture (Bilello 1991). This, which confirms that architecture is more conservative than it is assumed (Monedero 2003), hinders potential questioning and updates.

From Latin American contexts, the need to question the educational canon is urgent. Most of the research on architectural education derives from the Northern Hemisphere, that is, from foreign socio-cultural realities and educational systems. Harriss, Salama, and González Lara recently edited the The Routledge Companion to Architectural Pedagogies of the Global South (2023), in which they state that the canon of architectural pedagogy has been transposed or imposed from the North to the Global South. The prevalence of this—in addition to systematically marginalizing other forms of knowledge—has resulted in the ossification of certain structures and content, preventing architecture as a discipline from advancing in impact and relevance. In a context of unprecedented transformations that challenge the discipline of architecture to review many of its precepts and historical traditions regarding how we imagine, conceive, and develop architecture (Greene et al. 2012), the feminist paradigm emerges as an opportunity to reassess what we are doing from our educational foundation (Teymur 2011).

background

A decade ago, Peter Buchanan, in his article "The Big Rethink: Architectural Education," advocated for a paradigm shift in in architectural education that would align with the changing times the world was experiencing (2012). In Chile, just before the social unrest and the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the School of Architecture and Urbanism at the Universidad de Chile began a strike that revealed the discontent of the new generation of students with established teaching practices (fig.1). Concerns about mental health care, leisure time, and other demands destabilized an educational canon that is rarely discussed. After 2020, which forced all architecture schools to adopt an online education system and reconfigure their teaching methods and practices, the teaching-learning dimension of architecture regained interest as an essential area that we must investigate. The forced implementation of remote education exposed the resistance to change and the lack of empathy in the hidden curriculum practices (Dutton 1991) of architectural education. And although other teaching approaches and tools were tested, ten years after Buchanan highlighted the need to change the paradigm, the prevalence of the canon persists, and the most evident changes are not necessarily structural.

Within the context of the fourth feminist wave and in a setting like the Chilean one, characterized by the massification of education, a broad undergraduate offer, and the diversification of the student profile, we should ask: How can the feminist paradigm guide a critical review of the educational canon? How do we unlearn from feminisms? In the words of Helen Aston et al., "promoting the transformation of our students is at the heart of our pedagogy (…) it is encouraging to see them change their attitudes, behaviors, and practices (…) thus, students will be able to take the initiative to demand a change in our profession" (2020, 286). This article seeks to consider the danger of the single story (Ngozi Adichie 2018) and begin to recognize, through certain narratives, local initiatives that enable unlearning within architecture schools, through the various perspectives that feminisms offer us.

Recognizing the hegemony of an androcentric architectural culture (Agrest 1988) also implies recognizing the persistence of an educational canon that sustains it. Questioning both opens the door to the possibility of unlearning and aligns with a series of positions that consider it necessary to deconstruct the canonical (Western, Eurocentric, patriarchal, idealistic, dualistic) view of understanding architecture to open new disciplinary debates (Pérez Moreno and Komara 2022). It is urgent to adopt a feminist and intersectional perspective to understand architectural education as a committed pedagogy that must always be "evolving in dialogue with a world beyond itself" (hooks 2021, 37).

The Feminist Paradigm as an Opportunity

To teach in varied communities not only our paradigms must shift but also the way we think, write, speak.

bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress

According to Pérez Moreno: "In the field of architecture, perhaps due to its technical nature, the inclusion of this (feminist) perspective is progressing somewhat more slowly" (2018, 22 trad propia?). In this sense, it is necessary to claim that architecture, besides being a technical and service-oriented profession, is a discipline strongly linked to the reproduction of certain socio-cultural values, and it is precisely there where its disciplinary potential resides, surpassing the purely instrumental (Schalk et al. 2017). A decade after Preston Scott Cohen (in Greene et al. 2012) called for moving beyond the idea of purely technical and instrumental teaching-learning to focus on how to be part of a new world, feminisms take up the call and offer a possible way forward.

The current diversification of labor fields and the advancement of new technologies, which now allow almost everything to be addressed as a design problem (Fisher 2000), have broadened notions about the practice of architecture. However, the conservatism of education prevails, except for limited teaching experiments that have rejected the norm (Colomina et al. 2022), remaining stuck in its own tensions, evading destabilization, and reinforcing the educational canon.

The feminist paradigm as an approach and tool provides an opportunity to advance beyond these tensions. Amid a fourth feminist wave, at the height of which society as a whole "is adopting a gender awareness that is changing our culture" (Pérez Moreno 2019, 24 trad.propia?), progress has been made progressively from considering women as agents or users of architecture toward other interconnections that allow us to distinguish the history of women from that of feminisms, assuming an intersectional and inclusive perspective. This implies that merely a parity-based approach is no longer sufficient; instead, one that effectively addresses what Lorde notes: "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" (1984). Unlearning the logics of a teaching-learning system that favors convergence over divergence, pursues certainty, and promotes the search for correct answers over the exploration of errors (Lang 2021), becomes a challenge.

Make initiatives visible to catalyze (un)learning

It matters what we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with

Haraway, Staying with the Trouble

Making less disseminated narratives visible opens the possibility for questioning. Mapping initiatives from disciplinary formative foundations brings us closer to unlearning in a more concrete way. Beyond what tradition dictates through its great works or widely published and disseminated classical texts, Donna Haraway's storytelling (2019) becomes a key resource for unveiling situated narratives that are now destabilizing (to a greater or lesser extent) the formative canon. This feminist practice of thinking with or through others allows us to overcome the aseptic and ideology-free ideas woven around the history of architectural education. Thus, this communication presents some of the preliminary results of a digital survey disseminated in Chilean architecture schools.

The objective of the survey was to identify, based on the responses of students and professors, various initiatives that have introduced (or are beginning to introduce) the issue of gender perspective and feminisms in the Chilean educational sphere. The anonymous survey was disseminated through a snowball process (Hernández and Mendoza 2018), initiated by the researcher reaching out to a list of other female professors and academics, asking them to forward the digital survey to their students and colleagues. From the survey questions—which are outlined in figure 1—this article will focus on the first two in order to: (1) Identify the most common format of the mentioned initiatives, and (2) Analyze the contribution of each in terms of suggesting a possible path toward unlearning. To delve deeper, two regional initiatives identified from the 51 responses collected by July 2023 will be described.

Figure 1_ Questions from the digital survey. Source: the author.

context

The massification of higher education in Chile, concentrated at the undergraduate level (Brunner and Miranda 2016), is a phenomenon related to architecture and its educational field. If in 1981, before the promulgation of the Ley de Universidades, there were 5 architecture schools, by 2017 there were 28 institutions offering a total of 43 programs nationwide (Lagos and Fuentealba 2018). However, neither this extensive offering nor the freedoms that the Chilean liberal education system grants for the configuration of programs and graduation profiles have been able to counteract a tendency towards homogenization in teaching methods and practices (Fuentealba et al. 2020). The prevalence of a canonical "architectural culture" present in both practice and education is not just local but global (Manley and De Graft-Johnson 2013) and seems to confirm the relevance of these exercises in visibility and local destabilizing initiatives.

Figure 2_ Geographic distribution of architecture schools in Chilean territory. Source: the author.

According to Bernasconi (2017), the instruments, policies and practices of the higher education system in Chile were designed for a middle-class student profile, with the availability to dedicate themselves fully to their studies. Another factor in the changes observed in Chile is that female enrollment in architecture has reached 52.15%², positioning it as one of the STEM³ fields with the highest female presence. This seems to confirm that "architecture is a traditionally masculine and currently feminized profession" (Pérez and Komara 2022). However, this quantitative "female advantage" (Niemi, 2017; Niemi and Weaver Hightower 2020) does not consolidate all the contributions (or unlearning) that a gender perspective could bring to architecture in more radical and significant terms.

results

Regarding the format of the reported initiatives, commonalities are found suggesting that the classroom is the main space for promoting them within architecture schools. The reported cases mostly consist of courses, followed by "other" formats, ranging from talks to informational-administrative committees to address the issue of gender at an institutional level. From this, it can be inferred that those who usually catalyze these initiatives are academics and professors, who can do so through courses, talks, or specific projects. In fewer cases, student collectives manage the initiatives (fig. 3).

In response to the question of what the contributions of the identified initiatives are, that is, how they could help us unlearn, the most frequently mentioned (from a set of five pre-formatted responses) is (1) integrating the gender perspective into research and project developments. This is followed by (2) learning about new female architect role models, (3) broadening the view of architectural practice, (4) recognizing the diversity of architecture users, and (5) experimenting with more collaborative or participatory dynamics.

Figure 3_ Formats presented by the identified initiatives. Source: the author.

While these five contributions or emphases are not considered mutually exclusive, the two initiatives that will be described in more detail below stand out for their particularity within the sample. Firstly, because they are accounts from regional universities (noteworthy given the centralism of the context; see figure 2), and secondly, because they address, each in their own way, issues less discussed in the field, such as (1) experimenting with collaborative dynamics and (2) being managed by student collectives (fig. 4).

Figure 4. Two initiatives: MAF and ProfessorARQ in social networks (IG). Source: the author.

• The regional initiative MAF (Mujeres Autoconvocadas FARCODI) from the Faculty of Architecture, Construction, and Design at the Universidad del Bío Bío in Concepción presents a unique institutional-scale narrative. This community, composed not only of architects but also of students, former students, administrative staff, professors, and academics from fields such as Construction and Design, seeks to raise awareness about gender and feminisms throughout its university context. Through testing collaborative and interdisciplinary dynamics concerning the feminist perspective, the MAF group has been able to advance and diversify its actions at the institutional level, even securing funds for research projects⁴. Through their Instagram account, they share their activities (in addition to reposting other related content), such as the consolidation of the MAF Feminist Itinerant Library, a project that expanded the feminist and gender-focused literature available in the institutional library. This initiative, funded by university extension funds awarded to the collective, organized a series of outreach activities for the university and regional community to introduce the gender perspective through the publications acquired, with the ultimate goal of democratizing access to feminist literature.
• The student-led initiative ProfesorARQ from the School of Architecture at the Universidad de Valparaíso is noteworthy within the sample as it is the only narrative that originates from the concerns of the student body itself. Furthermore, it could be said that it "starts at home," by collecting and giving voice to the female professors who are part of its educational community, which is highly significant as an act of advocacy from a regional architecture school. In this case, the emphasis on (2) learning about new female architect role models is joined by (3) broadening the view of architectural practice as a potential path toward unlearning, as the narratives of female architects who have dedicated themselves to teaching and research validate this is a legitimate architectural practice (Nieto 2014). The ProfesorARQ collective also notable for its intersectional approach to gender and for organizing events that foster solidarity among women and minorities, making this initiative a safe space capable of articulating gender and feminist concerns and actions for both undergraduate and graduate students, as well as for the broader educational community.

Finally, it is worth noting that the most frequently mentioned methods for promoting these initiatives are social media, followed by word of mouth, which accounted for 19% of recommendations. However, when it comes to actual participation, 47% of respondents indicated that they had not yet taken part in any initiative, compared to 41% who had (fig. 5).

Figure 5_ Results related to participation, dissemination, and contributions of the identified initiatives. Source: the author.

final thoughts

This survey was conducted within the context of paradigm-shifting transformations observable in the attitudes of those within architectural educational communities (Aston et al. 2020), reflecting narratives that foster new commitments and ethics for the future of architectural practice. By considering feminisms as a potential catalyst for unlearning, it is assumed that the most powerful tool for driving change is education (Stansfield, quoted in Monedero 2003), which aligns with the proactive role of education (Manley and De Graft-Johnson 2013). The applied methodology assumes that architecture schools are the space where disciplinary discourse is formulated, tested, and disseminated (Ockman 2012), and thus views them as barometers of broader societal debates (Doucet 2017).

The survey echoes bell hooks' assertion that "the classroom continues to be the most radical space of possibility in the university world" (2021, 38 trad prop?), as the classroom setting appears to accommodate most of the identified initiatives, particularly in the form of courses. However, in an effort to emphasize the need to diversify the methods and motivations for promoting unlearning through feminisms, this article sought to highlight the institutional-scale contribution of the MAF collective, as well as the student-led contribution of the ProfesorARQ intiative. Both are unique to the Chilean context, each addressing the challenge of improving responsiveness and the capacity to engage with emerging issues and concerns—a goal that clearly becomes increasingly difficult at the institutional level (Tzonis 2014). It is crucial to articulate not only the voices of academics and professors but, above all, the voices of the new generations, who embody the future of the discipline. While both narratives stand out from the national context, their characterization confirms that, in times of crisis and paradigm shifts, the boundaries between pedagogy and the political arena tend to dissolve (Colomina et al. 2022).

This preliminary mapping highlights the crucible we are beginning to shape and understand regarding the various approaches feminisms offer for questioning the educational canon and articulating alternative ways of teaching and learning—a challenging but essential task (Schalk et al. 2017, Verde Zain 2023). This initial systematization of information opens the door to a series of practices aligned with a global theoretical framework, which must—precisely through the visibility of these situated narratives—be locally reinforced. As a future step, the research will aim to further explore the narratives associated with each of the identified initiatives, both common and more particular, with the goal of mapping a diverse range of approaches that are not always easily categorizable (Colomina et al. 2022). In conclusion, this initial exercise acknowledges that, while gender has historically been a fundamental catalyst for unlearning, it is often treated as a quantitative variable of analysis (Chías 2011). To facilitate unlearning, we must do so in an additive and non-exclusive approach (Harriss, Salama, and González Lara 2023). From these two situated narratives, the gender perspective and feminisms shed light on emergent actions that destabilize the educational foundations of the discipline, enabling progress to move and better alignment with the world we inhabit.

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* Part of the theoretical framework and results set out in this article were presented at the VI International Conference on Architecture and Gender (ICAG), held October 3-6, 2023, in Valencia, Spain.

1 Beatriz Colomina et al. (2022) compiled reflections on "radical" pedagogical practices and initiatives during the period 1960-1970.

2 Data from INDICES of the National Council of Higher Education (Consejo Nacional de Educación Superior) (2022). https://www.cned.cl/indices_New_~/pregrado_carreras.php (Accessed June 5, 2023).

3 STEM: acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. While there could be debate as to whether architecture falls under STEM or STEAM (adding Arts), this study classifies it in the former group, given the inclusion of at least one technical university in the sample.

4 The first project, Emociones en el espacio público. Red de interacción social para el derecho a la ciudad segura con perspectiva de género is funded by the 2022 Higher Education Innovation Program in Gender (Programa Innovación a la Educación Superior en Género), awarded to the Universidad del Bío-Bío (UBB), and the second, Red territorial por las mujeres y niñas del Bío Bío. Autocuidado, formación y liderazgo femenino, by the 2023 National Service for Women and Gender Equality (Servicio Nacional de la Mujer y Equidad de Género).