Values and Architectural Education

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

This paper takes as its point of departure the idea that cultural difference has never been so threatened as it is today. Globalisation has the potential to create a more homogeneous physical and cultural world, and in so doing replace divergent values with Western perspectives and technologies. A new UIA/ UNESCO Charter for Architectural Education forcefully puts the case for educational programs which can understand and take into account world social, cultural and environmental problems. The argument advanced in this paper is that architectural education needs to position these concerns at the core of its programs, and a means of learning about them. A review of some recent international research into architectural education demonstrates the relatively narrow values framework in which architectural education can take place. Understandings in relation to designing from reflection in action to hermeneutics. provide a more inclusive way of doing design and a means of incorporating divergent values. Whether some of the new directions in architectural education (and tertiary education generally) will permit this is not clear. Drawing on design teaching experience in the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Sydney-over a decade, some examples are given of how divergent values were explored, and some suggestions made for ways in which globalisation may be more positively engaged within the current climate.1