Design and Studio Pedagogy

Utilizing an educational concept known as the hidden curriculum to analyze the design studio, the author argues that there is a rough correspondence between schooling and larger societal practices, where the selection of knowledge and the ways in which school social relations are structured to distribute such knowledge, are influenced by forms and practices of power in society. Asymmetrical relations of power are reproduced in schools and classrooms, including the design studio. In response, the author has been experimenting with a transformative pedagogy for the design studio, attempting to set up the conditions to investigate not only the many issues of design, but the nature of design education itself, especially with regard to how knowledge is produced and disseminated, how social relations are structured, and how students and the professor come to see their roles in these activities.