Public Crits in Architectural Design Education: Some critical reflections

Abstract

Critiques (crits), which are a key form of interaction between teachers and students in the studio, are often reduced to static instances of a one-way knowledge transfer. Based on an ethnographic study of studio teaching at five leading European architecture schools, and referring to a concept of designing developed by design theorist Horst Rittel, the paper at hand discusses the rather passive role of students during crits as a shortcoming that has to be remediated for unlocking the full potential of the design studio approach.