The Master of Science in Design Theory and Pedagogy is a one-year, three-semester program that addresses the growing ambiguity between practice and academia and prepares students for a new kind of hybrid career that has emerged in architecture: the architect-theorist-educator.
Constructing a New Apparatus for Design Education
Designed to be a platform from which a new generation of academic architects can evolve, the Design Theory and Pedagogy program at SCI-Arc examines the history of architectural education, its current pedagogies, and encourages the development of unconventional design research that uncompromisingly expand the scope of traditional programs of advanced architectural scholarship to construct a new apparatus for the production of design theory.
Students in the Design Theory and Pedagogy program experiment with new forms of architectural scholarship, receive hands-on teaching experience within the remarkable studio culture of SCI-Arc, and develop an intellectual framework that can sustain a life-long theoretical project in architecture. Throughout the program, Design Theory and Pedagogy students are given substantial opportunities for acquiring practical teaching experiences combining writing, critical thinking, lecturing, and curriculum design that reconsider contemporary pedagogical practice.
Reconsidering Contemporary Architectural Pedagogy
The first two Design Theory and Pedagogy studios use SCI-Arc as a live-teaching laboratory, integrating students into the teaching practices of the school’s core curricula and the pedagogies of its advanced Vertical Studios as they develop syllabi and studio briefs. The concluding studio asks students to develop design projects following their Vertical Studio briefs from the spring semester.
Design Lab coursework in History + Theory builds a deep historical and theoretical understanding of design theory and pedagogy and challenges students to develop their own theoretical positions and strategies for conducting scholarly research in anticipation of building a career in academia.
Furthering research opportunities, the required Advanced Architectural Studies seminar sequence provides a forum for SCI-Arc EDGE students to discuss the theoretical problems that impact design and the contemporary world. Students form interdisciplinary teams to produce and execute a fully-developed research proposal. The sequence culminates in a postgraduate colloquium where resulting research projects are presented. Each semester, EDGE students are able to select an elective course from SCI-Arc curricula in Applied Studies, Visual Studies, History + Theory, or Liberal Arts.
“We’re focused on building discourse. Students graduate from the Design Theory and Pedagogy program with an ability to perform their pedagogy through both design and theory. Each of our graduates has constructed a discourse in the context of the program that they bring into the world. This discourse shapes how we collectively reflect on the discipline and the practice of architecture. Therefore, the academic careers we create are not parallel careers in anticipation of practice; they are a form of practice.”
Design Pedagogy in Practice
Graduates of the Design Theory and Pedagogy program have gone on to hold faculty positions at SCI-Arc, UCLA, Cal Poly Pomona, California College of the Arts (CCA), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Städelschule, Kent State University, Pratt Institute, The Ohio State University, Universidad Iberoamericana, and New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). Others have entered PhD programs to continue their pursuit of architectural scholarship.
Exhibition view of Sweet Harmony: Rave Today, co-curated by Juan Rincon (MS Design Theory and Pedagogy ‘19) at the Saatchi Gallery, London.
Exhibition view of Sweet Harmony: Rave Today, co-curated by Juan Rincon (MS Design Theory and Pedagogy ‘19) at the Saatchi Gallery, London.
Exhibition view of Sweet Harmony: Rave Today, co-curated by Juan Rincon (MS Design Theory and Pedagogy ‘19) at the Saatchi Gallery, London.
Field Conditions
Subin Jameel (MS Design Theory and Pedagogy ‘19)
Field Conditions is a studio proposal that incorporates a formal and material dialogue between constituents within a field of objects. The idea is to create a sense of ambiguity between real and fictional elements, as the faux takes on hyper-real characteristics, and the characteristics of the original pieces take on more curiously faux characteristics.
Exhibition view of EDGE Design Theory and Pedagogy student-curated exhibition Institutional Pedagogies at SCI-Arc, Fall 2019. Multichannel video installation of student interviews, archived data, and research pamphlets.
Urban Baroque
Yara Feghali (MS Design Theory and Pedagogy ‘18)
Urban Baroque is a project for downtown Los Angeles focused on the transformation of building facades through the application of AI convolutional neural network processing.
Fictional Landscapes
Ryan Scavnicky (MS Design Theory and Pedagogy ‘17)
Fictional Landscapes is a series of constructed images interrogating the estrangement of architectural entities into constructed natures.
Dissectional City
Majeda Alhinai (MS Design Theory and Pedagogy ‘17)
Dissectional City project presents a rendering of a speculative urban narrative using digital dissection techniques on a series of 3D scanned objects.
Fetish House
Claudia Wainer (MS Design Theory and Pedagogy ‘18)
The application of architectural thinking takes place in the form of critical reflection on assumed norms and conventions. Fetish House challenges stereotypes related to gendered roles in the domestic interior.
The Liminal Machine
Mohamed Badawi (MS Design Theory and Pedagogy ‘20)
The Liminal Machine studio interrogates spaces of liminality though the thermographic mapping of spaces in the city.
Rural Speculations
Dylan Krueger (MS Design Theory and Pedagogy ‘18)
Rural Speculations examines the transformation and estrangement of the everyday into the extraordinary.