The Routledge Companion to Architectural Pedagogies of the Global South

The established canon of architectural pedagogy has been predominantly produced within the Northern hemisphere and transposed - or imposed - across schools within the Global South, more often, with scant regard for social, economic, political or ecological culture and context, nor regional or indigenous pedagogic principles and practices. Throughout the Global South, architecture’s academic community has been deeply affected by this regime, how it shapes and influences proto-professionals and by implication architectural processes and outcomes, too.

The Routledge Companion to Architectural Pedagogies of the Global South resituates and recenters an array of pedagogic approaches that are either produced or proliferate from the ’Global South’ while antagonizing the linguistic, epistemological and disciplinary conceits that, under imperialist imperatives, ensured that these pedagogies remained maligned or marginalized. The book maintains that the exclusionary implications of architectural notions of the ’orders’, the ’canon’ and the ’core’ have served to constrain and to calcify its contents and in doing so, imperiled its relevance and impact. In contrast, this companion of pedagogic approaches serves to evidence that architecture’s academic and professional advancement is wholly contingent on its ability to fully engage in an additive and inclusive process whereby the necessary disruptions that occur when marginalized knowledge confronts established knowledge result in a catalytical transformation through which new, co-created knowledge can emerge. Notions of tradition, identity, modernity, vernacularism, post-colonialism, poverty, migration, social and spatial justice, climate apartheid, globalization, ethical standards and international partnerships are key considerations in the context of the Global South. How these issues originate and evolve within architectural schools and curricula and how they act as drivers across all curricula activities are some of the important themes that the contributors interrogate and debate.

With more than 30 contributions from 55 authors from diverse regional, racial, ethnic, gender and cultural backgrounds, this companion is structured in four sections that capture, critique and catalog multifarious marginalized pedagogical approaches to provide educators and students with an essential source book of navigational steers, core contestations, propositional tactics and reimagined rubrics. The Routledge Companion to Architectural Pedagogies of the Global South pioneers a transposable strategy for academics from all disciplines looking to adopt a tested approach to decolonizing the curriculum. It is only through a process of destabilizing the hegemonic, epistemological and disciplinary frameworks that have long-prescribed architecture’s pedagogies that the possibility of more inclusive, representative and relevant pedagogical practices can emerge.

Harriet Harriss (RIBA, PFHEA, Ph.D.) is a qualified architect and Dean of the Pratt School of Architecture in Brooklyn, New York. Her teaching, research, and writing focus upon pioneering new pedagogic models for design education, as captured in Radical Pedagogies: Architectural Education & the British Tradition, and for widening participation in architecture to ensure it remains as diverse as the society it seeks to serve, a subject she interrogates in her book, A Gendered Profession. Dean Harriss is also recognized as an advocate for diversity and inclusion within design education and was nominated by Dezeen as a champion for women in architecture and design in 2019. Her latest book Architects After Architecture (2020), considers the multi-sector impact of an architectural qualification.

Ashraf M. Salama (FRSA, FHEA, Ph.D.) is Full Professor in Architecture and Director of Research at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK. He has led three of architecture in Egypt, Qatar and the United Kingdom, two of which he has founded and was Head of the School of Architecture at the University of Strathclyde (2014-2020). With experience spanning across many contexts, he has been the director of research and consulting at Adams Group Architects in Charlotte, NC. He has published 14 authored and edited books including Demystifying Doha, 2013; Architecture Beyond Criticism, 2014; Spatial Design Education, 2015; Building Migrant Cities in the Gulf, 2019; Architectural Excellence in Islamic Societies, 2020; and Transformative Pedagogy in Architecture and Urbanism, 2021. He is the UIA 2017 Recipient of Jean Tschumi Prize for Excellence in Architectural Education and Criticism.

Ane Gonzalez Lara is an assistant professor of undergraduate architecture at Pratt Institute School of Architecture. Ane is the co-founder of Idyll Studio. Her professional work with Idyll balances social and cultural concerns with extensive formal and material research. She has developed academic research initiatives as part of her studio teaching that have examined the United States-Mexican border and the Korean demilitarized zone. She received her Master equivalent degree from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Navarra, Spain. She is a registered architect in Texas and Spain. Prior to working at Pratt, she taught at the University of New Mexico and the University of Houston. Her research interests include pedagogy, and social and climate justice topics as they relate to the built environment.