Ethical teaching, learning and collaborating in the real world

Abstract

RESEARCH AND TEACHING in the Department of Architectural Technology at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) are increasingly focused on live projects in local communities. Live projects ‘offer potential sites for critical pedagogies and creative agency that in turn support individual and social transformations’ (Morrow and Brown, 2012:1). They can be de ned as collaborative design projects, where solutions are researched, developed and sometimes constructed by students, with a resultant outcome that is valuable to the end user (Sara, 2006:1). The Design-Build Research Studio (DBRS) at CPUT was formed in 2011, and students have since completed several projects, including the design and building of an outdoor classroom (2011), the conversion of a container into a library (2012), and participation in an informal settlement reblocking project (2013). This paper describes the last project’s process and comments on the integration of live project pedagogy into the architectural curriculum.