This study concerns itself with examining the degree to which Live Projects can deliver learning experiences that enable architecture students to gain specific professional practice-ready skills and capabilities currently perceived to be lacking within the existing school curriculum - (1) collaborative interaction within and between inter-disciplinary teams, (2) participatory engagement with clients & civic concerns and the (3) capability to manage emergent ambiguities in risk exposure & decision-making –and as a consequence examine (4) how embryonic Live Project assessment rudiments might contribute to this acquisition? Architects are under increased pressure to demonstrate the value of their contribution within the process of building design and construction. They are tasked with working effectively in teams, collaborating effectively with clients and end users and to cope with growing levels of risk and liability, uncertainty and ambiguity, often requiring greater creative leadership and commercial risk-taking in order to succeed. The need for architects to acquire three skillsets to cope with these conditions imposes changing expectations around the architect's role in practice and places increased pressure upon schools of Architecture to ensure their students are equipped with gaining these skillsets. The question emerges as to whether a less-established teaching model – Live Projects - might be able to deliver skills that will not only respond to, but also endure the ongoing changes within professional practice? And if so, in relation to what skillsets? In contrast to other research enquiries concerning Live Projects and literature concerning architectural education in general, this thesis gathered evidence from a highly diverse range of sources – including data on emergent economic and industrial trends outside of the construction sector - as a means to define what the most valuable skillsets might be. For schools of architecture, the specific challenge is to not only to work out how to teach these skillsets but to design and then assess learning activities that facilitate and reward their acquisition. Subsequently, this thesis also examines whether tentative assessment rudiments can play an enabling role in this respect. Within a broader learning theory context, this enquiry supports a wider body of emergent evidence that Live Projects offer learning experiences consistent with much of the literature regarding effective pedagogy - one that involves authentic and active engagement with real situations being more effective at enabling learning more relevant to the nascent demands of wider industry. Subsequently, the main question being considered – as reflected in the title - is: To what extent do Live Projects enable the acquisition and application of three ‘practice-ready’ skillsets? This question is then operationalised by examining this efficacy in relation to four sub-questions. 1. To what extent can Live Projects enable students to acquire inter-disciplinary teamwork capabilities? 2. To what extent can Live Projects enable students to acquire client collaboration & civic engagement capabilities? 3. To what extent can Live Projects enable students to acquire ambiguity tolerance & risk management capabilities? 4. To what extent might Live Project assessment rudiments assist in the acquisition of the three skillsets? In order to answer these questions, the enquiry employed qualitative as well as quantitative data collection methods. The qualitative evidence largely utilised grounded theory methods and analysis as a means to examine the perceptions of educators, architects and students. This involved the discovery of theory through the analysis of data and real world research, which focuses upon problem solving with a view to creating meaningful change. The mixed methods approach relied upon triangulation as a means to cross-examine evidence from the different data sets and to strengthen validity. The themes relating to the missing skillsets were then inter-related to highlight any interdependencies and to ensure a rigorous level of analysis and abstraction. Findings in relation to each skillset were isolated within focused chapters. Mixed method or ‘multi-method’ analysis - involving a series of matrices - was used to compare both quantitative and (selected sections of) qualitative data. In line with practice-based research methodology, an extended and iterative period of data gathering and analysis allowed the researcher to consolidate observations regarding the acquisition of specific skills in both an academic as well as a practice context to consolidate into a concise set of learning concepts. The thesis subsequently used these learning concepts to define tentative assessment rudiments. The samples chosen for this study were situated in two distinctly different contexts; in practice and in education: encompassing architects, trainee architects, students and educators both with and without Live Project experience, to enable a clear set of variables for comparative analysis. The samples were also drawn from both the US and UK – a useful consequence of research funding in terms of providing quantitative data and comparable cohorts. These insights were then used to tentatively explore practical ways the acquisition of these skillsets could be assessed. The conclusions of this study identify that Live Projects can enable students to acquire the three skillsets due to their ability to offer experiences that more closely align with professional practice. However it also pinpoints specific contingencies such as ensuring Live Project success is measured in terms of processes and not just outcomes - and - that keeping Live Projects as non-compulsory, extra curricula options or adjuncts to more established teaching models allows them to retain their inherently flexible, adaptive and responsive nature. Whilst there is general view that a lack of formal acknowledgement of Live Projects within the curricula-validating infrastructure of RIBA & NAAB has contributed to a collective sense that Live Projects are undervalued, the evidence suggests that the opposite is true – that Live Projects do have the ability to meet the criteria for validation extensively and effectively and can make the validation criterion more accessible and meaningful to students – and -because Live Projects encompass a hugely diverse range of projects by their nature of being holistically responsive to a set of site and community specific circumstances – assessment rudiments (rather than a design brief) might be the only unifying criteria. Given the current crisis in underemployment and the rise of the unpaid internship, these capabilities are of increasing relevance and value. Furthermore, it is transposable skills – which all three of the skillsets are – as opposed to those that are exclusive and unique to architecture – that are most likely to best serve students in future, whether or not they choose to become professional architects. Traditional subject specific skills are undeniably important, but transposable skills deserve greater emphasis and investment given the economic reality of finite resources and demands for greater user participation. Finally, for architectural educators already engaged in or initiating Live Projects, this thesis provides theoretical as well as an applied-knowledge framework to draw from, encompassing a practical as well as passionate advocacy for their wider implementation.

This research examines the rationale and impact of Enterprise Architecture (EA) adoption in the UK Higher Educational (HE) sector. EA supports alignment of Information Systems (IS) capability and high-level Strategic Planning for organisations. Previous studies in HE sector show that IS planning difficulties are increasingly affecting required levels of effectiveness and future changes. Institutions identify the need for a business-like approach, to support senior managers in the decision-making in times of unprecedented economic and sector revolution. Adopters spearheading the process claim that EA concepts and tools will enable institutions capture IT resources, align administrative processes, leverage IS investments and coordinate information requirements and regulations effectively. This claim is supported by the identification of benefits of EA in other public and private sectors. Using 4 UK universities, this study reviews the practices and effects of EA in the larger but more traditional universities and medium-sized but newer universities. The institutions were investigated using interpretive research methods. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis was used to analyse the data and interpret the findings based on a combination of existing and new theoretical constructs. A summary of the research findings states four key success factors for the adoption and institutionalisation of EA in HE institutions. They are: (i) Senior management support, appropriate organisational structures, actors and scope of EA work (ii) Key stakeholder buy-in and commitment (iii) Resources (iv) Evaluation metrics. HE institutions are not adverse to EA adoption; but are aware that institutional actors and cultures shape the adoption. There are necessary support structures that should be in place: (i) institutions need to have a formalised governance structure, which ensures proper planning procedures are enforced and change is monitored effectively, (ii) the right people skill and availability would ensure success, (iii) adopting a systematic and continuous approach to business process review (iv) institutions need to develop simple and flexible IT infrastructure to enable requirements for integration, accessibility, and agility.

Technological innovation has made huge strides and improved human living significantly in the last century. However, it has also brought unprecedented life-affecting challenges which could pose a problem of survival for the human race. Given the strong impact of architecture on human living and the environment, sustainable development as a theme in architectural education becomes crucial. This study aims to explore how architectural education can be improved to support sustainable development based on the insights gained from the perspectives of architectural practitioners in Hong Kong. A semi-structured, individual, in-depth interviewing method was used to solicit data from a total of eighteen practitioners, including professionals in architectural practices and academics in higher institutions, A data analysis model based on Attride-Stirling's thematic network analysis (2001) was adopted to identify key themes. Themes were developed to address five research questions, namely on the understanding of sustainable development; its relationship with architecture; the role of architects to promote sustainable development; programs of architectural education for sustainable development; and factors impacting change in architectural education for sustainable development.

This dissertation investigates how technology and architectural education relate to each other, in the broadest possible sense. What are the internal and external factors affecting our understanding and use of technology in architectural education? The aim of this thesis is to understand and relocate the concept of technology into architectural education ideologically. This relocation does not only handle the understanding of technology in relation to architectural education through a critical analysis, but also the way we understand and locate ourselves and our education in relation to technology, architectural profession and society. The mode of inquiry is a conceptual one. It is a philosophical undertaking / an investigation of the guiding principles, hidden rules of formations, layers of relationships and the fundamental aspects of technology and our knowledge of it. In this regard it provides the reader with a detailed account of the current relationship between architectural education and technology through a post- structural/critical analysis, which can lead to new understandings, new technologies and new educational practices with technologies. In other words it identifies the existing philosophy underlying the varying use of technology in architectural education, in order to be able to enable new ways of relating ourselves to the technologies we'll have in architectural education practice in the future. The main outcome is a revised philosophical understanding of technology in relation to architectural education through expanding, deepening and clarifying the relational space between architectural education and technology. Primary layers of social, secondary layers of architectural education and technological production, and the way discourses -practices function between the primary and secondary layers of relationships through discursive layers connecting them are some of the concepts dealt with while trying to define and explain the relationship between architectural education and technology.

This Thesis explores learning within the context of architectural studio teaching. It focuses on the way in which teaching and learning takes place in discussions on architectural design among tutors, students and visiting critics in the context of the presentation of student work in interim and final reviews. As reviews are based on an oral presentation and discusslon of students' work(feedback), their verbal content can be analysed to reveal the structure of architectural learning In the design studio. Research was undertaken at two separate locations over two consecutive time periods: first, in the late 1980's at the Bartlett School of Architecture, U. C. L. and then in the early 1990's at the School of Architecture and Landscape at the University of Greenwich. The Thesis therefore examines the shift In architectural education that took place In London during the late 1980's and early 1990's. The research involved recording and transcribing into the form of a text, the content of architectural design reviews which took place at both schools. The text was then analysed in terms of its content, form and structure, at the Bartlett, recordings were made of twenty seven reviews from the first, the third, and the diploma year (nine each), at Greenwich, a comparative sample was recorded of nine first year and nine third year reviews. The aim was twofold: a) to examine how the dialogue in reviews and the students' designs progressively matured over the years, and b) to Identify the extent to which the new pedagogy changed the structure of the learning interaction in the design studio. It was found that reviews at the Bartlett operated mainly at an Intellectual/conceptual level, were analytical and focused on the final building design. The participants drew on background knowledge In the form of theory, technology and precedents. These aspects were found to be used implicitly in the design studio. Reviews at Greenwich, which represent the current London educational scene, were found to be more intuitive and experiential. They operated mainly at a visual level and focused on the design process through explicit teaching methods. The creative activity of constructing new design rules in formal/visual architectural terms ('foregrounding') was dominant. Both educational systems revealed that architectural concepts are formed at the visual and intellectual level simultaneously, by the interaction of the two, despite their different balance (visual/ intellectual) in each pedagogic mode. The clarity of the discussion during the reviews was influenced only by the extent to which the visual/intellectual interaction was explicitly acknowledged as a key component of the teaching method. The Thesis therefore argues that 2-D and 3-D representations are active In Initiating architectural cognition, and perhaps It is only these visual representations that are able to initiate 'foregrounding'. At both schools, at all educational levels, the design students decision making was found to remain stable, and architectural concepts progressed from simple to complex, not in a predictable and linear fashion but in a circular, iterative process. Finally, the Thesis questions the existence of the concept of a 'central Idea' or 'parti' that brings all the design rules together, Among students this was found to be more of an ideal than a reality, as these rules seem to come together in the form of a 'collage' rather than as a rational structure.

This thesis investigates socialisation in architectural education in East Africa. It was hypothesised that socialisation formed an integral part of professional education,through which students acquired undocumented, but nonetheless important aspects of the profession, building both values, and a cultural ethos in the process. Socialisation in the context of architectural education, thus takes on added significance, given the longevity of the educational process, as well as the close association between faculty and students. The outcomes of the educational process thus evoked questions of the transformative nature of the process, and how this was effected. Undertaken as an ethnographic study, the research investigated elements of socialisation within five established architecture schools across East Africa. Framed in the context of a learnscape of architectural education, the study examined influences on architectural education in three key areas: Pre-socialisation; Institutional socialisation; and, educational socialisation. A mixed method approach was used, addressing the contextual diversity presented by the setting of East Africa. The mixed method approach made use of document analysis, a questionnaire study, focus group discussions, and participant observations, as data gathering instruments. The variety of methods, along with the multitude of study sites, ensured data triangulation as a key element in validation of the findings. The study revealed socialisation as being an important and integral component of architectural education, existing at all stages of the educational process. Prior to entry into architectural education, pre-socialisation served to inform student ideas and values related to the profession, often based on uninformed perspectives. Institutional influence, presented a traditional educational approach, creating culture shock for incoming students through a misalignment of values between students and architectural education. The contrasting expectations of student and faculty,and the attendant influence on socialisation, were overtly evident in the educational realm. This was highlighted by approaches to contemporary issues in architectural education, and the nature of educational activities within the schools. Through this research, socialisation was found to be an integral part of architectural education. Far from being a mere puzzling phenomenon, ignored and taken for granted,socialisation forms a fundamental part of architectural education, which forms a critical part of the education of architects.

In an architect’s education, the design review is an event where students present a design scheme in front of a panel of critics, in order to receive feedback. The nature of feedback is usually more evaluative than informative, and its delivery is predominantly instructive and in the form of monologues. In an environment that appears to be more authoritative, students often feel intimidated, and some are reluctant to participate in a dialogue and interact. This thesis through the observation and classification of oral feedback in undergraduates’ architectural design review, explores dialogic enquiry as means of teaching and assessment that can promote interaction. The research draws on the method of Grounded Theory to identify three principal feedback typologies: Direct Suggestions, Reflecting Questions and Abstract Suggestions, and a principal comment typology, Clarifying Questions. Based on empirical evidence, four student-presentation factors seem to influence the typologies’ frequency: Well Comprehended Scheme, Poorly Comprehended Scheme, Less Communicative Student, and Well Developed Scheme. Students' and critics’ participation duration was also documented. A new method for recording design reviews produces coded transcripts designed to accommodate these objectives. The results assist in understanding dialogic enquiry as a condition that promotes interaction, which can constitute design review a social, participatory, and experiential activity. The outcomes suggest the need for more dialogue and more questions, and more importantly, a shift in the general mentality of approaching design reviews from ‘fault-finding’ and prescriptive feedback, to a more exploratory learning situation that sets an example on how to be critical of someone’s work and share ideas in a professional and social environment. The research proposes a concise theoretical framework predicated on dialogue and enquiry for design tutorials and reviews that can become part of the training for design teachers in Schools of Architecture, as well as Schools of Design.

This research is concerned with the aspirations -goals, hopes and desires- of architecture students. The twenty eight students investigated studied in a student-centred, problem solving programme based upon multi-disciplinary work in Mexico City. Most participant students’ mid-level education was in teacher-centred pedagogies. Despite the importance of Bourdieu’s capital volume concept –reading, museum visits, knowledge of the arts, listening to classical music, educational qualifications, parents’ studies and jobs, prestige, as well as social connections- little empirical research has been conducted using this concept in relation to that of educational codes and with that of aspirations, within sociology and much less within architectural research. Educational codes, in Basil Bernstein’s theory, are the principles that through the curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation of a degree programme shape a student’s views. The research purpose is to identify what generates some students’ dissatisfaction with the flexible or student centred and problem solving pedagogy. The thrust of the thesis is to show how students’ previous educational codes, their capital volume along with the blurred expectations the social system offers to them builds their aspirations (subjective experiences) and how these influence the choice of their priorities that in turn define their advancement in a flexible-rigid architecture programme. Each participant was investigated and analysed as case study on three stages of her/his higher studies. Data were collected through a combination of open interviews, sentence completion questionnaires, observations and school records. Students’ answers were analysed to find patterns in the interconnection of their personal and contextual factors impinging on their educational trajectory. Each student’s capital volume was defined to locate them in Bourdieu’s representation of the social space to gain insight of their nearness and farness to satisfy material and symbolic needs (objective conditions). The students' responses were analysed using Bernstein’s constructs of classification (power) and framing (control) to identify their orientations to meaning and learning. Students with higher levels of economic capital have lower levels of cultural capital than students in less favourable objective conditions. The thesis demonstrated that students with higher levels of economic capital, or in favourable objective conditions, but with scarce cultural capital are more oriented to things than to people and delayed his/her educational trajectory more than the students in less favourable objective conditions. The patterns of interconnections between students’ objective conditions, orientations and marks were made explicit introducing a language of description from the sociology of aspirations. A language of description is understood as a language necessary for making the tacitly constructed explicit “in a non-circular way” (Bernstein, 1996: 135-136). Three levels of cultural, educational and professional aspirations drawn from literature in the field were combined to conceive students’ aspirations level. The thesis demonstrated that students in higher social positioning have lower aspirations levels and lower performance than those in lower social positioning. In the last type of students excellent or very good performance replicates. Students whose previous educational codes were less flexible than that of the architecture programme held low aspirations levels and dysfunctional cultural principles (codes). Students who studied high school in a flexible educational process learn to prioritise their goals, becoming more realistic, open to accept ambiguity and diversity. Students identified strategies for improving the teaching-learning process some of which is outside of the design studio. The research contributed in a methodological and conceptual nature by explaining, in a non-circular way, how the interconnection of architectural students’ previous pedagogic codes, their objective conditions and subjective experiences influence their learning in a flexible-rigid educational context.

This document collates examples of the author’s practice, initiatives, inquiries, and scholarship in the five year period from 2010 to 2015. In conjunction with the critical commentary, ‘Developing a Curriculum for Engagement for Architectural Education at Northumbria University’ it serves to satisfy the requirements of Northumbria University’s regulations for the submission of a Professional Doctorate by Portfolio. The individual components within this portfolio seek to underpin the author’s claim towards developing a ‘curriculum for engagement’ in support of the student’s holistic educational experience of architectural education at Northumbria. The majority of the components have resulted from collaborations with colleagues in the course of the author’s practice. These have included fellow academics, academic managers, colleagues from other institutions and disciplines, as well as students of the programmes of architecture. In support of developing a ‘curriculum for engagement’, these collaborative works embody the notion of ‘communicative action’ (Habermas, 1981) in seeking consensual, iterative and beneficial initiatives for the benefit of student learning and experience. All inquiries have been supported by ethical permissions from relevant schools and faculties in the institution. All components have also been made available in the public domain, through a variety of outlets relevant to the particular output and audience. Permissions have been sought and granted for their reproduction in this portfolio. The individual components have been re-formatted for the purpose of this portfolio in order to comply with Northumbria University regulations for doctoral submissions. Font sizes and type, line-spaces and layouts have been standardised, and Harvard Northumbria has been used throughout for the purposes of citations and in-text referencing. References have been collated alphabetically. Word counts have omitted references.

Traditional institutions of the architectural design studio such as the design critique or the design jury are at the core of studio pedagogy. Yet, they have shifted and evolved over time towards what can be hardly defined as the typical master-apprentice “atelier” praxis anymore. Design studio pedagogy, deeply rooted into our disciplinary ethos, is under pressure due to a series of factors such as new industry demands, ever-evolving technologies or the diversification of architecture’s collaborative contexts of practice. While the design studio comprises a series of cultural, social, technological and educational mutually interdependent dimensions, this research specifically focuses on technology-mediated teaching and learning communication. By following a grounded theory approach, this work attempts to formalise and describe technology-enabled emergent studio pedagogies. In more detail, the observed technologies in this thesis are those of augmented reality visualisations embedded into design critique sessions, and the use of Wikis for online communication throughout a studio course. The research question pursued along this thesis is, then, “how do the use of AR visualisations and the use of supporting Wikis impact on communication in the architectural design studio?”. For such enquiry, it is claimed that the integration of technology into architectural education contexts does not proceed only on the grounds of tools’ development and training, but on a series of complex interrelations across technological, communicational and societal patterns that once orchestrated, provide a vehicle for such technology-driven pedagogies. However, the observation of the architectural design studio as a social setting mediated by technologies comprises to not only conduct extensive observational work, but also to question and reflect upon how its constituent institutions (e.g. the design critique, the design jury) are potentially augmented by technology. In that sense, this research has been conducted as a “cognitive ethnography”, by taking into account both experimental and observational research procedures to unravel its communication dynamics in the context of actual design studio settings, as opposed to highly controlled lab-based design scenarios. As a result, a series of research methods and techniques are described to operate as a participant observer in such settings, their practicalities and limitations, and the theory informing such methods. The main contribution of this approach is the collection, transcription and analysis of on-site gathered data, therefore grounding the research results to the contexts in which they operate - supporting the validity and applicability of the research outcomes. The resulting theory outputs - namely “theory of augmented pedagogies” - describes the emergent communication dynamics resulting from the use of such tools. Its construction process is as follows: After observational data is analysed following an incremental coding process, a set of conceptual categories (a set of conceptual categories) is created, and then linked to each other allowing the formulation of a framework. The framework, composed by seven categories, clusters systematically built evidence of the complex role of technology for architectural education purposes. The categories are: solo interactions, social interactions, technology affordances, troubleshooting, emotional engagement, multimodal engagement, and organisational shifts. Those categories are organised in two core topics that describe the impact of technologies in the architectural design studio: “augmented interactions” and “pedagogical implementations of technology”. Throughout the definition and scope of those topics, various links across pedagogy and technology are claimed. The outcomes of this research intend to serve as a pedagogical resource for integrating new technologies into architectural design studios, and organise those newly emergent pedagogies as novel educational resources. Since it is based on a grounded theory approach, the framework is also flexible enough to accommodate further pedagogical knowledge, and paths for future work are identified accordingly. It is concluded that amid diverse views and approaches towards architectural education, instructors mainly operate with little supporting pedagogical resources and mostly following an experience-based teaching approach. As such, new ways to organise and transfer pedagogical knowledge in relation to technology-enhanced learning, such as the one derived from this work, are a contribution to the work of architectural educators. On a secondary claim, it is asserted that the outcomes of this work also contribute towards the development of technology for educational purposes.