What About Learning

What about Learning? focuses on how architectural education and learning at large faced ongoing disruptions and pressures under the COVID-19 pandemic and how we can reimagine learning environments.

This books focuses on “What about Learning?” a studio led by Deborah Saunt of DSDHA, in London in terms of how architectural education and learning at large faced ongoing disruptions and pressures under the COVID-19 pandemic. Disembodied learning and a renewed sense of civic participation, along with increasing awareness of how one’s relationship with the environment is so critical to life at home, led the students to consider a twofold architectural question: What is the best site for learning today? What are the alternative forms of learning and exchange it could nurture?

A collective analysis of YSoA’s changing conditions, from its physical site to its virtual presence and networks, and parallel research into alternative learning models, such as University of the Underground and the London School of Architecture, served as a basis for critique and the making, and unmaking of curriculum in the students’ studio projects. The design projects drew from lockdown and needs for different spatial potentials in sites of personal significance for learning. Talks from a symposium with invited guests from different fields—from activism to planning and pedagogy—addressed cross-disciplinary exchange about learning and the built environment and are also included.