Responding to Embodied Injustices: Introducing Critical Thinking and Empathy in Architectural Education

Abstract

The climate emergency has forced architects to rethink how and what we design. If we continue to practise and teach architecture like we always have, we will only further contribute to the climate emergency and its social and environmental consequences, enforcing “embodied injustices” in architecture. The foundation of our practices is established in education. In this chapter we unfold the key issues of the status quo of architecture education by analysing the mechanisms of the design studio and the current implementation of problem-based learning. The typical top-down culture of defining design problems generally prevents students from engaging in critical thinking that may hinder developing a skill set for empathy, solidarity and collaboration. Instead, students are often encouraged to develop themselves as individual(istic) designers. Combined together, this creates a lack of engagement in holistic thinking and transformational behaviour, which is necessary to tackle current challenges. To help students in this and in treating sustainability as a way of thinking instead of a distinct phenomenon, critical thinking and empathy need to be better integrated into architectural education. We suggest that Design Thinking is a potential approach for both creating a framework for acquiring holistic knowledge and evaluating and transforming one’s own values and attitudes. Together with blended learning strategies, Design Thinking can help integrate optimal learning methods and mindsets into the architecture curricula.