Places and spaces: The Architectures of Art and Design Education
The built environment of the art school is undergoing a period of transformation; with a shift towards interdisciplinary environments, mass investment in new buildings, and a widespread adoption of virtual or hybrid learning platforms. These environments can be understood as pedagogical tools that shape, house and locate students and practice physically, psychologically and artistically.
This session seeks to facilitate a dialogue that interrogates the forms, structures, ecosystems and histories of the art school. How have the studios and workshops —designed for learning, teaching, and making — influenced and informed curriculum, creativity, practice and community? It questions how the legacy of spaces designed for artistic practice determine and impact decisions made for the future, making a timely provocation on the position of arts education in relation to current social and political landscapes.
Session Convenors:
Rose Gridneff, University of the Arts London
Neil Drabble, Norwich University of the Arts
Speakers:
Martin Newth, Glasgow School of Art
Life Live Rooms. From the Individual to the Dialogic in Fine Art Studios
This paper explores contemporary adaptations of studio space in Fine Art education, addressing both internal and external challenges. It proposes alternative models for deploying art school resources, drawing on case studies from my experiences leading programmes at Chelsea College of Arts, UAL, and the Royal College of Art, London. In these high-cost urban contexts, with increasing student numbers, the paper argues that societal, artistic, and cultural shifts — including the rising costs of living and studying, the positive increasing diversity of student backgrounds, and the growth of relational and collaborative art practices — necessitate a rethinking of studio organisation.
The case studies highlight attempts to move beyond traditional, individual-focused models toward collaborative, dialogic spaces. At Chelsea, the MFA ‘studio’ was reframed as a ‘cultural production hub’, while at the RCA, the development of a new MFA in Arts and Humanities included initiating a ‘live room’, playfully shifting from the concept of a traditional ‘Life Room’ to a more open, dialogic and technology-enhanced studio space. This paper critically examines these innovations, assessing their impact on student practices and the professional readiness of graduates.
In addition, the paper reflects on prospective initiatives at the Glasgow School of Art, where I now work as the Head of Fine Art, and considers whether more affordable space encourages conventional approaches. This analysis explores how such environments influence artistic production, student belonging, and the professional trajectories of graduates.
Lucy Howarth, University for the Creative Arts, UK
Art School Building: The Old/ New Chelsea
The former ‘New’ Chelsea School of Art building on Manresa Road, off the King’s Road – an icon of the 1960s London art school ‘golden age’ – was demolished in 2010, after the college itself moved to its current home (the elegant Allies & Morrison barracks conversion next to Tate Britain on Millbank).
‘Manresa Road’ was a purpose-built art school many years in the planning, and established Chelsea as an institution, in contradistinction to what became the prevailing pattern of art schools folding into polytechnics during the 1970s. Through an archival account of how the design came about – between art educationalists (including Chelsea Principal Lawrence Gowing and Chairman of the NACAE William Coldstream) and architects of the London County Council – the correlation of utopianist values in post-war British society, modernist architecture and higher education in art, is mapped.
This research opens up questions about the relationship between architecture and the art school, buildings and pedagogy, pertinent at a time when flagship art school buildings such as Alsop’s Ben Pimlott building for Goldsmiths, the Stanton Williams King’s Cross development for Central St. Martin’s, and the Royal College of Art White City Campus by iDEA are appearing – and art education is, as ever, in crisis.
The work was originally developed under the auspices of the Tate Research Project ‘Art School Educated’ 2009-2013. Following publication in iJADE 33.2, 2014, and inclusion in the Tate book THE LONDON ART SCHOOLS, 2015, this research is revisited now in light of continued interest and developments in the field.
Beril Sarisakal Erkent, Columbia University, USA
Pedagogy Beyond Academy: Teaching Crafts in Factory Workshops of the Late Ottoman Empire
Histories of art and architecture often situate design education within formal academic spaces. Looking beyond academia, this paper examines the pedagogical practices within factory workshops of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ottoman Empire, specifically in tile-making at the Yıldız Imperial Porcelain Factory and textile and carpet weaving at the Hereke Imperial Textile Factory. Here, vocational training in design intersected with industrial production, creating a pedagogical arena where technical skills and aesthetic values were collaboratively cultivated. As crafts were uprooted from their localities of origin, how did industrial spaces and techniques shape—and become shaped by—the epistemologies of design? How were procedural methodologies imbricated in embodied learning practices? And what were the socio-economic ramifications of the practical, material, and artifactual conditions operative in these spaces?
Contrary to modernization theories that regard crafts and industry as anachronistic, this paper contends that they were historically co-constitutive. It centres on spaces of training—such as drafting offices (resimhane) and weaving workshops (iplikhane, halıhane)—to uncover how craft-making was embedded in a social project of modern subject-making, with student-labourers (primarily women and children) and instructors (from academy-trained artists to skilled artisans) as key actors. Drawing on contemporaneous media, academic curricula, as well as material sources and instruments of training, this paper situates factory education within a broader socio-economic project of modernizing craft. It argues that these factory-based regimes of making not only aimed to modernize craftsmen but also to integrate traditional crafts into the global market, fostering a distinct aesthetic and economic vision for Ottoman craftsmanship.
James Corazzo, Sheffield Hallam University (UK)
Derek Jones, The Open University (UK)
James Benedict Brown, Umeå University (Sweden)
Elizabeth Boling, Indiana University (USA)
Colin M. Gray, Indiana University (USA)
Nicole Lotz, The Open University (UK)
The Visibilities and Proximities of the Design Studio
This paper examines the architecture of the design studio from a pedagogical perspective. It emphasises the critical interdependence of studio as place and studio as pedagogy, highlighting that one cannot be fully understood without considering the other. This observation arises from the project Studio Properties, an international collaboration of studio educators bringing together research and expertise to identify a series of studio properties. This paper identifies some of these properties [bold in square brackets] to probe how the design school’s architecture and pedagogy collaborate to produce particular kinds of learning.
Walking into a studio teaching space is a different experience than walking into a lecture hall. It can be challenging to discern where the ‘front’ of the class might be when neither the room’s arrangement nor the occupants’ behaviour is oriented toward a single point of focus [no front]. The space may feel cluttered with objects lying around, materials stacked up, and work in progress stuck to walls [surfaces], on desks [extended and distributed cognition], and in service of [making visible]. Tutors and students don’t always stay in place; they visit each other’s workspaces, stand and discuss pinned-up sketches, and may even be gathered in unexpected corners, which are not always inside the studio [informal learning spaces]. Other students may be hidden away, working behind ad hoc privacy barriers [public and private space]. The emergent architecture of studio enables participants to use studio as a space to design with, not just design in.