Registrations are now closed. If you're keen to attend, email Rebecca at rebecca.kiddle@vuw.ac.nz and find out whether any spaces have opened up. 

Day long wānanga: Tuesday 17 November, 2020. Note that this event has been rescheduled from an earlier time.

 Te Herenga Waka Marae, Te Herenga Waka: Victoria University of Wellington, 46 Kelburn Parade

Are you interested in critically evaluating your own teaching practice through a decolonisation lens? This wānanga considers this issue in the context of the design review/crit process, a pedagogical tool used extensively in design education. Through considering this learning and teaching tool, you will get a broader understanding of issues around decolonising of teaching and learning in Aotearoa NZ.

Design education and professional practice has utilised the crit or the design review as a tool to critique student work since the early nineteenth century1. The crit involves a student presenting work to a panel of ‘experts’ with these experts responding with critical advice usually with a view to improving the work. This pedagogical tool has a number of benefits including the sharing and expanding of ideas through a social learning process. Equally though, the crit has been a source of angst, even pain for many setting up a dynamic between student and critic encouraging students to aggressively defend their work resulting in detrimental pedagogical and personal outcomes2. El-Husseiny writes, “the crit is frequently a playground for the display of intellectual superiority, arrogance, and occasional bullying” 3.

In the Aotearoa New Zealand context, additional questions around whether the practice of design review chimes with tikanga Māori remain uninterrogated. What indeed would a ‘Māori crit’ or a ‘decolonised crit’ look like? Or more fundamentally, do design reviews support the development of mātauranga Māori or do they channel knowledge towards the Eurocentric value sets and worldviews that much of architectural and design education is based on?

This wānanga explores these questions asking our six speakers to provide whakaaro, provocation or alternatives to stimulate thinking around how we better teach architecture and design in a way that supports successful student learning rooted in an Aotearoa New Zealand context.

Please note: There is an option to attend just the morning session or the afternoon session (onlyif you have already been part of a pōwhiri at Te Herenga Waka marae previously i.e. you are a no longer waewae tapu).

Detailed programme to come. Speakers will include academics, design practitioners and students.

For more information please contact organising team on:

Rebecca Kiddle – Rebecca.kiddle@vuw.ac.nz Hannah Hopewell – Hannah.hopewell@vuw.ac.nz Maibritt Pedersen Zari –maibritt.pedersen@vuw.ac.nz

1 Parnell, R. & Sara, R. (2007) The Crit: An architecture Student’s Handbook, Elsevier Architectural Press (Second edition). 2 See for example Sara, R., & Parnell, R. (2013). Fear and learning in the architectural crit. Field Journal, 5(1), 101-125. 3 El-Husseiny, M. (2009) Book review, The Crit: An architecture Student’s Handbook, Elsevier Architectural Press (Second edition) Parnell, R. & Sara, R. (2007), in Journal of Architectural Education.