Xinyue Tian
Architectural Interdisciplinary Education: Experiments in the Post-war Period (1950-75)
First and second supervisors
Abstract
This research is centred on changes in architectural pedagogy at Schools of Architecture in the UK postwar era between 1950-75. In particular, when the social sciences (e.g. geography, economics, and sociology) were integrated into the teaching of architecture, women gained new opportunities for architectural education.
For instance, in 1950, Gordon Stephenson launched MA. Civic Design at Liverpool School of Architecture (LSA). Stephenson transferred planning thinking from the American university MIT to a British setting. The introduction of social studies into the urban planning curriculum, as well as the relaxation of enrollment restrictions, helped a small number of female students join the field of planning. Around 1970s, the Edinburgh Department of Architecture (EDA) and Bartlett established the School of Built Environment and Environment Studies. Environmental studies had as its aim the integration of social sciences, where women featured more prominently, and the more traditionally male-dominated architecture field. In the wake of these changes, an increasing number of women entered the field of architectural education.
All of this evidence suggests that interdisciplinary courses related to social sciences did female students entering the architecture profession, but this research seeks to fill in this picture and to understand more precisely not only the nature of these changes but how students at the end experienced them.
This project focuses on the LSA, Bartlett and EDA as case studies, covering the same term of three principals – Robert Gardner-Medwin, Richard Llewelyn-Davies and Robert Matthew. Each of the case studies represent three different educational models respectively, and three different responses to the crisis in architectural education, which is worth studying: namely Beaux-Arts, Bauhaus and Modernism. Essentially, curriculum reforms at these three institutions reflected the broader trend of the increasingly complex nature of architecture integrated education during the period 1950-75.
The original contribution of this research is to explore these previous pedagogical experiments in reforming architectural education. It will also reveal the contributions of women educators (e.g. Jane Abercrombie and Josephine Reynolds) to interdisciplinary teaching and research at different schools, which have so far been poorly understood by the public.
Biography
Xinyue Tian, a PhD student, is studying in Architectural and Urban History at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. She obtained her postgraduate degree in Master of Architecture (ARB/RIBA Part 2) with First-Class at the Liverpool School of Architecture, the University of Liverpool. She also holds the certification of LEED AP Building Design + Construction and has a year out working experience in Shanghai, specializing in doing housing design.
Xinyue’s research interest is architectural pedagogy, especially in women architectural education at Schools of Architecture in the UK post-war period.
Image: A diagram of University Disciplines Influencing Environmental Design Studies, c.1970s. Photo Credit: The University of Liverpool Special Collections & Archives.