A pedagogy of uselessness: challenging solutionism and utility in the Anthropocene through architectural pedagogy

Abstract

This article discusses an architectural pedagogy of uselessness in relation to the Anthropocene, explicitly building on pedagogical involvement in a design studio at a department for sustainable architecture. The suggestion of a pedagogy of uselessness aims at questioning the criteria and paradigms of utility and solutionism that tend to characterise the discourse on sustainable development, environmental governance, and resilience. To this end, a pedagogy of uselessness moves towards what we have called sustainability otherwise and suggests an orientation which resists the calculability of utility and solutionism. The article is organised in three parts: the first looks at four specific student works that, following the scope of the design studio, question the dominant discourse on sustainability through architecture while addressing territorial issues in several different geographies. The second part focuses on the conceptual references that informed the notion of sustainability otherwise: thinking of modernity as a bewitched time; terrain and landscape as conflict; and weaving as a notion to describe a methodological approach. The third and final part elaborates on the organisation and content of the design studio, in which the article suggests a teaching and learning approach that questions both strictly technical and formal approaches, and offers a provisional and negotiable definition for a pedagogy of uselessness.