Abstract
Architectural live project education (including Design Build projects, Extension Projects and Service Learning) is evolving rapidly. Emerging research describes, defines and analyses contemporary activity. Much is based on case studies that rely on the quality of the author’s critique or is not located within a wider theoretical, historical or cultural context. The aim of this paper is to develop an objective method to analyse live projects that includes the peripheral and promotes diversity and evolution. The paper analyses 154 contemporary live project case studies located in twenty-eight different countries that have been drawn from the online Live Projects Network between April 2012 and January 2016. This paper explores three connected questions: What differentiates and connects contemporary international live projects? What live project models and strategies have emerged to date? What influence are live projects having on architectural education, research and practice? Ordering live projects by singular categories such as outcome or motive fails to acknowledge their complexity or to reveal new models and strategies. Quantitative and qualitative analyses demonstrate that human and physical resources and contexts have the greatest influence on diversity of live project models and strategies. The expertise of the live project participants is capable of overcoming contextual resource limitations via design ingenuity. A Taxonomy has been developed to illustrate the relationship between these factors. This allows us to identify the ways in which live projects are influencing contemporary architectural education, research and practice.
Highlights
Live projects are one of the most dynamic recent developments in architectural education
This paper explores three connected questions: What differentiates and connects contemporary international live projects? What live project models and strategies have emerged to date? What influence are live projects having upon architectural education, research and practice?
Relationships with external collaborators: commissions (27%); collaborations (48%); self-initiated projects (25%). This suggests that live projects are operating in a way that is distinct from conventional practice and can attract external collaborators, probably by demonstrating a maturing track record and expertise
Summary
Live projects ( known as Design Build, Extension Projects and Service Learning) are one of the most dynamic recent developments in architectural education. They form an emerging field operating with increasing expertise, gathering momentum in the last five years. Communities of debate and mutual support are forming as evidenced by many recent conferences and the formation of online networks [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12] This has revealed approaches that have evolved in response to local conditions, often independently and spontaneously. All would recognise these activities as belonging within architectural practice
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