Abstract
Crossing Cultures is a university-based research initiative that is part of London Metropolitan’s Centre for Urban and Built Ecologies (CUBE) which aims to develop a new pedagogical model. The focus is to provide an inclusive learning environment that facilitates intercultural relationships and group learning, equipping students with essential skills for a globally connected world beyond the subject of architecture. We have paired the design studio activities in London with a field experience of live engagement in southern Italy, in a region suffering from depopulation, while simultaneously experiencing the arrival of asylum seekers. The confluence of these opposing developments creates a need to rebuild local communities and presents an exceptional opportunity for our students to become agents of change. The article outlines how, through the creation of an additional teaching and learning platform for multi-disciplinary research outside the boundaries of the university campus, this teaching practice is raising social capital by attracting and integrating students and asylum seekers alike, adding to population and economic growth. The article concludes by highlighting the unique opportunity to scale up this hybrid studio/field study model, which has arisen because of the COVID-19 pandemic. What is proposed is that now, as universities are developing blended learning delivery models, our observations could feed into a new, expansive model for studying architecture as a student-in-residence mode of study.
Highlights
We need to invite more young people back to the old towns
We have paired the design studio activities in London with a field experience of live engagement in southern Italy, in a region suffering from depopulation, while simultaneously experiencing the arrival of asylum seekers
A larger scale study is needed to further evaluate the long-term benefits of Crossing Cultures on integration, but I feel that our observations, at a time when universities are developing blended learning delivery models, could already feed into a new, expansive model for studying architecture as a student-in-residence mode of study
Summary
We need to invite more young people back to the old towns. I ... would like to see an International School in the old town of Belmonte, creating a lively international environment.[1]. Experiencing social integration has certainly empowered our students to develop ‘intercultural relationship capabilities’ and ‘critical consciousness’ which they can apply back in London, and when encountering intercultural environments beyond their studies.[40] This positive experience was described by a student who said: ‘The more I do this, the more I appreciate that people can contribute to things that at first I didn’t recognise. Raising social capital and growing the local economy through an architecture residency Crossing Cultures is part of a tradition of university live projects, described by Harriet Harris and Lynnette Widder as including ‘design/build work, community-based design, urban advocacy consulting and a host of other forms and models’ happening in ‘the borderlands between architectural education and built environment practice, and benefitting the world outside of academia’.42.
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