Keywords

1 Introduction: The Nordic-Baltic Academy of Architecture

I am head of the department in architecture at Iceland University of the Arts (IUA) and – together with my cohort – in charge of designing the educational experience for our students. Since 2016, I have been attending meetings of the Nordic Baltic Academy of Architecture (NBAA), an organisation of educators from nineteen schools of architecture from the Nordic and Baltic countries. NBAA was established in 1993, with the aims to share knowledge, promoting common views, concerns, and interests in the broad field of architectural education and research [1].

In Autumn 2018 as part of my PhD research on architectural education in the Nordic-Baltic area and as one of the educators actively involved in the NBAA, I started conducting interviews with students and educators of the network, thinking together about the responsibility, value, and meaning of architectural education. The fundamental results of these conversations are the essence of my PhD titled: “Becoming cosmopolitan citizen-architects: A Reflection on Architectural Education in a Nordic-Baltic Perspective” which was defended at the University of Iceland in November 2022 [2]. In this article the essence of my PhD research is presented in a concise and focused way to address specifically the need to develop a language, pedagogy, and scholarship in architectural education as a project to advance the knowledge, traits, attitudes, values, and behaviours necessary to respond to global challenges whilst creating conditions for students and their educators to locally engage as active citizens (Table 1).

Table 1. The Nordic Baltic Academy of Architecture
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2 Research Questions and Methods

A total of 40 semi-structured interviews were conducted between 5 November 2018 and 26 March 2020 among twenty-nine educators and fourteen students from the NBAA network. All interviews were initiated by three research questions:

  • What skills should students have after studying architecture?

  • How should these skills be taught?

  • How can architectural education be of special importance to our society?

Each question addresses architectural education from a different viewpoint to reveal dispositions, skills, pedagogies, and multiple societal agencies associated with the practice of architectural education. “Skill” was explained to interviewees not only as an ability to do something (an expertise), but rather as the combination of knowledge, attitudes, values, and behaviours considered vital to becoming an architect. Through these questions I could conduct an in-depth exploration of an area in which the interviewees have a substantial personal experience that is architectural education.

All interviews were recorded, for a total of 32 h and 13 min, they were then transcribed verbatim, and promptly emailed to participants, who were invited to make comments or amendments. All interviews were then analysed following the Grounded Theory (GT), a rigorous method for collecting and analysing qualitative data to construct theories grounded in the data itself [3]. Each interview was first singularly analysed, and its essential key topics were highlighted. The analysis of each interview was then compared to the other interviews to find out recurrent topics, shared cultural themes, and essential common features. By doing so a theoretical direction emerged, one that positions the global challenges (climate crises and social injustice) at the core of architecture education and indicates that each school of architecture has the duty to educate future practitioners for active societal agency to contribute to their solution.

Through an iterative relational process of analysis of the recorded interviews, their comparison, and interpretation based both on my personal experience and the use of pertinent literature from the field of world citizenship education, I could construct a communal perspective grounded in its Nordic–Baltic context, that is a theory that I call of Cosmopolitan Citizenship Architectural Education (CCAE), whose purpose is to advance the societal scope and meaning of architectural education.

3 A Cosmopolitan Architectural Education

3.1 The Findings from the Nordic-Baltic Voices

What emerged from the forty Nordic–Baltic dialogues is the acknowledgment that the grand challenges—the climate crisis and social inequality—are the most important issues that need to be faced for the continuation of life on our planet and their addressing ought to become the foundation of any design process and the purpose of architectural education. Nordic-Baltic respondents underline the importance of conceiving architectural education as an explorative and formative process to help students finding both their interests and their societal agency, by acquiring the knowledge, traits, attitudes, values, and behaviours necessary to collaborate in bettering the world starting from their own communities. The Nordic-Baltic voices view the process of learning as one devoted helping students developing critical skills (the capacity to question everything), social awareness (the ability to understand what you see), self-reflection (understanding the impact of your design choices), imagination (being able to conceive of and represent what is not there yet), and action (the ability to pursue your ideas beyond the school’s limits). Fostering social agency through the design process demands of schools to create the learning conditions for students and their educators to be exposed to diversity of thoughts, to different ways of knowing and doing, and to create conditions for collaboration with otherness, that is to create a learning environment that supports students developing their political roles.

The strong commitment of the Nordic-Baltic voices to operate both as active citizens and agents of positive global change led me to investigate the fields of citizenship education, cosmopolitanism, and global citizenship education. The reviewing of this literature served as the theoretical framework through which analyse and interpret the Nordic–Baltic voices and led me to build a theory which I call Cosmopolitan Citizenship Architectural Education (CCAE). This theory is grounded in the NBAA’s context, and yet it reflects my multicultural and multidisciplinary interests and the historical context – a time of challenges to biodiversity, human health, and well-being. As such CCAE theory has “a direction, an orientation, a purpose” [3] that of helping students and educators cultivating a language, activating a pedagogy, and nurturing a scholarship capable of educating a new generation of architects committed to respond to the grand challenges and to bring about positive societal change. To these societal agents, I have given the name of cosmopolitan citizen-architects [4,5,6,7,8,9,10].

3.2 Theoretical Framework for Cosmopolitan Citizenship in Architectural Education

Cosmopolitan: from the Greek kosmopolitēs, ‘citizen of the world.’

Citizenship: a juridical status and a civic and political agency that positions everyone in terms of rights and responsibilities into a larger societal context [11].

The concept of cosmopolitan citizenship is based on the understanding that we all inhabit the same living system. Cosmopolitan citizenship does not mean homogenization of ideas, nor the obliteration of cultural differences but it celebrates the diversity that exists in the world by also recognizing its common traits [12, 13]. Cosmopolitan citizenship is a societal project of redefining who we are and how we relate to each other, as diverse and equal beings who live in a common and shared world.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) explains cosmopolitan citizenship as a project of education which requires the acquisition of the knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, and behaviours necessary to become active promoters of more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure, and sustainable societies [14]. Cosmopolitan citizenship education requires both an acute awareness of the state of the world – its problems, injustices, and possibilities – and the intention to engage for solutions, to care for and with Others. This type of education emphasizes political, economic, social, and cultural interdependency and interconnectedness that exist between the local and the global, and the shared responsibilities that each individual carries as a distinct yet equal citizen of a shared and common world [15].

Educating for cosmopolitan citizenship requires constant interactions between different people to develop social awareness and new perspectives. It involves attaining knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviours necessary to understand that all Earthlings are part of the same ecological and social system, and to envision a common future wherein no one is excluded and to actively engage as agents of care for life on Earth. Cosmopolitan citizenship is indissolubly linked to solidarity, empathy, emancipation, freedom, and the pursuit of global justice; as such, it is practice oriented because it requires critical civic engagement with real cases [16].

Even though the term “cosmopolitan citizenship education” was never mentioned by any of the respondents it is my understanding that the concept of cosmopolitan citizenship captures the shared thoughts on architectural education that have emerged from the Nordic–Baltic dialogues. With this theoretical framework presented I know focus in explaining what a language, pedagogy, and scholarship of cosmopolitan citizenship pertain.

3.3 The Language of Cosmopolitan Citizenship in Architectural Education

The language of Cosmopolitan Citizenship Architectural Education helps students acquiring a broader vocabulary of concepts and ideas to redefine what architecture is and can do. This language speaks of architectures as plural, heterogeneous, situated, and collaborative processes which are always in relation to places, communities, and people, and yet such processes are also profoundly influenced by global forces. A CCAE language is world-related and place-based, and it explains architectures as the social and ecological relations involved in their practice—a practice that transcends the design of buildings to include processes of thinking, theorising, and writing that relate humans and their environment [17, 18]. This is a practice that is holistic and receptive of arts and humanities, science and technology, and new social, technological, and ecological challenges [19,20,21]. It is one that can be used in multiple ways: as a critical process of enquiry [22]; as a vehicle for raising social awareness [23, 24]; as a tool for imagining and advancing agendas of social justice [23, 25]; and as a collaborative project aimed at living together harmoniously [26].

The language of CCAE validates students’ different voices, interests, and different ways of practicing architecture. It explains creativity as a collaborative project based on thinking together. It invites students and their teachers to consider school’s time not as a rehearsal for future practice, but as a time invested to challenge the status quo, a time for action, and a time to forge the conditions for civic engagement between academia and the world outside the school. CCAE language encourages the creation of a caring learning environment to empower students in developing their own architectural practice as well as their societal agency to contribute making a positive difference in the world. The language of CCAE is further influenced by the work of international architectural commentators who celebrate the value of architectural education beyond building design, who expand architecture’s agency by making the field of research more receptive to diverse voices and conditions [2, 27].

3.4 The Pedagogy of Cosmopolitan Citizenship in Architectural Education

The pedagogy for CCAE aims to redesign power relations in the design studio—the very core of Nordic–Baltic architectural education, by making it more receptive and inclusive of different ways of being, thinking, and making architectures; more collaborative among students, their educators, and their community; and more concerned with exploring the design process to advance social and ecological justice. A pedagogy for CCAE is committed to educating critical thinkers capable of addressing issues of societal relevance and making them at the base of the design process. The pedagogy for CCAE aims to form self-reflective, collaborative, and socially aware beings equipped with the social skills to engage in dialogue with diverse people (experts and non-experts), to cooperate and collaborate (with everyone), and to form future practitioners capable of bringing diverse forms of knowledge and experience together in their communities.

A pedagogy for CCAE is committed to honouring the two fundamental purposes of architectural education, that is to educate ethical professionals and world citizens [20]. Such pedagogy aims to equip future architects with the skills, attitudes, traits, and behaviours necessary to move away from current destructive practices and towards the environmental, social, and economic justice necessary to protect life on our planet. Cosmopolitan citizenship architectural pedagogy invites each school in the world to define both its local mission and its global relationship contributing therefore to redefining how we live together [2].

3.5 The Scholarship of Cosmopolitan Citizenship in Architectural Education

Cosmopolitan citizenship education aims to advance the very idea of scholarship. More than thirty years ago, Ernest Boyer, in his influential report Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate, invited universities “to clarify campus missions and relate the work of the academy more directly to the realities of contemporary life” [28]. Many universities today are working on expanding the meaning and scope of scholarship, strengthening their societal relevance and public engagement. Ronald Barnett for instance advocates for the “ecological university” as one “that takes seriously the world’s interconnectedness and the university’s interconnectedness with the world” [29].

The scholarship of CCAE recognises that fairer knowledge is constructed when diverse perspectives and standpoints are included in the research process, and when knowledge production reflects critically on the nature of academic research by asking what purposes it serves and whom does it support and discriminate. The scholarship of CCAE allows social and ecological events to further shape, bias, and influence the nature and scope of academic research, and it celebrates its unique local bonds, and it acknowledges that every place is never dissociated nor dematerialised from the global context [30]. The scholarship of CCAE recognises academic researchers’ responsibility to disseminate their outcomes via open and clear platforms freely accessible to a larger audience. It recognises the importance for academics to be part of the most pressing moral, political, and cultural questions and hence collaborate across disciplines with other academics and practitioners to advance just and fair solutions. The scholarship of CCAE promotes forms of scholarly activism by creating a learning environment conducive for students and teachers to transgress university boundaries for civic engagement and the pursuit of social and ecological justice. The scholarship of cosmopolitan citizenship aims to create a new era: the Cosmopolicene, a collaborative, inclusive, and caring age where the interconnectedness among us all is valued and protected, and where development translates in social and ecological justice [2].

4 Thinking from the North

Each school of architecture visited in this research represents a microcosm devoted to the production, discussion, and dissemination of architectural thinking [22]. Each school is a place where “the ethos of a profession is born” [31]; where attitudes are shaped and carried into professional life; where a legacy is passed down from one generation to the next; where architects’ possible societal roles are imagined and then enacted.

My intention with this research is to think together with my Nordic–Baltic colleagues and students on architecture’s social and political responsibilities and obligations. During this dialogical process it emerged vividly that the essence of architectural education is based on forming civic minded, engaged professionals who can use their acquired skills in multiple ways for the betterment of their community.

I cannot, nor do I wish to, claim that any of these findings belong exclusively to the NBAA network, nor to architectural education only. I can only claim that these forty interviews have a common ground that of connecting architectural education to cosmopolitan citizenship education. It is this indissoluble link between society and architectural education, this societal sense of responsibility that is, for me, the key to understanding architectural education in the Nordic–Baltic region [2].

5 Conclusions

This paper exposes the main findings presented in my PhD “Becoming cosmopolitan citizen-architects: A Reflection on Architectural Education in a Nordic-Baltic Perspective”. It continues therefore supporting the idea that architectural education is a field of study not only receptive to the notion of cosmopolitan citizenship, but one that helps to advance it. As such, architectural education is of paramount importance for both educating not only future designers of buildings but for preparing students for active cosmopolitan citizenship. It is of paramount importance to educate future architects who can contribute to shape new perspectives and new stories of what architectures are and can do, architects who can enact new societal agencies necessary to face and respond to the present grand challenges and those yet to come. Educating cosmopolitan citizen architects means supporting the long tradition that envisions the essential role of an architect as a public servant devoted to the protection of the common good. It recognises that each architect has a political agency, and as such an architect is asked to be socially relevant and to use the practice of architecture in multiple ways as a critical process of enquiry, as a vehicle for raising social awareness, as a tool for collective imagination, and as a collaborative project aimed at caring for and repairing the common good, besides the undisputed role of architects as buildings’ designers.

Educating cosmopolitan citizens means becoming inquisitive-knowledgeable-self-reflective-critical-empathic-collaborative-caring beings, who are instigative of hope and have the courage to act in the now for the pursuit of a better world. Becoming cosmopolitan citizen architects means learning to include the Other, future generations, and unrepresented voices in the design process to achieve social and ecological justice, it means learning to make design decisions grounded in their social and environmental context and equally influenced by the understanding of their local and global implications. Becoming cosmopolitan citizen architects means challenging the myth of the star architect as a solitary genus, towards forming architects who are more prone to dialogue and collaboration, who understand the value embedded in celebrating the social and ecological relations present in each design process. This is about understanding that the ongoing environmental crisis needs to constitute the premise and scope of scholarly investigation; be part of educational discourse, form our individual and collective planetary consciousness and unite us as we move towards solutions. Becoming cosmopolitan citizen architects is connected to lived experiences, it is a process and an ongoing activity that aims to complete us as humans in our ever-changing realities and connecting us with the world [2].