Abstract
Among the design disciplines, architectural education in Australia has a unique con-straint: accreditation. On the one hand, competency requirements by accrediting bod-ies potentially limit an educator’s autonomy and curriculum development. On the oth-er, competencies define and regulate a profession by ensuring standard knowledge and skills. In this paper, we analyse the pedagogical and professional impacts of the 2021 “National Standard of Competencies” for Australian architects, particularly the inclusion of Indigenous Knowledge for the first time. Together with the recent Indige-nous Design Charter – Communication Design, these competencies signal a shift in Australian architectural and design education that suggests a vision closer to Escobar’s “design for the pluriverse”. Embedding Indigenous Knowledge and world-views through mandatory requirements is a first step in changing not only pedagogy but also the design professions.
Keywords
pedagogy, architecture, indigenous knowledge, competencies, pluriverse
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.278
Citation
Huppatz, D., and Day, K. (2022) Australian architectural education in the pluriverse, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June - 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.278
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Research Paper
Included in
Australian architectural education in the pluriverse
Among the design disciplines, architectural education in Australia has a unique con-straint: accreditation. On the one hand, competency requirements by accrediting bod-ies potentially limit an educator’s autonomy and curriculum development. On the oth-er, competencies define and regulate a profession by ensuring standard knowledge and skills. In this paper, we analyse the pedagogical and professional impacts of the 2021 “National Standard of Competencies” for Australian architects, particularly the inclusion of Indigenous Knowledge for the first time. Together with the recent Indige-nous Design Charter – Communication Design, these competencies signal a shift in Australian architectural and design education that suggests a vision closer to Escobar’s “design for the pluriverse”. Embedding Indigenous Knowledge and world-views through mandatory requirements is a first step in changing not only pedagogy but also the design professions.