Architectural education in the GCC

By Dr Alaa Mandour,Sultan Qaboos University, Oman

What is the meaning of the term “Architectural Education?” It conveys the notion of formal, structured, paced and supervised training. Training that is well balanced in terms of subject matter, methods, techniques and aims, which is constantly evaluated and re-evaluated, and, when completed, somehow recognized by external authorities as intrinsically sufficient to allow an individual to practice architecture.

Architecture was principally a craft in the pre-modern period. And like many crafts that are instantly applicable to everyday life, architecture then depended more on apprenticeship than on theoretical knowledge – and it did so across cultures. Research shows that no medieval culture developed a body of theoretical and historical knowledge as a prerequisite for its architects and builders to practice their craft. They only needed to learn by monitoring and by reiterating what their masters did.

Nowadays, architectural education and practice in the GCC is facing a dramatic situation. There are incessant endeavours to improve architectural inputs to rearrange the structure of the educational method, to test accepted ideas, and to prod prospect apparitions. However many researchers have revealed fundamental disagreements over the goals and objectives, structure and contents and tools and techniques required for architectural education today.

While agreement is still lacking on what changes and developments in education will best support the ambition of modern societies, architecture students and educators must adhere to international standards but also incorporate a critical approach to the reading of the traditional environment as an essential part of curricula.

If we examine the core context of architectural courses throughout the GCC, most of it tends to lack a clear orientation. It tends to be project-oriented rather than be based on an explicit goal-based pedagogical philosophy – although promising initiatives are being taken in the documentation of heritage preservation and the philosophical aspects of planning and building craftsmanship within Muslim traditions and history!

Unfortunately, in GCC courses, teaching methods and curricula still tend to be conspicuously influenced by foreign models and Western references. In my opinion, there is too heavy an emphasis on design theory and too keen a focus on aesthetics, material choice and physical comfort rather than social needs and realities. Issues of culture, socio-economic needs, indigenous techniques, technologies and materials and even climate are rarely perceived as valid issues for the curriculum.

We can argue that this approach needs to surpass the discourse of form and ornament by involving a more responsive approach. With regard to culture in contemporary architectural thinking and teaching, we should be discussing a new academic sensibility that shapes the ways in which architectural history and theory are approached; the role culture can play in the shaping this sensibility; and the conceptual and ethical problems inherent in cultural representations. In short, we need to be consciously addressing the ‘correct’ balance of practice and theory.

A large majority of GCC educators seem to be teaching their students how to preserve history, how to retain the socio-cultural aspects and what are the considerations to be involved in their designs.

But, when we go back to the kitchen the recipe gets tweaked and the Western ingredients appear, mostly because they are the only ingredients available in the market.

In fact, all the information sources come from the West and the curricula for the very universities in which we teach are set up by experts from USA and Europe. So, it’s no wonder that the ‘dish’ created is something alien; something that simply adds a bit of cultural spice in the form of parapets or wind towers.

What we need in the Gulf is a real commitment to a post-enviro revival of the educational core and an exploration and genuine deconstruction of our history. If this happens, it allows us to reconstruct our present and create our future, not as a mere replication, but as an evolving process to leave for the coming generations.

In architectural education, we need to bring together and convey different periods of time, which requires a deeply dimensional projection of human beliefs. At best, it can provide an echo of a spiritual universe which integrates humans in a meaningful order and provide them with the feeling that their small personal world is in harmony with a much larger reality.

The conflict between the traditional culture and modern systems of thought has to be seen in this wider context, for the controversial issue is the interpretation of ‘development’. For example: a) Should development enable the balanced realisation of the totality of human capabilities, or should it reduce reality to limited aspects of material life at the expense of other qualities? b) Should development promote an increase in quantifiable production only, or should it support a different type of creativity, which includes more fundamental forces and experiences?

As far-fetched as these questions may seem, they determine the cultural responses which eventually generate the built environment and its physical expressions. The way to achieve the built environment we seek is to explore and discover the potential continuity between past, present and future. To do this, we need to: a) Analyze and interpret basic urban and architectural patterns to determine how they can be adopted or reinterpreted in a contemporary context; b) Figure out how to deal with the problems and incompatibilities caused by the impact of time differences, both in philosophical and in practical terms; c) And identify the new alternative approaches, which could reconcile traditional principles, contemporary needs and the living future.

Furthermore, we have to develop our educational identity by tackling what we recognise to be our real problems. Identity is not a self-conscious thing; we find our identity by understanding ourselves, and our environment. Any attempt to undermine or shortcut this process – or to concoct – an identity, would be dangerous to us all. It would be manipulation; little more than mere gesturing.

A signal is quite distinct from a symbol, for it implies a reaction. If an architect, after travelling around the world, were to return to his origin, and attempt to reproduce there a glass building he saw in Boston, he would simply be transmitting signals. But if, on the other hand, he were to take the principles of architecture, and apply them to a completely different set of materials, customs, climate and traditions, he might put up a contemporary building which isn’t all glass but which is very relevant to its locale and identity.

Now that the built environment has become subjugated by a market system, and that commodity has become the goal and signifier of social life, it has become impossible to keep architectural education free of economic rationalisation.

Architectural education today finds itself having to function within boundaries of co-modification, relativity, and practical complexities as its defining precincts. This is a shame. For it to remain credible, architecture must return to its older, semi-independent and gallant model, whereby the architect was supposed to have a rounded education that allows him to be a master builder, artist and humanist.