Rethinking Positions in Architectural Education, Research and Practice
Call for Papers and Concepts for the 2024 EAAE Conference in Münster
Earthrise 19681
„Oh my God! [...] There‘s the Earth coming up. Wow, that‘s pretty.”
Astronaut William Anders’s spontaneous enthusiastic reaction on December 24, 1968 during the Apollo 8 mission led to one of the most influential photographs ever taken.2 Showing the Earth as a beautiful, vulnerable and seemingly self-contained system from far beyond its boundaries inspired environmental movements around the globe.
While scientists and environmentalists raised the awareness of our planetary limitations, the Club of Rome report “Limits to Growth” being their most prominent statement, architectural practice and academia largely remained confined within the predominant image of architectural production of “less is more”.
In the course of history, human activity has become a factor that decisively influences living conditions on earth. It impacts the climate, biodiversity, geology and our ecosystem to such an extent that an international committee of geologists proposed the introduction of a new epoch in 2016: the Anthropocene.3 Considering that building activities are factually responsible for the majority of global carbon emissions and waste production, we need to respond to these current urgencies in kind: LESS IS MUST.
As architects and educators, we ask the question: How can architectural education stimulate this premise? The 2024 EAAE conference in Münster is intended to offer room for the critical examination and discussion of architectural education, its routines, ideals, targets, comprehensiveness and scale. The conference themes encompass educational fields and aspirations, such as programming, architectural and urban design, construction and visions of the future.
The Münster School of Architecture invites thinkers and makers from European universities, experts, practitioners and visionaries to present their perspectives. We are interested in how architectural education can foster the capability to create meaningful and relevant contributions to the future of the (built) environment.
Perhaps we are about to witness a new Earthrise moment that can inspire an abundance of ideas and concepts for architectural education, at this turning point in human history? What more can LESS offer?
WHAT IS LESS ?
To reintegrate human life in our ecosystems, three guiding strategies of sustainability exist, usually referred to in this order: efficiency, consistency and sufficiency.
The technological promise of efficiency strategies (e.g. energy-saving regulations) has shaped the debate on sustainability for quite some time. The concept of consistency offers a greater degree of integration and points towards a renewed relationship between humans and nature (closed cycles instead of externalization).
However, neither of these strategies for the integration of our lifestyles in the system of planet earth seems sufficient to achieve the goals we are necessitated to reach. Rebound effects demonstrate that pure (technological) optimization does not reduce the consumption of resources in the overall balance. The concept of sufficiency allows us to discuss the notion of LESS, of reduction as well as enrichment. The title of the 2024 EAAE conference proposes a productive succession of above mentioned three key strategies:
First, sufficiency is considered the point of departure for any kind of project that can address questions on actual needs. Subsequently, consistency has the potential to embed a project within its context of available resources. And finally, efficiency addresses the relationship between effort and result.
Mies van der Rohe is inseparably associated with the phrase “less is more”. At the beginning of the 20th century, the phrase aimed at minimalism in architecture and the removal of elements that were determined to be unnecessary in order to achieve a sense of elegance and clarity in design. Less was understood differently at the time in the sense of the liberation from ornamentation and became a paradigm for architectural design encompassing a pure and reduced aesthetic design vocabulary.
Especially in the field of architectural education, it became an axiomatic recipe for a period of pedagogic practice that prevails to this day – ignorant of the inclusive potential of architecture regarding the climate as a context, the availability of resources or integrated thermal comfort.4 This modernist notion of „less“ needs to be redefined in the light of current challenges.
The EAAE 2024 call LESS IS MUST
In 2021 at the 1st deans’ summit of the European Association for Architectural Education (EAAE),“The Oslo Pledge” was proposed, determining the climate crisis as the by far most crucial framing of academic responsibility in the fields of architecture and planning. Furthermore, the Pledge expands the scope beyond spatial parameters by including ethical values, such as diversity and equality.
The call for LESS IS MUST is also the main premise for the innovation of architectural education today. It addresses the inherent capability of architectural design and design thinking to pave the way by considering integrated parameters and multiple strategies. Architectural methods such as mapping, drawing or model building are not only means to develop a beautiful design, but also powerful tools for understanding sites, societies and systems. Architectural thinking and practice are able to manifest visions and imagine futures for (currently unknown) protagonists. It means conceiving and acting, finding and founding and a manner of exploring, instead of exploiting resources without reflection.
The call is an encouragement for experimenting, for a change of mind and heart, as well as getting involved with the changing face of a profession, in order to cope with major endeavours of transformation. This can allow architectural education to be able to incorporate transformative literacy, critical understanding and political awareness in order to create not only spaces, but also environments and patterns of life for our future.
LESS IS MUST aims at a holistic understanding of reduction and concentration. By focusing on essential elements and building components, architects can create designs that demonstrate consciousness towards climate and resources, sensitivity towards materials and circularity, cost effectiveness without neglecting grace, elegance and beauty. LESS IS MUST encourages architectural students and educators to carefully consider every element and detail, ensuring that each contributes meaningfully to the overall design, while critically deliberating on what may detract from its quality. Integrated approaches can enhance the sensitivity of building with and not against nature, and discuss changes in the procedural implementation of planning concepts. By contouring urgent questions before uttering wrong answers, we recall successful methods from the medical world, such as healing with anamnesis, diagnosis and therapy. With an adapted logical workflow in future architectural education, by raising awareness of the responsibility of architectural creation and its effects on the global scale of the earth, we can gain an understanding that allows us to care for the beauty of the Earthrise and its relevance to our natural assets and livelihoods.
7 PANELS: Challenges affecting the future of architectural education
The panels deal with questions on specific topics as well as their relevance to education. These topics are roughly related to departmental expertise and scales of architectural teaching. Education as the central cross-sectional subject of the conference is an important focus of all panels.
See detailed information at Panels.
PROGRAMMING
LESS form, more performance
Holistic programming of climate responsive architectureDESIGN
LESS new, more preservation
Ideational and typological rethinking of existing buildingsSTRUCTURE and CONSTRUCTION
LESS in structure
Efficiencies in construction, technology and economyRESSOURCES and CIRCULARITY
LESS waste
Circularity and urban miningURBAN DESIGN
LESS is happiness
Sufficiency and good life in urban designEDUCATION CONCEPTS
LESS routine, breaking new ground
New concepts in architectural educationVISIONS
LESS utopia
Architectural visions and future demands (student workshop)
Conference presentations
The conference intends to offer a lively forum for debate and exchange, with valuable insights into future architectural education. Presentations and discussions will be organized in seven panels. Each panel will have at least two moderators, one from MSA Münster and one from the EAAE. Presenters have the opportunity to submit papers. The tandem partners, with academic support of EAAE network experts, will organize and coordinate a peer review of the submitted papers. Accepted authors will have the opportunity to briefly present their conclusions during the conference.
The applicants select one of the seven related topics. The authors of accepted papers will agree to present their conclusions at the conference in a short introduction in the manner of a project announcement for potential students. In addition, applicants will agree to the right of use of delivered contents in the framework of the conference and related documentation. The conference organisers reserve the right to withhold a paper from the program if the author fails to comply with the specified guidelines, including deadlines and submission requests.
Further information about the submission of papers are here.
- 1 „Earthrise“ https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/earthrise-3/ (download on 31/01/2024, Image: Nasa)
- 2 Jennifer Levasseur, space history curator at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC https://www.newscientist.com/artic- le/0-how-the-stunning-earthrise-became-the-worlds-most-famous-photograph/ (download on 31/01/2024)
- 3 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aad2622 (downloaded on 31/01/2024)
- 4 cf. Reyner Banham. Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1969