Growing Rhizomes and Collapsing Walls: Postmodern Paradigms for Design Education

A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo. The tree is filiation, but the rhizome is alliance, uniquely alliance. The tree imposes the verb ìto be,î but the fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction, ëand . . . and . . . and . . .- Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.

The system and structure of architectural education is a resultant of two sets of forces. On one side, we have the inherent characteristics and peculiarities of architectural profession that drive its academic component and remain the same at any given point of time. I will call these factors intrinsic factors. On the other side, we have numerous contextual and environmental (cultural, technological, sociopolitical) factors whose essence is change. I will call these the extrinsic factors. Technology, and in particular digital technology, is one of those extrinsic factors that I will specifically address in this paper. My effort here is to bring a theoretical basis to understand how digital technology impacts the organization, transmission, dissemination and composition of knowledge that could in turn affect architectural education. My proposition in this paper, which is based on Deleuze and Guattariís notions of rhizome and Jean-FranÁois Lyotardís ideas on postmodern pedagogy, is for a curricular direction that opens the walls of the schools of architecture and particularly the design studios. I call for a move toward ìwall-less studiosî that fuel a ìrhizomatic pedagogy.îThe present educational model that most of the architectural curricula follow is a deeply territorial one. By territorial, I mean a fortified and fiercely guarded terrain. We imagine that the student would enter the walls of the institution and would go through a strict regimen of courses, exercises and simulations of ìoutside world.î In addition, the student would go through a series of steps that are clearly numbered, defined, graded, sequenced and hierarchically organized. At the end of the curriculum, the student is released from the bounds of the walls of the institution into the so-called ìreal world.î This delimitation and distancing while being useful and necessary to a certain extent have become religiously secured fortifications. As Jean-FranÁois Lyotard wrote, ìif education must not only provide for the reproduction of skills, but also for their progress, then it follows that the transmission of knowledge should not be limited to the transmission of information, but should include training in all of the procedures that can increase oneís ability to connect the fields jealously guarded from one another by the traditional organization of knowledge.î1 -(SENAGALA, 1998)

SENAGALA, M. (1998). [online] Mahesh.org. Available at: http://www.mahesh.org/articles/rhizomaticstudios.pdf [Accessed 17 Feb. 2020].