A Few People, a Brief Moment in Time: Architectural Education Experiments 1987-91

This essay draws together an account of pedagogic experiments in architectural education that took place at the Polytechnic of the South Bank School of Architecture, Postgraduate Diploma (RIBA Part 2) between 1987 and 1991. Revisiting this period of holacratic autonomy and student-led collaborative education, the essay aims to shed some light on the value of manifesting transformative creative educational models in the contemporary context of design education. Charting an extraordinary period of student agency, the work considers how the notion of social and individual political resistance, manifested as creative action, can inform a transformative and liberating feminist methodology. Thirty years after these events, amidst the march of the privatisation and commodification of architectural education, the increasing homogenisation of a skills-based, profession-led curriculum, may be a moment to reconsider the potential embedded in an alternative, rebellious, feminist design studio and practice.