The studio as a place to be wrong cheaply: reflection-in-action and the critique

A design studio is not a room with drawing boards. The arrangement the word names puts judgement beside the work while it can still change. Work kept in private is judged late, once the drawings are finished or the code is written. The thesis of this unit is that the studio's advantage lies in that timing. It does not lie in the quality of what the studio produces.

The usual defence of the studio is a claim about quality: that better designers come out of it. The interpretation behind the timing claim is Donald Schon's. Later studies examine the instrument he pointed at without testing his conclusion, and find not a smooth coaching conversation but an exchange in which the practitioner-teacher supplies most of the talk (Goldschmidt, Hochman and Dafni, 2010). The design knowledge that changes hands stays largely tacit (Uluoglu, 2000). This is the first of ten units; it hands unit two what such a studio is given, a brief that has to be constructed.

Schon's account rests on cases, not tests

Schon (1983) named the mechanism reflection-in-action. A competent practitioner, he argued, knows more than they can state, and that knowledge shows in the adjustments they make while acting: the practitioner acts, the situation answers back unpredictably, and the next act is adjusted. He drew the account from cases and interviews across five professions, architecture among them.

The architectural studio became his clearest instance (Schon, 1983, 1984). In his record of one desk review, a student named Petra is stuck on a school for a sloping site. Her classrooms will not sit on the ground, and she cannot say what to change. The studio master, Quist, lays tracing paper over her drawing and draws as he talks. He does not correct the classrooms. He reframes the problem, and he imposes a geometry of his own on what he calls the screwy site. The gallery that Petra had treated as a way through becomes the element that orders the rest. Petra leaves with a problem she can test rather than a drawing to defend. The correction arrived while the drawing was still provisional, which is the timing claimed above. Schon later turned the observation into a teaching design (Schon, 1987), the practicum. In the practicum the coach demonstrates reflection while the student is still acting, instead of marking finished work.

Schon warns that a master's speed may hide the reasoning behind it.

The critique teaches talk at least as much as it improves work

Four studies examine the critique, and the first concerns who speaks. Goldschmidt, Hochman and Dafni (2010) recorded three desk critiques in second-year architecture studios. They coded every statement by the pedagogical work it did. The three teachers differed in what their talk was for. Design teachers, they note, are practitioners with no pedagogical training. A critique's quality therefore depends on experience, awareness and talent.

The second concerns what is transmitted. Uluoglu (2000) analysed recorded critiques. She argued that design knowledge carries general and personal attributes at once, and that a critique's value lies in the personal and tacit rather than in transmissible rules. She reports that the second-year studio's weakness lay there, in relating the abstract to the concrete and thinking to doing. She then describes the tools she introduced to tie conceptual work to concrete cases. If the most valuable part of a critique will not generalise, a critique is hard to teach and hard to scale.

The third concerns what is really taught. Dannels (2005) analysed the critique's language through genre theory. She found four oral genres, distinguished by visual and spatial elements and by audience feedback, within which particular skills mark success. Her conclusion is uncomfortable here: the critique teaches students to talk about their work at least as much as to improve it.

The fourth offers the constructive reading. Oh, Ishizaki, Gross and Do (2013) reviewed published work on critiquing in architecture studios. They separated the factors that shape it into the subject, the level and the means. A critique is then well or badly matched to the stage the work has reached. That turns a ritual into a decision the studio can specify. The critique also has a public form. Anthony (1991) argues that the design jury's adversarial format often fails as teaching, because it judges the outcome while the reasoning that produced it stays hidden.

Design knowledge sits in objects, not propositions

Cross (1982) argues that design is a third area of education beside science and the humanities, with its own ways of knowing: designers tackle ill-defined problems in a solution-focused and constructive mode, using non-verbal codes that translate abstract requirements into concrete objects. He builds the case by contrast with the sciences rather than from studies of designers, so the warrant is an argument and not a result. If design knowledge lives partly in codes and objects, a curriculum of propositions cannot transmit it. Lawson (2005) supplies the practitioner's version: design is a negotiation between problem and solution, in which the designer's own knowledge shapes what they can see, so a designer finds problems as well as solves them.

A studio teaches through participation, and reproduces what it practises

Lave and Wenger (1991) explain why a studio can teach without a formal curriculum: learning, on their account, is participation in a community of practice, in which newcomers move from the periphery towards the centre by doing real work alongside those who already do it. Their five cases are apprenticeships, from Yucatec midwives and Vai and Gola tailors to naval quartermasters and Alcoholics Anonymous, and they note that the midwives and the quartermasters do not learn in a master-apprentice relation at all, since a newcomer is subordinate, learner and the one answerable for some small part of the work all at once. A studio whose every judgement comes from one tutor is not the arrangement the model describes. They argue the model generalises, so a studio is an instance of it, not their case. The account is also a warning: learners take on what the community practises, including its exclusions. Who is admitted decides what is practised, so a critique that rewards quick spoken English, or a studio a wheelchair cannot enter, carries its exclusions with its method.

Contested question: does the studio teach judgement, or select for it?

The literature divides. Schon (1983, 1984, 1987) and Crowther (2013) hold that the studio teaches a transferable reflective skill, because the timing of judgement makes the skill teachable, and Crowther's economic objection, that the method consumes contact time and resists scaling, is not a denial that it works. Webster (2008) and Dannels (2005) hold that what the studio transmits is a social discipline: Webster argues that architectural education leaned on reflection-in-action as a justification while the studio reproduced the master-apprentice relation uncritically, and Dannels supports her, since the skills that mark success in the critique's genres are social as much as technical.

Three studies would settle it. The first is a matched comparison of studio and non-studio teaching of the same task. The work would be judged blind, and revision would be measured where the critique happens. The thesis is a claim about when revision occurs. The second is an experiment on critiques matched and unmatched to the stage of the work, which tests the prediction of Oh, Ishizaki, Gross and Do (2013). The third is a longitudinal trace of who stays and who is judged to succeed. Only that trace separates teaching from selection. None of the three exists in the literature this unit rests on.

A narrower disagreement sits inside the first position. Goldschmidt, Hochman and Dafni (2010) treat the variability of the critique as untrained practice, so the remedy is to train the critic. Oh and colleagues treat it as a problem of matching, so the remedy is to choose the critique to fit the stage. What would separate them is whether training a critic changes the outcome of a critique at all.

The two sides rest on evidence of unequal kind. Schon's case is interviews and desk records from five professions, so it shows a move is possible, not how often it happens, and Crowther, Webster and Dannels reason from economics, history and observation, so none separates teaching from selection. The strongest objection is that the timing claim cannot outrun that gap: if a studio admits students who already revise readily, early judgement records a trait rather than teaching one. While the dispute is open, a designer states what a critique is for, and records what changed after it.

Where the argument is heading

Webster (2008) and Crowther (2013) point the same way. The studio's justification has to become an account of what the critique does, rather than an appeal to what the studio is. Crowther identifies technology as where the method's dependence on contact time and its resistance to scaling might be answered. He asks which parts could be extended and which substituted. Oh, Ishizaki, Gross and Do (2013) supply the shape such an account would take, since subject, level and means are the variables a specification would have to name. The test is not whether the studio survives. The test is whether anyone can state, in evidence rather than in tribute, when judgement should be moved.

The sources this unit rests on

• Anthony, K. H. (1991). Design Juries on Trial: The Renaissance of the Design Studio. Van Nostrand Reinhold. https://archive.org/details/designjuriesontr0000anth Anthony examines the architectural design jury and argues that its adversarial form often fails as teaching, because it judges the outcome while the reasoning that produced it stays hidden. She proposes alternatives that make the judgement explicit.
• Cross, N. (1982). Designerly ways of knowing. Design Studies, 3(4), 221-227. doi:10.1016/0142-694X(82)90040-0 Cross argues that design is a third area of education beside science and the humanities, and that designers tackle ill-defined problems in a solution-focused and constructive mode using non-verbal codes. He builds the case by contrast with the sciences, not from studies of designers.
• Crowther, P. (2013). Understanding the signature pedagogy of the design studio and the opportunities for its technological enhancement. Journal of Learning Design, 6(3). doi:10.5204/jld.v6i3.155 Crowther analyses the studio as the signature pedagogy of design education and names both its strengths and its shortcomings, including a dependence on contact time and a difficulty in scaling. He argues that technology could extend or substitute for parts of the studio.
• Dannels, D. P. (2005). Performing tribal rituals: a genre analysis of crits in design studios. Communication Education, 54(2), 136-160. doi:10.1080/03634520500213165 Dannels observed and interviewed in design studios over a year and found four oral genres, defined by visual and spatial elements and by audience feedback, within which particular skills mark success. She argues that the critique teaches students how to talk about their work as much as how to improve it.
• Goldschmidt, G., Hochman, H. and Dafni, I. (2010). The design studio crit: teacher-student communication. AI EDAM, 24(3), 285-302. doi:10.1017/S089006041000020X The authors coded verbalisations and built linkographs from three desk critiques in second-year architecture studios and found that the teacher dominated the talk. They note that design teachers are practitioners without pedagogical training, and offer their method as feedback for a missing pedagogical basis.
• Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511815355 Lave and Wenger argue that learning is participation in a community of practice, in which newcomers move from the periphery towards the centre by doing real work alongside old-timers, and they draw the model from five apprenticeships rather than from design. They argue it generalises, which is why a studio can be read through it.
• Lawson, B. (2005). How Designers Think: The Design Process Demystified. Architectural Press. doi:10.4324/9780080454979 Lawson describes design as a negotiation between problem and solution in which the designer's own knowledge shapes what they can see, and argues that design problems are found as well as solved. He draws on practice examples, not controlled studies.
• Oh, Y., Ishizaki, S., Gross, M. D. and Do, E. Y. L. (2013). A theoretical framework of design critiquing in architecture studios. Design Studies, 34(3), 302-325. doi:10.1016/j.destud.2012.08.004 Oh and colleagues reviewed published work on studio critiquing and separated the factors that shape it into the subject, the level and the means of the critique. They argue that a critique works when it is matched to the stage the work has reached.
• Schon, D. A. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Basic Books. https://archive.org/details/reflectivepracti0000scho Schon argues that competent practitioners know more than they can state and that the knowledge shows in the adjustments they make while acting, and he names the exchange of action and the situation's reply reflection-in-action. He reasons from cases and interviews across five professions, architecture among them.
• Schon, D. A. (1984). The architectural studio as an exemplar of education for reflection-in-action. Journal of Architectural Education, 38(1), 2-9. doi:10.1080/10464883.1984.10758345 This paper uses the architectural studio as the case in which reflection-in-action is most visible, describing a master who reframes a student's problem on tracing paper rather than correcting her drawing. It fixes the studio, not the lecture, as the site where reflective practice is taught.
• Schon, D. A. (1987). Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions. Jossey-Bass. https://archive.org/details/educatingreflect0000schn Schon describes the studio as a setting in which the coach demonstrates reflection while the student is still acting, and proposes the practicum as the design for professional education. Like the earlier books it reasons from cases, so it supports the possibility of the move and not its frequency.
• Uluoglu, B. (2000). Design knowledge communicated in studio critiques. Design Studies, 21(1), 33-58. doi:10.1016/S0142-694X(99)00002-2 Uluoglu analysed recorded studio critiques and argued that design knowledge carries general and personal attributes at once, and that a critique's value lies in the personal and tacit rather than in transmissible rules. She reports that relating the abstract to the concrete was the weakest part of the studio she studied.
• Webster, H. (2008). Architectural education after Schon: cracks, blurs, boundaries and beyond. Journal for Education in the Built Environment, 3(2), 63-74. doi:10.11120/jebe.2008.03020063 Webster reviews how architectural education has used Schon's framework since 1983 and argues that the profession leaned on reflection-in-action as a justification while the studio reproduced the master-apprentice relation uncritically. She calls for a more critical reading of reflection and of the studio's power relations.