THE COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE: TEACHING PEDAGOGY IN THE ARCHITECTURE FOUNDATION DESIGN LAB

Abstract

The Foundation Design Lab in School of Architecture + Design at Virginia Tech plays a very important role in helping students to become a member of the architecture professional. The foundation design lab is more than a classroom. It is a learning community made up of faculty and students. Student learning is influenced by many of opportunities and challenges in this community. This results in students from different cultural backgrounds and identities becoming independent and creative designers. Due to their positions as educators the authors have the opportunity for a direct and close relationship with the members of this community and the way in which they interact. Thus, the authors were able to observe how learning occurs and how the members learn from their environment, interactions, and experiences to establish their own identity and make them ready for the profession. This study draws upon qualitative research approaches by employing observation of the respective foundation lab over a semester as well as interviews with instructors and students. In addition, the paper written by a former dean of architecture at Virginia Tech, Charles Burchard, is used as an additional source to trace the development of the foundation design pedagogy over the past 5 decades. The collected data was analyzed based on the four aspects of Wenger's (1998) theory of community of practice (CoP): identity, meaning, practicing and community. The results indicate that functioning, as a community is critical to learning how to be professional architects.

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