The City as a School: An Urban Pedagogy

‘The City as a School’ describes an urban pedagogy, an approach to design teaching and research that leaves the exclusivity of the school as a space apart, and the safety of a discrete studio-based project behind, to immerse students and teachers in the contingent space of the city. It describes two exemplars of this urban pedagogy, developed at the University of Auckland; the Lab and the Event Studio. These exemplars explore the city as an assemblage, and inquiry as a performative form of pedagogy that embraces the uncertainty that such an understanding of the city-asassemblage brings forth. Four emerging ideas are explored: hybrid research forums, shared uncertainty, material politics and fragile democratisation. Borrowed from the field of urban studies—specifically from the work of Ignatio Farías and Anders Blok—these four ideas determine the dimensions in which urban pedagogy takes place. Considering design research teaching and learning as a kind of social labour set within these determined dimensions re-contours the subjectivity of teachers, students and communities as collaborators in design research projects and, we propose, prepares students for contemporary and future forms of expanded architectural practice