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This study investigates the transformation of the architect's role as portrayed in written texts by analyzing discursive practices concerning architectural education in Turkey between 1963 and 2000.

The research employs critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine selected texts published in the Mimarlık journal, representing the Chamber of Architects of Turkey. By embracing M. Bakhtin's “dialogism” approach, it aspires to foster new discussions on architectural education and establishes a “dialogical landscape” showcasing various voices and arguments. The research supplements its methodology by mapping the dialogical landscape, illustrating the relationality of discursive practices.

The paper contends that alterations in the missions, goals, and priorities of the architectural discipline significantly impact architectural education. Rather than focusing on individual perspectives, the creation of new dialogical platforms, emphasizing the interplay of diverse and conflicting viewpoints, offers more comprehensive pathways to guide the future of architectural education.

Debates and conflicts regarding the architect's role are central to architectural education. This article offers a novel perspective on the history of architectural education in Turkey by analyzing shifts in the definition and role of the architect as expressed in the Mimarlık journal. By integrating the principles of dialogism into the study of educational discourses and revealing the relationality between material-discursive practices, it aims to enrich the discourse and contribute value to critical studies on architectural education.

This paper aims to contribute to the pedagogical field of architectural education by conceptualizing autobiographical spatial narratives as possible radical resources and avenues for participation. It seeks to advance a critical approach to the dominant canon of course contents and hidden local dynamics of exclusion and discrimination in architectural education.

The methodology is based on conceptual and critical analyses of feminist, postcolonial and radical architectural pedagogies, relating those with broader feminist pedagogies that question exclusion and discrimination mechanisms from the perspective of the radicality of emotions. As a second step, three experiments intentionally designed in academic courses to open space for autobiographical spatial narratives are analysed to extend the theoretical discussion into the specific local dynamics of exclusion and discrimination that have largely been ignored to date in Turkey.

Different pedagogical approaches and self-experiments have revealed that autobiographical spatial narratives are a type of resource that accommodates students' diverse spatial experiences including forcible displacement. Sharing that multiplicity creates opportunities for participation in the classroom and studio where different individualities, backgrounds and identities are made visible. These potential resources and participation are open to emotions and affects, are collective and transformative and, therefore, are radical.

Although research on architectural pedagogies is still limited, the current literature is constantly being empowered by new studies from various geographies and localities. The present study may facilitate future comparative readings and further research on radical architectural pedagogies, particularly within the Global South, where complex local dynamics might share commonalities dominated by the Western canon. It may also open new discussions on discrimination and the exclusion of silenced individuals in architectural education in Turkey and elsewhere. In the scope of this paper, however, the practical experiences and observations based on two years in architectural education may be too limited for a comprehensive analysis of the applications of autobiographical spatial narratives.

This paper offers novel strategies for creating inclusive, intersectional and decolonized perspectives for knowledge production and more equal spaces in architectural education.

Although the design studio has formally been the locus for design education, informal education approach has gained more and more acceptance in the world. Informal education, which is the education outside the confines of curricula, includes the acquisition of knowledge and skills through experience, reading, social contact, etc. Workshops cover the essential weight of this informal education. Although the role of the design workshops in architectural design education has been very limited through overall design education’s past, many schools of architecture have taken steps to consider workshops as the part of informal learning and education.

“Culture and Space in the Build environment” (CSBE) Network of IAPS have been organizing “culture and design workshop series” for graduate and post graduate students in Turkey since 2001. In these workshops, a design teaching approach based on the conceptual framework of culture and space interactions is applied. The conceptual framework developed for the architectural design education, takes three fundamental starting points for workshops as the part of informal design education: as a tool for informal design education (method), as a tool for learning & understanding culture-environment relations (content), and as a tool for awareness of different environments/contexts (scale/place). The foundation of the conceptual framework is based on the general approach that discusses the “architectural design process” with regards to environmental context and content.

Within this context the aim of the paper is to discuss and evaluate the importance and the contribution of workshops as tool for informal architectural design education. These discussions will be held on the case of IAPS-CBSE Network’s last workshop “Istanbul as a Palimpsest City and Imperfection”. In the paper, the process, the method, the content and the results of workshop studies will be discussed and evaluated.