Tactics for Collaboration Across and Within Disciplines

Abstract

While the architectural design process may be led by a figurehead architect, contemporary buildings are the result of vast teams of designers, engineers, and builders. They are furthermore influenced by social issues, local policy, and clients. Yet typical American architectural design pedagogy centers around design studios where students work individually on creative projects. This pedagogical style reinforces a fallacy of the genius architect, the heroic designer who designs and creates in a vacuum. This paper and presentation showcases a seminar designed specifically to subvert this paradigm and provide targeted collaboration skills and support to students as they work on inter- and intra-disciplinary teams on a creative project. Taught collaboratively between Northeastern University’s School of Architecture and New York University’s Tisch School of Dance, this course takes inspiration from historical collaborations between prominent experimental dancers and designers like Anna and Lawrence Halprin; Merce Cunningham, John Cage and a variety of designers; and others. During the first six weeks of the semester, architects and dancers prepare within their own disciplinary cohorts for collaboration. Architects learn from case studies in contemporary dance and set design; they learn hand drawing and sketching skills for quick ways of expressing their ideas; and finally they read, complete exercises from and discuss Collaborative Intelligence: Thinking with People Who Think Differently, by Dawna Markova and Angie McArthur. Dancers also read this book. Following this preparatory period, architecture students are paired based on skill areas, interests and working styles discovered through the workshop. Then, architect pairs and dancers exchange portfolios of work before meeting remotely for a “speed-dating” style zoom session after which they rank their preferred collaborators. Teams are thus formed and the long distance collaboration between architect pairs and dancers begins. Together, architect-dancer teams envision and prototype a public performance through remote collaboration. Students draw from the methods in Collaborative Intelligence to address conflicts. Through this process, architecture students experience at a small but real scale the architectural design and delivery process from conceptual development to project completion with a focus on building collaboration tactics.