Reinterpreting Architectural Education: Exploring Methods for Incorporating Sustainability Themes

This paper explores prospective means of incorporating sustainability and green building themes into formal architectural education. By unpacking and understanding the most common and perceived successful methods of including these themes in curriculum, suggestions can be made to steer and capitalize on the effective integration of sustainability and green building topics within the framework of architectural education. Grounded theory methodology focuses on the generation or discovery of a theory to develop a framework for further research in a field where no strong, generally accepted theories exist (Strauss and Corbin 1998; Creswell 2007). The topic of integrating sustainability into formal architectural education is a prime candidate for this type of exploration, as it is a field of great interest, but without a substantial theory. Referencing constructivist grounded theory, this study was framed in how individual faculty members and their groups of peers interact to create their perceived social constructs, thereby establishing a reality of their own processes and the familiarity of colleagues’ processes. Through purposeful sampling, a list of potential participants included eighteen faculty members from different architecture programs around North America. Twelve were interviewed before theoretical saturation was reached. The datasets were analyzed through an iterative coding process, and resulted in themed categories and clustered data addressing the primary topic of interest and other sub-research questions. Core categories of Student Engagement and Repositioning the Worldview emerge from exploring relationships within the gathered data. It is perceived by study participants that the most promising opportunities for leverage in this arena include establishing frameworks for student reference, defining levels of context for projects, addressing differences in sustainability terms, engaging studio courses, and integrating themes across support courses.

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