One to one to one: a triumvirate of interpersonal relationships in beginning architecture education

Abstract

This paper presents a critique of the implicit and explicit conceptions of one-to-one relationships in beginning architecture design education. Over the last two decades, higher education in the UK has undergone a period of profound structural change and marketization, manifested in the introduction of £9,000 fees and the lifting of the government cap on student recruitment. As new architecture courses are established and existing ones grow, the shift in focus from one-to-one design tutorials to group teaching has often been driven not by pedagogical imperatives but by economical and political efficiency. In light of this, our premise is that a successful contemporary studio needs to have three overlapping one-to-one relationships: the tutor-student relationship; the tutor-studio-group relationship; and the student-student relationship. We argue that a group project in and of itself is an insufficient means of prompting a studio group to act collectively and collaboratively. We argue that the historical one-to-one master-student relationship, while an important touchstone for architectural educators, is now secondary in importance to a triumvirate of more dynamic one-to-one relationships.