In 1973 architectural students of the AA toured across the UK in the converted ‘AD/AA/Polyark’ bus, with the aim of encouraging dialogues among schools of architecture and between students and the world ‘out there’. Specifically at the AA, students of Brian Anson took part in the struggles for Covent Garden, and in Brussels, around the same time, architecture students at La Cambre developed counter-projects in support of the local urban struggle. This lecture looks at these encounters with the ‘real’ world to consider the opportunities and limitations of a socially responsible architectural pedagogy.
Isabelle Doucet is a senior lecturer in Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Manchester. Her research focuses on the relationship between politics, aesthetics, and social responsibility in architecture. She is the author of The Practice Turn in Architecture: Brussels after 1968 (Ashgate 2015) and co-editor of the volume Transdisciplinary Knowledge Production in Architecture and Urbanism (with Nel Janssens 2011). In 2016, she coedited a special issue dedicated to Architecture and Contestation for Candide Journal for Architectural Knowledge.
Image: The AD/AA/Polyark bus, 1973, near Bath, stuck in the mud. Copyright Peter Murray.