<commit_before><commit_msg>change location of post<commit_after>---
layout: post
title: Reviewing the design crit.
date: 2018-11-29
categories: Journal
tags: [Pedagogy, Psychology]
image: null
---

Last week I was a guest reviewer, alongside <NAME>, <NAME>, <NAME>, <NAME> and <NAME>, at the University of Western Sydney's first-year undergraduate design review chaired by <NAME>. It was an enjoyable day with some promising ideas and skills on display from the first year cohort, and the architecture faculty itself. As with nearly all reviews not all projects were as sophisticated or resolved as others, but all presented with a willingness to learn from the guest panel. My approach to reviewing is one of positivity, to engage with the ideas and attitudes on display, and to suggest alternative avenues and trajectories for future exploration. However, when no ideas or attitude towards architecture are evident in a project things get tricky, what do you do? I have experienced a range of design review (or crit) situations ranging from heated discussion and insults to job offers, across this spectrum an important relationship emerges, the intersubjective connection between the presenter and reviewer, one who is required to have extensive architectural knowledge and experience, and the other who is in the process of building up their own.

In last weeks review, I was particularly thinking about the psychology of students within the environment of a design review. Reviews are generally set up where the presenting student seeks approval from the person reviewing. Vocabulary such as "I like, I love, I think this is great", places the design reviewer into a hierarchy where they instil praise on the student within their frame of architectural experience. Academia is based on this hierarchy, involving sessional tutors all the way up to Dean, it produces a staging of elite output with increasing knowledge and experience at the top of the structure. As a result, it is easy to see that decisions in academia generally align with the hierarchy, to seek approval, and demonstrate an ability to perform at a raised status, there is a highly visible and established employment structure. Students don't necessarily witness this directly, but the design studio has this embedded into its culture, as the tutors seek the approval of unit coordinators, students seek equivalent approval from their tutors, which seeps into the design review.

I recently read the book "The courage to be disliked" by <NAME> and <NAME>, it teaches about the psychology of <NAME>, the lesser known contemporary of <NAME> and <NAME>. Adlerian psychology, as it has become known, promotes a way of thinking which does not allow past experiences, doubts or the expectations of others influence individual decisions. For Adler all problems are intersubjective problems meaning that personal goals and actions are driven through a comparison to others leading to feelings of inferiority. Adler argues that the desire for superiority produces emotionally or materially exploitative actions. While I am not saying that the design studio and design review instils a culture of inferiority and superiority there is always this tension when student decisions are based on praise. Adler promotes non-hierarchical interpersonal relationships through social systems of mutual interaction, leading to a greater sense of equality, a feeling of connection to a community and a greater willingness to contribute rather than consume.  

In the Freudian view inferiority from a perceived position within social hierarchies motivates personal action, this is the context of the design studio and review format. What if the requirement of the studio was to contribute and shape a curriculum, to help form a culture or community rather than consume a pedagogy; would an Adlerian way of thinking produce a more resilient and radical thinking from students keen to discuss their work rather than seek approval. As research into data-driven society increases and the public consciousness changes to one of radical difference rather than homogeneity then perhaps research into the mental health of student must consider the social contexts that their learning and personal performances take place.
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