architecture  EDUCATION forum South Africa UIA2014

The Architectural Education Forum was the outcome of a Symposium on Architectural Education hosted by the Wits School of Architecture and Planning in early 2014 and is a grouping to critically discuss how to improve architectural educational practice here and now and to exchange relevant information. Its main focus is issues that are relevant to architectural education in Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, which includes global and regional concerns. Its membership consists mainly of teaching staff from schools of architecture from over Africa, but there has also been support and interest from other associations concerned with architectural education based on other continents.

The immediate aim was to enable architecture lecturers who attended the symposium to continue a constructive discussion on current research and practice generated by the challenges of teaching in a transformative way in changing circumstances in South Africa. The need for such a forum had already been expressed at a previous conference on “Changing Paradigms” in 2013 and the fact that many interested parties would be together in Durban for UIA seemed an excellent opportunity to continue the conversation.

The Forum started very informally as a list of people who wanted to be notified about the next discussion, but it has been growing steadily ever since. The AEF submitted a “parallel project” proposal to the congress which has blossomed into a full congress session entitled “Architectural Education Otherwhere – seen from the South” and congress has approached it to become a project partner for the education programme. AEF activities are presently being convened by Ariane Janse van Rensburg of the University of the Witwatersrand and Jolanda Morkel of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. For further information the contact e-mail is [email protected]