A Foucauldian look at the Design Jury

What I read

In this article, the author examines the power dynamic present in architecture juried critique. She examines the juried experience through a lens of Foucault’s writings and theories, and describes the results of an ethnographic study with architecture students; together, these point to a highly emotionally charged pedagogical approach to teaching and learning that may not actually be effective.

First, the author presents Foucault’s work focused on how knowledge and power have historically been intertwined. His early work identified the presence of these structures in a variety of contexts, and his later work on genealogies “attempted to uncover the ways in which modern institutions developed disciplinary practices to constitute, limit, and keep particular discourses in circulation through time.” He named these micro-technologies of power. He has been criticized as failing to provide knowledge around when this power has been rejected successfully. These ideas are the inspiration for the author’s paper—to explore how the architecture jury process “operated as a micro-technology of power” and how that power was negotiated.

Next, the author describes how architecture has been taught, with a focus on the emergent gatekeeping over the last 150 years. Education shifted from an apprenticeship “in office” form of learning to one in professional schools, and this growth and placement shifted some pedagogical approaches. One change was that classes were taught by educators instead of practicing architects; another is that projects were simulations and not real. While teaching approaches did not necessarily change, the structure of academia required a new “practice of examination” which was formalized in a design jury. This can be examined through a Foucault-style lens as well, in order to “disclose the effect of design jury practice, that is, what design jury practice did to those students who participated in it.”

The author describes her research approach, which leveraged observations of three juries, interviews with 27 students, discussions with nine critics, and reading and analyzing the university’s Jury Guide.

She then identifies the way juries are discussed by students. The folklore of a critique as being emotionally terrifying was discussed with mixed emotions, with some students describing it as a positive experience, but many also indicating ways that they compensated for such an extreme form of teaching. Next, the author describes the results of the ethnographic research, which first discussed the setting and then the actual experience. The setting provides a ritualized performance area, with a primary emphasis on the student in the spotlight and the jurors surrounding them. Prior to the jury event, students had typically worked all night and conducted poor personal habits, again described with fondness. Students were not taught how to behave in a jury, but had attended events with other students and had inherited the behaviors and knowledge of how the scenarios worked in practice.

Next, the author describes the actual dialogue that occurs during the critique. The jurors had assessment forms with “so-called objective” outcomes, but there were largely ignored by the jurors. The dialogue was supposed to be led by the style of the Jury Guide, but “the official aims failed to acknowledge the inherent complexities involved in talking about levels of objective achievement when the definition of what is and is not architecture is a contested concept both inside architectural schools and within the wider architectural community.” Aesthetic preferences were questioned and derided, and “harsh epithets” were commonly used. This resulted in distressing and emotionally charged reactions from students. However, some students benefited from constructive dialogue with the critics, because they were “able to align the presentation of themselves and their work with the paradigm of the atelier.”

The author concludes by describing the idea of a jury has changed. It used to be focused on representing a level of learning, but that has theoretically been replaced by feedback to support reflection. The space itself has, again theoreticlaly, evolved into “an open and notionally inclusive dialogical arena.” But these things have not had led to intended learning outcomes, and instead towards the development of tactics for surviving the study. She concludes that “the research exposed a considerable and worrying misalignment between the espoused design jury theory and the theory in practice.”

What I learned and what I think

I have not read Foucault, and I also haven’t read a strong thoughtful article about design education that is really grounded in a non-design set of discourse other than that of Dewey and Schon. This approach resonates a great deal, and should shape what I end up reading—if I haven’t read a seemingly unrelated source, I clearly won’t think to view designerly activities through that lens.

This lens fits on critique almost too perfectly. It is exactly as described: a formalized event that theoretically is intended to be educative and content-rich, and that ultimately plays out as diseducative but certainly performative-rich. Students who succeed in critique learn how to manage the event. It isn’t about educational growth or improvement of a concept; it’s about being charismatic and getting your way. That’s only bad if there is a mismatch between stated and actual value. If the students realize that learning to critique is about learning to manage and manipulate stakeholders—which is a real, fundamental part of being a practitioner—then instructors should explicitly teach that, and the approach should be viewed in that manner. If it’s claimed to be anything else, than it should be structured in a totally different way. As I reflect on my own experiences running critique and also teaching critique, I’m not sure I ever split those two things. I purposefully teach the manipulation part and make it clear that students should view presentations and critiques as manipulation, but I have always viewed it as content-substantive too, and I’m really starting to question that.

It’s almost impossible that a critique held at the end of the quarter has any real value at all except to be celebratory, and it’s really never positioned that way. Even having a question/answer period runs counter to that; if it’s a celebration, the students should present and then everyone gets drunk. I suppose if the goal really is for an end-of-quarter critique to have learning value, then it should focus only forward-facing; the thing that was made should only really be analyzed as a proposed way to do things differently in the future.

I don’t necessarily view the emotionally unsafe part of the learning experience as entirely bad, though, because it really is something that’s commonly found in industry—people are just shitty to each other, and that seems to crop up even more in the context of design, where you can hide behind the subjectivity of work to make obtuse comments like “it just isn’t working.” If students don’t get to practice feeling that way and responding to that type of response, then they won’t have the beginning of a pattern language for what to do in those circumstances. But like any part of education, it’s important for someone to know what they are about to experience, why they are experiencing it, have a chance to discuss what happened, and to have all of that happen in a context that’s at least initially trusting and supportive. That absolutely doesn’t happen with guest critiques.

On the other hand… having people look at your design work and respond to it really is incredibly effective for improving it, because even a terrible and ridiculous and poorly informed conversation about a made-object offers room for viewing things differently and then completely rejecting what was offered. This is particularly true when the conversation is from someone who knows what they are doing in design, and from someone who has no idea what they are doing in design—the latter being, somewhat by definition, a “user.” But we never ask a user “what do you think?” because it’s clearly a useless way to approach knowledge gathering. Instead, we watch people do things and ask them about it. The end of the quarter critique is a weird anomaly. If we reframe ongoing critique as that way of approaching things, we might have a student establish a “I’m going to watch you do things” type of experience with a professor, watch them do things, and then ask them questions about it.

If a student did that, I would be floored and love it. But I’ve never actually formalized that into a teaching approach. It might look like… a student is working through an interaction design problem. They show a flow, and set up a participatory-style use it and evolve it experience for me. I “use it” with my finger in a standard paper-prototyping way, and talk out loud. Then, they instruct me to redraw a screen with specific guidelines, and they ask me questions about what I did. And then we have a meta-discussion about what happened.

Come to think of it, that form of role-play is something I do all the time, and it works. It’s directly a Bob Fee method. But I’ve never formulated it into an approach.

This article, and this form of reflection, is all in line with the “question how we teach design” push I’m on. There are so many established structures of the studio that we take for granted, and many of them disappeared with online learning and bootcamps. It’s actually a pretty interesting way to compare what was removed and what, if anything, was lost. I should list the explicit modes of teaching I use, and I’m sure there are some papers about these, too.