ARCHITECTURES / ARCHIVES 2: Practice/Pedagogy

India Whiteley Announcement
Subject Fields
Architecture and Architectural History, Archival Science, Art, Art History & Visual Studies

This year's Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (SAHGB) Annual Symposium will take the form of a series of 4 virtual symposia and seminars between July and October. Run in partnership between the SAHGB, Architectural Association (AA) Archives and Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Collections, we will explore the connections between architecture and archives. The relationship between the two provides a primary interface between architectural history and practice, but has been little explored by either discipline. In four sessions we will ask who is represented (and who is not) in architectural archives, what the role of these repositories is for practice and pedagogy, who they serve, and what their future looks like in the age of BIM and Post-Occupancy Evaluation. 

In this second session we delve into the symbiotic relationship between practice and pedagogy that lies at the heart of the architectural archive. Bringing together a distinguished panel of historians, archivists (from a range of settings, including contemporary architectural offices), designers and educators, we will question what the terms of ‘practice’ and ‘pedagogy’ signify within each field, analyzing how they operate and relate to each other.

Case studies and theoretical papers will address a broad array of topics, aiming to highlight areas of convergence, and perhaps of tension, between the disciplines. In an attempt to forge broad connections, discussions will range from speculative questions around methodologies used for archival appraisal, arrangement and description, to examples of ways in which teaching can ‘re-animate’ the archive, to studies of the very practical issues surrounding archival capture in the digital environment of the modern architectural office.

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