Research and the future of architecture educaton in East Africa

Abstract

Research in architecture education in East Africa has for the most part been presented in what can best be described as a “silo” approach, presented in a stand alone “Research Methodology” courses that are separate from perceived core of architecture, the design studio. Research was (and is) not regarded as part of architecture, thus having a separate life outside the ‘design process’. Architecture education in this context became the in the all too familiar situation in much of Africa, “the presentation, the transmission of packaged, or pre-digested, information – education as instruction administered to the ‘ignorant’ by experts” (Mills and Lipman, 1994: 214), and largely unchallenged by the receivers of the knowledge, and taken to be apolitical, thus universally relevant (Owolabi, 2007). For faculty in the [Named School] at [Named University], this approach was not judged to be the most appropriate for architecture education for future professionals.