An Emerging Community-Engaged Paradigm in Architectural and Design Education

As contemporary cities evolve to become more heterogeneous, there is a growing demand for architectural educators to engage with their communities to address their varied needs of urban stakeholders. This paper will focus on two design research projects in the University of Hong Kong to illustrate how community-oriented architectural education can be advocated through an institutional catalyst in a tertiary educational system. In this context, the exchange of knowledge is defined by participation from professional institutions, private commercial groups, community stakeholders, and government departments to pursue a common design vision. Through a modified learning-/teaching-POOL Model, these case studies will give a nuanced view of how community engagement becomes an emerging architectural paradigm, challenging the original form of the one-way authoritative mode of knowledge reproduction. The paper will illustrate how such a multi-disciplinary approach can best position universities in addressing our complex contemporary social needs. It aims to fill the research gap in knowledge on the experiential aspects of inter-disciplinary collaboration as a new design education paradigm in the Asian context.