Talking, Drawing and Realizing together: Identifying elements of Desk Tutorials

Traditionally, architecture teaching is anchored in situations of tutoring within an architectural design studio, where students are developing individual projects at their desks. At the Danish schools of architecture, this is especially relevant since project-related work covers a large percentage of the 30 ECTS points required each semester. This unique pedagogical tradition is based on ‘reflection in action’ with regular feedback on the student’s design development. This article uncovers and identifies elements of desk tutorials and the impact they have on the teachings in architecture to students at both undergraduate and master level.

Tutoring involves a reflective practice and the integration and testing of abstract knowledge, which is a central part of the education of architects. However, since we as tutors often unfold our desk tutorials in one-to-one situations, we rarely question and discuss what a tutoring session actually consists of and how it unfolds, as this is often a tacit knowledge having been developed from years of experience in teaching, thus essential parts of this unique and also intimate situation remain less described.

This article presents a development project at Aarhus School of Architecture (DK) with a focus on studying desk tutorials. The project was based on fieldwork: on monitoring different tutoring sessions, analyzing and comparing them. Three different tutors that all have numerous years of experience, also from different schools of architecture, have been observed in their practice of tutoring.

Findings from our fieldwork include how tutoring is built around a basic structure of time with an introduction, deeper conservations and ending with a more or less open conclusion. Tutoring includes a complex array of different types of communication occurring as both improvisation and instruction, supported by different media such as sketching, modelling etc. and involves a comprehensive sensibility and timing towards individual students.