Introduction. Why Anti-Disciplinarity?

This chapter argues that architectural education remains siloed despite the unique permissiveness of architecture – its ability to engage other fields of knowledge – as a discipline and practice. This is a paradox that the authors argue needs to be resolved. The isolation of architectural education from other disciplines is partly the result of institutional factors – how credits are allocated, and how the intensity of the studio system makes “minoring” in other subjects virtually impossible. It is also the result of the incursion of market forces into education: the requirement of bringing practice-ready graduates immediately into the service of a status quo. The chapter argues that this inertia is especially detrimental given the urgent local and planetary crises that architecture is uniquely positioned to address. These crises require an “anti-disciplinary” practice, which is defined as hybrid, trans-scalar approaches that properly embed design into the multiple contexts that inevitably produce it – and which design has an ethical responsibility to engage. Finally, the chapter describes the editorial framework of the book – contributors from around the world were asked to describe their anti-disciplinary pedagogical experiments – and summarizes each chapter.