Throughout my academic career I have been a strong advocate of incorporating practice engagement and dissemination of practical experience into the curriculum and academic setting in the early stages of architectural education.
For this reason, I have organised and run practical workshops and tutorials alongside architectural and engineering practitioners for at least 15 years.

In my capacity as the head of architectural technology at the Mackintosh School of Architecture, I have introduced practical workshops at stages (years) 4 and 5 alongside the existing and very well perceived Co-Lab projects at stages 1, 2 and 3, which we have been running very successfully with the University of Glasgow School of Engineering for a very long time.

The new workshops at stages 4 and 5 have a main difference from the Co-Lab projects as they aim to bring varied practice engagement, expertise, and resolution to individual student projects rather than a common stage project. These workshops also have a particular focus on climate literacy and how it can be incorporated within the individual studio work and furthermore the students’ general knowledge and understanding of climate literacy.
The presentation will aim to explain the nuances of organising and running these workshops at the Mackintosh School or Architecture, from the students’ , practitioners’, and the academics’ side.

It will explain how we run the actual practical workshops, the logistics, student numbers, issues with student expectations and student participation, and dissemination of feedback. It will then look at the expectations and challenges from the invited practitioners who might have no teaching experience or a clear understanding of the students’ level variations and other variants.

Lastly, the presentation will consolidate the role of the academic, as a link and mediator between the student and practitioner, who manages not only the process and logistics of the actual workshops but rather oversees the progress of the individual projects, consolidates the feedback, and manages the intellectual enhancement of the cohort.