Studio design charrette with professional architects. Image courtesy of the Tyler School of Art and Architecture

On November 8th, the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University will host the Urban Workshop Symposium, the latest iteration of the Urban Workshop's engagements in community-based design and education. The event brings to the fore questions, conversations, and exemplars in how architectural education can engage with real-world stakeholders to the benefit of students and communities alike.

Breaking the silos of education and practice

Upon graduating, architecture students often lack real-world experience, leaving them underprepared for the complexities of practical, social, and environmental design. Without hands-on exposure, they may struggle to understand the impacts of their design decisions or develop problem-solving skills needed for issues like affordable housing and sustainable development.

The separation of education from real-world practice can hinder both graduates and employers, who must train students unaccustomed to applying their skills outside of the classroom. This delay impacts the benefit of education for clients, the public, and the environment as graduates acclimate to professional realities.

One solution is to involve students in social impact projects during their studies. By working on community-centered initiatives, students gain hands-on experience and learn to navigate real-world constraints and client needs.

In other words, students ‘learn by doing,’ gaining a people-centric perspective that benefits both their education and the communities they serve.

The Urban Workshop

At the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, located within Temple University, such an approach has been in operation for over two decades. Tyler’s initiative, aptly named the ‘Urban Workshop,’ is described by the school as an “interdisciplinary social impact design collaborative that engages underserved communities and mission-driven organizations in creating environments that are beautiful, just, and sustainable.” The university-based design center was formed in 2003 by the Architecture and Environmental Design faculty at Tyler, supported by grants from the Temple University Office of Research as well as external grants such as from the National Endowment for the Arts, the EPA, and the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

In the Urban Workshop, students work together with community partners to collaborate on addressing real-world issues and problems. Through participating, students experience both a framework for community-based learning and a wider model for ethically-driven professional practice. Meanwhile, real-world community partners are the beneficiary of architectural solutions, ranging from research to neighborhood space planning, buildings to landscapes, and pavilions to public art.

Previous outputs from the Urban Workshop include a collaboration with Variety, The Children’s Charity of the Delaware Valley, which ran between 2020 and 2023. Named the ‘Living/Learning Cabin,’ the prototype created what Tyler describes as “a nurturing enabling space for children and disabilities,” with cabins designed to convert from sleeping to classroom spaces to accommodate year-round educational programming as well as summer camps. The prototype developed by the Urban Workshop will serve as a blueprint for twelve to be built across the organization’s Montgomery County site.

Through participating, students experience both a framework for community-based learning and a wider model for ethically-driven professional practice. 

Elsewhere, 2019 saw the Urban Workshop collaborate with Triangle CDC, Thomas Jefferson University, and the Temple Small Business Development Center on a revitalization project targeting the Triangle CDC in Philadelphia. The so-called ‘Nicetown Neighborhood Revitalization’ sought to combat housing and job discrimination experienced by returned citizens. The outcome of the collaboration was a conceptual planning strategy and business plan for a mixed-use redevelopment, including social services, housing, and retail and educational opportunities. 

“Initiatives such as the Urban Workshop can be central to creating an ethic of citizenship in architectural design and planning education,” Urban Workshop Director Sally Harrison told Archinect. “An understanding of critical issues surrounding environmental justice is compounded when students have direct engagement with members of a community seeking to created new visions for deteriorated neighborhood space and place.”

“Through their research and design processes, faculty model skills not often found in traditional education,” Harrison added. “Students learn to listen acutely, to develop empathy, and to recognize deeper complexities when removed from the context of studio and classroom and immersed in the daily life of a real-world situation. Ultimately, community-engaged educational experiences can instill in students a broader definition of their agency in the place-making professions.”

Looking ahead

For organizers and partners, the Urban Workshop is as much about demonstrating a wider model for community-engaged design as it is for benefiting communities that work directly with the center. On November 8th, 2024, the center will hold an event at Tyler’s campus titled the Urban Workshop Symposium: Community-Engaged Design, Research and Pedagogy, in which members and community partners will share their work in architecture, planning, building, and scholarship. 

The event, open to students, faculty, staff, and guests from Temple University and the Philadelphia community, seeks to spur conversations about the future of community-engaged design. Moreover, organizers hope the event will open a conversation on design, research, and education at Tyler and Temple, addressing opportunities and challenges for initiatives such as the Urban Workshop in Philadelphia and beyond.

We will present current projects that are diverse in scale and outcome but share a common process that weaves together expertise in our various disciplines with the local knowledge and aspirations of our community partners. — Sally Harrison, Director, Urban Workshop

“The aim of the symposium is to build a conversation around opportunities and challenges in community engagement in design, research, and pedagogy,” Harrison told Archinect. “We will present current projects that are diverse in scale and outcome but share a common process that weaves together expertise in our various disciplines with the local knowledge and aspirations of our community partners.” 

“We hope to raise awareness of our work among our students and colleagues, to formalize our collective efforts within the university, and to expand our reach to communities seeking to build knowledge and vision for environments that are beautiful, healthy, and just,” Harrison added.

The symposium, and the wider Urban Workshop initiative, speak to an emphasis on collaboration that underpins a wider ethos at Tyler. In a recent edition of Archinect’s Deans List series, we spoke with Tyler’s Senior Associate Dean and Director of Architecture, Kate Wingert-Playdon, in which Playdon underscored Temple’s responsibility as a public urban university to engage with communities across the built environment.

“It’s not about ‘community-based practice’ per se but recognizing that there is knowledge in communities that makes things stronger,” Wingert-Playdon told us. “You’re always working in collaboration.” 

The Urban Workshop also presents a confluence of what Wingert-Playdon described as three topics that Tyler sees as crucial for the future of architectural education: climate change; culture, community, and social justice; and professional ethics and practice. As a professional practice-based program, initiatives that place students in real-world settings are therefore central to Tyler’s aim of building relationships across disciplines, contexts, and backgrounds.

“We have sought to identify the strengths and urgent needs in our three disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, and planning,” Wingert-Playdon noted. “One of the most important is the focus on 'thinking through making.' Thinking through making is really where the traditions of art and architecture align, and it is an essential piece of what we do.”