The uniqueness of design and architecture education is that it provides 'experience' as the context and content for learning. But all through schooling, from the age of 3 till 18 or so our brain has been trained and developed for analyzing and storing readymade knowledge and to depend on authority for affirmations.
Naturally, we have neither the knowledge nor the system to deal with 'experience'. Since the foundation has many courses that give the students the opportunity
to be in experience helps them to make some amount of transition from authority dependent learning to self-initiated explorations. But it does not handle deeper aspects of authenticity, knowledge creation, etc and is still rooted in the Western knowledge system. Consequently, there is the homogenization of aesthetic sense
and just imitation of western cultural context.
So, there is a need to rethink the Design and Architectural program in general and the foundation in particular to address these issues and to resituate us totally
within our respective cultural contexts and within the realm of true experience.
The rethinking is being initiated based on the research on how children learn the real world and on how non-literate artisan communities create the artifacts with culturally rooted aesthetic sense.
So, experientially rooted knowledge creation and authentic aesthetic sensibility are the two fundamental factors that need to be addressed. And the steps would
​ begin with addressing the damages of schooling, breaking the cognitive habits, and other psychological factors. The second step would be to recover the cognitive system that is needed to create knowledge and have aesthetic sensibility as an integral element of knowledge creation.
The most important and difficult aspect of this change is that the faculty also will have to initiate their own transformation process and learn to be co-creators of knowledge along with their ‘students’. So, the program is to initiate our journey and invite students to co journey with us....
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