Revisiting the role of listening in online architectural design studio pedagogy

Online education during Covid-19 left most architectural design studios with two sensory realms: the visual and the auditory. Although the initial reaction focused on sharing and collaborating on the visual material, it was the auditory affordances of the remote design studio environment which designerly operations and communications relied on, and were even characterized by. Considering the significant change in the role of sound for the design studio, and the evolution of the notion of listening in the 21st century, the capacities of sound and listening in understanding, reimagining and space-making for architectural learning, as well as organizing the studio experience in virtual and physical environments remains understudied. This paper aims to launch a discussion on the role and potentials of listening in the evolving practices of remote architectural education, feeding from 21st century listening theories and practices. A threefold inquiry is performed: revisiting the role of sound in architectural education, reviewing contemporary discourses on listening, and discussing the pedagogical affordances of the new auditory environments in remote architectural education through the project series “Spaces of Sounds”, designed specifically to tackle with the altered relationship with space, sounds and architectural communications in the first-year online design studio. Borrowing from theorists, artists and scholars’ discourses on listening, the discussion will be reflected on the new methodologies and critical approaches in design studio pedagogy to make use of the capacities of new auditory experiences. Finally, the emancipatory potentials of listening will be discussed for architectural learning in the new generation architectural learning environments.