edutopia
Utopia as Educational Practice in Architecture: New Methods for Envisioning Transformational Change
EDUTOPIA – Utopia as Educational Practice in Architecture: New Methods for Envisioning Transformational Change is a post-doctoral research project initiated and led by Jana Čulek and hosted at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Zagreb. The project is supervised by Prof. Mia Roth Čerina and developed in collaboration with the interdisciplinary research and teaching environment of the DeltaLab Centre for Urban Transition, Architecture and Urbanism of the University of Rijeka with Ida Križaj Leko, as well as the strategic planning office Urbanex, led by Ivana Katurić. Together, these three academic and professional partners provide a platform for developing and testing the project’s methods across architectural and interdisciplinary education and research, as well as spatial practice. The project is funded through the DIGIT Seal of Excellence under the Synergies Program by the Croatian Ministry of Science, Education, and Youth and the World Bank, and is set to run from July 2025 to January 2028.
About
Architecture as a Discipline for Transformational Change
Architecture has been recognized in numerous European and global policy documents as a field exerting a significant effect on our environment and can – in the years to come – either continue to be complicit in the climate crisis or lead in efforts to mitigate it. This importance has been especially recognized within the EU context through the development of the New European Bauhaus. While the engagement of the architectural discipline in addressing the most relevant socio-spatial issues of today is increasing, the focus is often geared towards developing sustainable building practices, either through the reuse of the existing building stock and materials; designing carbon neutral or carbon negative structures; or by designing smart buildings and cities which develop and integrate technologies aimed at optimizing various aspects of utilities consumption, infrastructure, and mobility. And while these goals are noteworthy, they only employ the engineering aspects of architecture, neglecting its more experimental, discursive, artistic, and interdisciplinary sides, and its potential for spatial and societal visioning, through imagining and proposing new futures for our (built) environment and its inhabitants – human or other. EDUTOPIA focuses exactly on this experimental and discursive – utopian – side of architecture, specifically through the framework of architectural education with the aim of teaching a new generation of spatial practitioners novel approaches for dealing with today’s complex condition.
Throughout centuries, utopian projects have offered some of the most innovative and thought-provoking solutions which often created a trigger for long-term transformational change. Instead of addressing only physical aspects of the built environment, they encompassed a wider array of socio-spatial topics using textual and visual narratives and can as such be valuable tools in addressing today’s global crises. Acknowledging the complexity ingrained in today’s society, as well as the negative connotations of producing totalizing narratives, novel ways of employing utopia as a critical method within spatial practice need to be researched and developed. Using narrative-based approaches which are developed through the utopian genre, together with a precise methodological structure, architecture as a discipline can engage more productively in conversations regarding our wider spatial, climatic, cultural, political, economic, and societal milieu, with the aim of fostering positive change which goes beyond simply modernizing the building industry. While establishing utopian approaches, tools, and methods as legitimate modi operandi is a long-term task for the architectural practice and academia, to assure their legitimacy, and long-term use, they need to become embedded in architectural education, research and practice. This will allow the architectural profession to comprehensively address a wider set of goals set by various EU and global policies, starting with one of the goals of the Health and Environment Research Agenda for Europe (HERA), namely that of developing “educational strategies and research designs” which would enable “the next generation of scientists, professionals and citizens” to successfully operate within our changing conditions.
Methodological Approach
The methodological approach of EDUTOPIA operates on two interconnected levels. Firstly, it investigates how utopian thinking can inform the pedagogical structure of architectural and spatial education by developing novel formats for the design studio that encourage experimentation, critical reflection, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Secondly, it develops concrete methods for teaching students to actively employ utopia as a critical and projective design method within their own spatial discipline. Rather than approach utopia as an idealized image of a distant future, the project understands it as a methodological framework through which students learn to speculate, narrate, draw, map, and critically observe and reimagine the socio-spatial conditions they encounter. The central question therefore becomes not one of designing an ideal future or city, but rather that of teaching the methods through which students and future spatial practitioners can construct narratives of possible futures that move beyond the obvious and probable, while actively and critically engaging with the conditions of the present.
Acknowledging that contemporary architectural and spatial education often oscillates between to complementary but frequently disconnected approaches – the development of practical design and technical skills and the the cultivation of research, critical thinking, and speculative inquiry, EDUTOPIA seeks to bridge this gap by combining imaginative and critical exploration with the development of situated and reality-based proposals through an interdisciplinary design process. Drawing on approaches based not only in architecture and other spatial disciplines, but borrowing also from other artistic and humanities fields, the project will focus on employing storytelling, speculative mapping, drawing, and narrative construction as as leading research and design methods rather that merely representational tools. In doing so, the students will be encouraged not only to investigate and propose possible futures, but also to question existing assumptions, construct complex systems of ideas, and engage with numerous actors and perspectives with the aim of producing scenarios that are both imaginative and critically grounded in contemporary socio-spatial realities.
research Objectives
The primary objective of the EDUTOPIA project is to equip future spatial practitioners with the tools and methods needed to address the complex socio-spatial challenges of today and tomorrow. This will be primarily achieved through addressing the gap between the discursive and practical aspects of architectural education and practice by developing and testing novel approaches and methods for the design studio. Building on the research developed in Utopia as a Critical Method (2023), the project investigates how storytelling, fiction, speculative design, and utopian thinking can become productive methods for critically examining our past and present and imagine alternative futures. Rather than treating these approaches as vehicles for producing impossible visions, EDUTOPIA explores their potential as practical and design tools for understanding contemporary conditions and developing meaningful spatial responses, activating through it the discursive side of the architectural discipline.
To achieve these objectives, the project will develop innovative methods for architectural and interdisciplinary design studios by combining insights form architecture, urbanism, literature, film, philosophy, and critical theory. These methods are aimed to encourage students to engage with environmental, social, cultural, political, and spatial questions and conditions through a holistic and intersectional perspective, enabling them to move beyond the design of objects and forms towards a broader process of engaging with our (un)built environment. The developed methods will be tested in architectural and interdisciplinary spatial education, as well as in spatial practice, while being continuously analyzed and refined. Both the developed methods and the outcomes of the design studios will be continuously shared through different dissemination channels in order to create a growing and accessible resource which can be further adapted and expanded by researches, educators, and practitioners.
Timeline
EDUTOPIA will unfold over a two-and-a-half-year period, progressing through a continuous cycle of developing, testing, refining, and disseminating new educational methods and findings. Throughout the project, the Faculty of Architecture in Zagreb will serve as the primary host institution, providing the setting for research activities and as the location of two design studios which will be held during consecutive winter semesters. The design studios will form the project’s central testing ground in which newly developed methods will be introduced, evaluated, and refined in collaboration with architectural students. Running alongside the main design studios at the Faculty of Architecture, the project will also include a secondment period with the DeltaLab Center for Urban Transition, Architecture, and Urbanism of the University of Rijeka. There the project will extend into an interdisciplinary research and education environment through the Urban Studies post-graduate specialist program. During the academic year 2025/2026, the developing methods will be adapted and tested with the program’s second generation of students, allowing the project to explore how utopian-based speculative and narrative approaches could operate beyond architectural education alone.
The last six months of the EDUTOPIA project will be dedicated to a non-academic placement at Urbanex, where the methods developed throughout the research will be translated into professional spatial practice and tested with ongoing strategic planning and urban-scale projects. Between these key phases, the project will focus on preparing new studio methods, analyzing the collected processes and outcomes, as well as on disseminating the research through exhibitions, publications, public presentations, the online repository, and social media channels. Together, the interconnected stages of the project will establish an iterative process in which each cycle will inform the next, continuously refining EDUTOPIA’s educational approach and strengthening its relevance across education, interdisciplinary research, and professional practice.