Microteaching

Object: Chair

^{Microteaching session – Group 1 – 3/02/2025}

I started the activity by explaining that I don’t use object-based learning in my course (BA Architecture), but that when I taught Design and Architecture Foundation, we used a series of activities based around objects. One of these activities consisted of a 5 weeklong brief where students created an object and then ‘questioned’ the object created.

The objects resulted from specific movements or activities involving 2 or 3 students (human bodies), and came to be through the materialisation of a “space in between” their bodies. Students used a variety of techniques and materials to produce this sculptural pieces/objects, and then went through a process of ‘questioning’ the object through practical action – changing the circumstances and/or conditions of interaction surrounding the object.

^{Design and Architecture foundation (2019)}

In the impossibility of undertaking the whole activity, I chose an object which derivates from the ‘space in between’ the human body, and that I could bring to the teaching room. I chose a chair, placed it on a table and I invited the participants to ‘question’ the chair by putting it out of context.

Participants started to talk about the chair and the fact that it was elevated on a table which already caused a shift of hierarchy. I agreed but asked my question again in a slight different way: How could the object be put in a different scenario, in relation to a different condition or circumstance?

One participant said he had a ‘story with chairs’ and told about his personal experience in drama class, when chairs where used to represent a plane crash debris and destruction (also as broken body extensions), which was a great start. But the next participant went back to discussing the ‘dominant’ state/understanding of chairs, talking about how emotions can be expressed through interactions with a chair while seating: leaning back, rock, screeching. Or how chairs were assembled to be uncomfortable in a specific project to challenge the conceptualisation of chair – uncomfortable chair as a prompt to start a conversation and challenge existing preconceptions.

With the objective of redirecting the conversation I gave a practical example of a chair being used as goal posts (kids playing football) when the circumstances around the object and therefore their significance of space/object changes, and explain that the understanding of conditions and circumstances as defining elements of a building (context) is crucial in architecture education – architecture as a contextual response. At this point I showed 2 archaeological artefacts in plastic bags and talked about the fact that they are meaningless without context. By themselves, these pieces of flint have no archeological significance.

Participants commented on the way stones were presented/framed in a particular way, which again (like the chair on the table) changes the perception. And questioned the relationship between history and objects and potential bias (male perspective on/interpretation of historical objects).

Audience feedback

P: Questioned how would you work with students, bigger groups, to propose such an activity/conversation?

F: The activity was structure through workshops and group-work with conversations and feedback happening between the groups and with the tutors with directly and timely feedback on the action / discussing being taken.

P: Wondered if the fact that the students of the Foundation course created/built their object gave them the entitlement to then question/deconstruct it? Common sense aspect of a chair makes the deconstruction more difficult, it is a loaded object, as opposed to students making their own objects.

F: Yes, it’s difficult to ‘break the common sense’, to see beyond the dominant state of spaces and objects, to see the possibilities which are yet not there, hence the importance of the activity to encourage this.

P: It would’ve been easier if you had given us some kind of parameter to start with. When you gave us the practical example of the ‘chair as goal posts’ I understood what you meant by questioning.

Reflection

Indeed, a chair is a very ‘loaded object’ (too much history and meaning) and therefore a very difficult object to deconstruct/question. Perhaps the session would have been more effective if I had asked the participants to play with the chair, and physically change the relationship body-chair as a starting point. Turning the chair upside down, for example, would immediately break with the ‘dominant state’ or ‘meaning’ of the object, turning it into a structure with legs spiking up instead of a structure for seating.

It was also interesting to feel the frustration of one of the participants who said I should have given parameters or examples to start with, because I actively avoid doing that in my teaching practice.

The amount of time I give students to figure things out varies according to the brief or task. But it is in this initial space, which I agree can be uncomfortable, that students must connect to their gut’s instincts and come up with a first response, even (or specially) if they don’t fully understand what is being asked. It is always in this first movement of reciprocity that I encounter the diverse and unique starting points for each student or group.

During Leslie Raven’s lecture Reflective Practice, Leslie started by giving the participants a task, to map our understanding of reflective practice, emphasizing that there was not right or wrong, and that she would not give us prompts or parameters. The prompts came after we all felt quite uncomfortable, but had the opportunity to put down a word or drawing on paper. The prompts came few minutes later in the format of questions not examples. At some point in this first part of the lecture, Lesley explained that it is in this uncomfortable space, when we have to connect to our gut’s instincts, that a deeper level of metacognitive experience happens.