Heuristic Pedagogy & Dramatic Discovery
November 6th, 2021
Lisa Landrum & Tracey Eve Winton
“Eureka! - I found it!” This famous exclamation of Archimedes as he discovered the law of buoyancy in a bathtub captures the joy of embodied knowledge and heuristic experience. How can dramatic arts infuse architectural pedagogy with Eureka potential, while fostering creative collaboration and ethical imagination? This dialogue among architectural educators reflects on recent theatrical experiments and dramatic approaches to design education.
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Lisa Landrum
Lisa Landrum is an educator, architect, scholar and creative researcher dedicated to advancing social justice, cultural meaning and mythopoetic imagination. She is Associate Dean Research and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Manitoba. Dr. Landrum earned a professional B.Arch. from Carleton University, and an M.Arch (post-professional) and Ph.D. in Architectural History and Theory from McGill University, where she worked with Dr. Alberto Pérez-Gómez. She is a registered architect in Manitoba and New York State, an executive member of Building Equality in Architecture (BEA) Prairies, and a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.
Her scholarship on architecture’s bonds with drama, democracy and philosophy is widely published, including chapters in several books: Reading Architecture (2019), Confabulations: Storytelling in Architecture (2017), Chora 7 (2016), Architecture’s Appeal (2015), Architecture as a Performing Art (2013), and Architecture and Justice (2013). She co-edited Narrating the City (2021), and is currently co-editing a book entitled Theatres of Architectural Imagination.
Theatrical imagination has animated her architectural research for 20 years – ever since participating in a drama workshop in 2001, while practicing as an architect in New York City. That workshop at the New School for Social Research was led by John Murphy, who trained with l’Ecole Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq and performed with the Swiss theatre company Mummenshanz. During her doctoral research on the roots of architectural agency in Greek drama, Lisa participated in acting classes with Complicité in London, Omnibus Théâtre Corporel in Montréal, and a Corporeal Mime Workshop with Thomas Leabhart in Paris. Since 1997, Lisa has collaborated with her partner Ted Landrum, creating group costumes, installations and events enacting the ‘body politic.’ This work has been exhibited at many venues, including the Confabulations Symposium (Alexandria VA), Winnipeg’s A2G Gallery, New York City’s Halloween Parade and Storefront for Art and Architecture, Strauss Gallery at Dartmouth College, and the Urbanism/Architecture Bi-City Biennale in Shenzhen, China.
Tracey Eve Winton
Tracey Eve Winton is an architectural historian, scholar and educator with an interest in architectural language and narrative. She has a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Architecture from the University of Cambridge, where she studied with Dalibor Vesely, and M.Arch. in the History and Theory of Architecture from McGill University, where she studied with Alberto Pérez-Gómez. Her doctoral dissertation was A Skeleton Key to Poliphilo’s Dream: The Architecture of the Imagination in the Hypnerotomachia. She is associate professor at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture, where she teaches design studio and cultural history, and for many years has produced experimental theatre. She holds a Creative Achievement award from the ACSA, and a teaching award from the NCBDS. She is currently writing a book about Carlo Scarpa’s Castelvecchio Museum.
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Heuristic Pedagogy is part of the Theatres of ArchImagination contribution to SunShip: The Arc That Makes The Flood Possible, as part of the Arts Letters & Numbers exhibition in the CITYX Venice Italian Virtual Pavilion of the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale.