3 minute read
Tutors Reflections
0.1 NOMALANGA MAHLANGU
As with most briefs, we (I) embarked on the Queer Clubhouse project without a predestined outcome. I believe as a team we tried creating a safe learning environment for both ourselves and the students to try an engage with a topic/design theme that is rarely touched in the school, specifically in undergraduate studies.There was something quite unapologetic about the students that sincerely engaged with the projects, some students tapped into their voices, while some did the bare minimum maybe due to their own fears or discomfort. The collaboration between courses strengthened their projects but I don’t think the students were aware of this, or knew how to use it to their advantage. The collaboration has the potential of teaching them how to critically unpack their designs theoretically, sustainably while still staying true to their concepts. Given more time to develop their designs I believe greater lengths can be reached.
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0.2 MXOLISI NTSHONA
The Queer Club project highlighted current, untapped and real lived experiences of Queer individuals. The students got to learn the experiences of people using the Narrative of short real stories of people’s journeys towards “becoming”. The course outline was well articulated with literature, videos that gave students deep understanding of the subject matter. Students got to experience the issues of identity and/or Gender experienced by many that could be considered the minority. Students learnt to design from the perspective of the other. Student Group selection process promoted a higher understanding of self in the group and individual strength, attributes and leadership capacities. Great interwoven programme that really integrated all knowledge gained and expressed within a common project by so doing achieving a “total design approach”. The student’s products with our collective direction from Lecturers has enough grounds to showcase this work beyond the boundaries of the academic but further to organisation/ clubs/associations that are representing, celebrating and solving matters with the Queer Movement.
0.3 LETHABO MATHABATHE
The department is one fundamentally transformative environment that’s ever evolving and a space that consciously creates room for growth and needed conversations between all that interact with it. Being involved in the Queer project and assisting with the collaboration of the modules at DoA, proved to be a very interesting way in dealing with issues surrounding architecture, the profession and dealing head on with the subject matter on so many levels. It was a very refreshing approach at tackling how we as spatial practitioners have so much control over how spaces are designed and how other people get to interact with them on a daily basis, despite our beliefs and opinions. The Queer project not only challenged both the students and us as lecturers, in engaging with the brief on both a personal and public/general level. But it also proved to us how design can always be fluid in its programs, and the spaces it encompasses and not only be conformed to what the program should be or what the site needs. There is so much one can do, but it all starts up here, in the mind.
0.4 STEVEN SOTIRIOU
The 2021 Queer project may be viewed as a significant and functional attainment of the objective of integration as between the disciplines of Design and Interdisciplinary Design. The effective implementation of the project may , inter alia ,be ascribed to its timing as at the culmination of the year in which the students had absorbed both the insight and required skills associated with an integrated approach. The execution of the project was further facilitated by the opportunity for in- contact learning as opposed to the earlier digital and on-line project approach which had added a challenging complexity . As an exercise in open, indepth understanding and exploration of the ‘Queer concept’, it may be regarded as limited. In this regard the concept was ‘set aside ‘while emphasis was placed on the design implications.
LETHABO MATHABATHE
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