Vision and Strategy 2017

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VISION AND STRATEGY 2017






Table of Contents 1.

Preface

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2.

Objectives for the period 2010-17

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3. 3.1 3.2 3.3

Vision 2017 Cultivating Difference Fabricating Space Creating Correlations

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4. 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7

Strategic Objectives and Focus Areas Research Education Dissemination Personnel Management Financial Framework Facilities

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1. Preface


Preface

The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture’s (RASA) Plan 2017 is a strategy for the foundations and development of the architectural programme in the period 2010-2017. The RASA Plan 2017 was approved by the School Council on 22 September 2010. The strategy work has stretched from January 2009 to November 2010 in the form of a wide internal debate throughout the School and the involvement of a number of external stakeholders. The process has served to take bearings of the architectural profession’s coming position in national and global development and the changes that will attract particular attention and thus require active initiatives in coming years. It is the School’s mission to create the basis for high quality in people’s physical surroundings through its educational programmes and architectural research. This is achieved through research, researcher education, research and practicebased education and the exchange of knowledge with our surroundings, all at the highest international level. The School sees itself as a modern academy of fine arts, which bases its work on strong traditions to continually renew and refine the methods that make its graduates unique in the international labour market.

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Preface

KA Vision og Strategi 2017 The problem-based project work form at the drawing table ensures the School’s close interaction between research and practice. This brings the School and the surrounding society closer together and trains the students in innovative solutionorientated behaviour. RASA is one of the world’s absolute leaders among schools of architecture in the field of problem-based project work. The artistic approach that has its origin at the drawing table combined with interdisciplinary research-based teaching is one of the School’s strengths and special characteristics. The innovative approach is to guarantee the School a prominent place as a knowledge-creating institution that contributes to technological, social, aesthetic, sustainable and cultural innovation in society. Thus, a main objective of the School of Architecture’s strategy is to create value for society.


Preface

The School has an obligation to ensure great academic diversity in architectural research and in the architectural degree programme, but it also wishes to identify clear strategic focus areas. Future students must be ensured more specialisation options and process-orientated competences directed at society’s needs, which will also improve our graduates’ possibilities in the labour market. The strategy’s ambition is to exploit the internal and external synergy through increased collaboration that will open up both through the merger with The Danish Design School and in relation to other artistic and research-based institutions and commercial businesses nationally and globally. The plan comprises: • An overall objective 2010-2017 • A vision 2017 • An overview of strategic goals and focus areas in the period

Rector Sven Felding December 12th 2010

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2. Objectives for the period 2010-17 Through its research and educational programmes in architectural planning, building art and design, RASA is to create the basis for high quality in people’s physical surroundings.


Objectives for the period 2010-2017

• The School is to participate in a critical dialogue with the surrounding society and be a strong and visible player in the architectural debate. • The School is to ensure an international focus in order to contribute to the solution of global challenges through architecture. • The School is to be able to capture emerging academic competences and develop new fields of knowledge. • The School is to strengthen basic research in fabrication and the materials-based. • The School is to strengthen research-based teaching by building integrated research and teaching environments. • The School is to increase the number of researchers in teaching to strengthen the knowledge content. • The School is to work systematically and strategically on the development of professional and personal competences in the individual employee.

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3. Vision 2017 RASA’s Vision 2017 is based on three themes: ‘cultivating difference’, ‘fabricating space’ and ‘creating correlations’. The three themes have multiple objects: Firstly, they characterise the core of the architect’s practice; secondly, they express the desire for a dynamic, academic culture, and thirdly they illustrate the School’s interaction with the surrounding world.


Vision 2017

Danish architecture and teaching at the School have been carried by insight into and appreciation of context, materials and techniques. Therefore, the School has traditionally been able to contribute directly to creating architecture and design that joined together the personally artistic and a socially aware mindset by means of current materials and techniques. In recent decades, however, the architectural profession has moved from analogue processes and craftsmanship practice towards a digitalised construction process and industrial production. Today, architecture is created from knowledge, ideas and components from near and far. These conditions mean that we now work in a new and differently composed reality – a reality where it is difficult to separate what is local from what is global. At the same time, global issues such as resource scarcity, ecology, demographic challenges and inequality at various levels demand increased attention from the architect as regards the joint responsibility for people, society and environment. These conditions place demands on the architect as regards increased specialisation. As a result, there is a rising need for sharpening the inner differences of the profession and the educational programme. In other words, there should be different ways of training as an architect within the framework of one educational programme.

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Vision 2017

3.1 Cultivating DifferenceKA Vision og Strategi 2017 Cultivating difference expresses a desire for a school that should first strengthen professional competences and work to increase the quality of research, teaching and study projects alike. In other words, it is not merely diversity for the sake of diversity, but rather a demand for a sharpening of artistic, theoretical and experimental work. Cultivating difference thus expresses the vision about the necessary, internal dialogue between the academic diversity that the School encompasses and should develop in future. It also expresses the desire that all of the School’s competences should open up in critical dialogue with the surrounding society so that the research and education-related focus can be challenged and developed into the measure of variation, abundance and extent that is necessary for the creation of architectural value.


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Vision 2017

3.2 Fabricating SpaceKA Vision og Strategi 2017 Fabricating space expresses the desire that fabrication be placed at the centre of the School’sresearch and teaching activities. Fabrication should be understood in its full extent: the development and realisation of ideas, concepts, theories, drawings, models, objects, mock-ups, spaces, exhibitions etc. Fabrication also expresses the span between craftsmanship and industry, between the resources of tradition and the change processes that the technological development makes possible and initiates. In this connection, it has become crucial to the architect to be able to link the place and the craft to the placeless industrial production, and to be able to develop architectural ideas based on new knowledge about architecture’s creation processes and materials. The objective is that teaching at RASA, with concrete proposals in mind, should take its starting point in many different courses that are organised across the field of fabrication. Fabrication should be a central source of architectural experience formation at the School communicated through varied teaching forms and courses.


Vision 2017

3.3 Creating CorrelationsVision og Strategi 2017 Creating correlations is the vision’s third theme: First, it is a question of innovative consideration of how the School can best educate architects to think, draw and build in contexts. Second, it points to a strengthening of the internal dialogue across academic differences where critical reflection, technical innovation, social responsibility and artistic strength can unfold into a common reality. Creating correlations also concerns the School’s relationships with the surrounding world. Relationships that are to be built up in the crossfield between the School’s competences and the collaboration and contrast offered by the profession, other research and teaching environments and the world at large. The School is to be able to capture and develop emerging competences so that the School can participate in new relationships and create the foundation for new correlations between sizes, conditions, forces, meanings, people and technologies. The School excels by showing this openness outwardly and by concentrating efforts inwardly on cultivating originality – not in every initiative, but where several small original statements start to flow in the same direction. By creating an inner structure that can further and stimulate such inner movements, the School can seriously contribute to indicating directions for architecture.

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4. Strategic Objectives and Focus Areas



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Strategic objectives and focus areas

4.1 ResearchKA Vision og Strategi 2017 The School’s research is to ensure the development of the profession by capturing emerging competences and ensuring continuity and continual development of the School’s knowledge base. The School’s research is to include basic research, strategic and applied research and artistic development work.


Strategic objectives and focus areas

KA Vision og Strategi 2017 Focus area •The School’s research is to be strengthened in fabrication and the materials-based through theoretical, technical and artistic research projects. •The School is to create greater synergy between research and teaching by linking the students to the School’s research in integrated research and teaching environments. •The School is to participate increasingly in interdisciplinary national and international research partnerships.

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Strategic objectives and focus areas

4.2 EducationKA Vision og Strategi 2017 The School is to educate architects to think, draw and build in contexts. Architects act in an increasingly complex world. This creates increased demands on differentiation in the educational programme and greater needs for academic depth. Because of this, there should be different ways in which to qualify as an architect.


Strategic objectives and focus areas

KA Vision og Strategi 2017 Focus areas • Project teaching is to take place to a higher degree in integrated research and teaching environments, and the interaction between project teaching and course teaching is to be strengthened. • The School’s students are to have more possibilities of focusing and choosing the direction of their study course. • The School’s teaching is to strengthen its international focus, e.g. through student exchanges with the leading research and teaching environments. • The School is to create settings that will support the work with fabrication through the artistic and experimental. •The School is to strive for high quality in the physical study environment in terms of facilities and space for a variety of study forms. • IT is to be strengthened continuously as an integrated tool in the artistic, analytical, practical and reflective architectural production. •The School is to develop new teaching forms, and strengthen and ensure the pedagogical and didactic competences of the teachers.

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KA–PLAN /2010 /INDHOLD


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Strategic objectives and focus areas

4.3 DisseminationKA Vision og Strategi 2017 The School is to be a strong and visible player in architectural debate and leave its mark as an academic knowledge centre and a forum for debate and knowledge exchange. As a cultural institution and based on its architectural research, its artistic development activities and its study results, the School is to be an active participant in society’s and the profession’s debate on architectural development. By way of example, the School has a privileged opportunity to place significant moral, aesthetic and ethical issues on architecture’s societal agenda – issues that otherwise risk not being raised and which the School should accept an obligation to raise.


Strategic objectives and focus areas

KA Vision og Strategi 2017 Focus areas • The School is to develop one digital platform, which is to collect information internally and disseminate information externally concerning the many different activities at the School. • The School is to give higher priority to its press and media work, so that the School’s knowledge and academic results are communicated to the outside world. • The School is to have an active international publishing activity in electronic and printed form, which reflects the extent of research and disseminates the School’s research and debate. • The School is to develop a number of new physical and digital exhibition spaces that will serve as a window and meeting places between the School, society and the international architectural environment.

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Strategic objectives and focus areas

4.4 PersonnelKA Vision og Strategi 2017 The School is to create a better balance between research and practice-based teaching by recruiting more architectural researchers based on the given financial framework. The School should also continue to aim to recruit the profession’s best and most dedicated practising architects. Finally, the School is to ensure a professional administration consisting of highly qualified employees.


Strategic objectives and focus areas

KA Vision og Strategi 2017 Focus areas • The School is to have an ambitious and transparent recruitment and careers policy that will ensure diversity in competences and reflect the School’s strategic ambitions. • The research-based project teaching is to be strengthened through the recruitment of researchers with teaching experience. • The School is to further the development of professional and personal competences in the individual employee strategically, including by giving priority to relevant further training and educational opportunities. • Relationships and collaboration between the academic and the administrative environments is to be strengthened. • The School is to have efficient and healthy work environment conditions of a high quality

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Strategic objectives and focus areas

4.5 ManagementKA Vision og Strategi 2017 The vision about cultivating difference calls for a flexible, attentive and dynamic management group that gives the individual responsibility and room to manoeuvre within the School’s overall strategy. This also applies to the administrative managers. The School’s research and teaching environments are to be managed through architectural insight.


Strategic objectives and focus areas

KA Vision og Strategi 2017 Focus areas • The School is to establish a simpler management structure. • The School is to establish a flexible and more dynamic academic basic structure that can accommodate the requirement for greater academic diversity in the educational programme. • The School is to ensure talent development at all management levels. • The School is to ensure the development of professional management competences among all employees with management responsibility. • The School is to ensure management communication that uses dialogue to create ownership and participation in leaders and employees alike.

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Strategic objectives and focus areas

4.6 Financial frameworkKA Vision og Strategi 2017 Government funding constitute the School’s financial foundation. Further to these, the School needs to supplement with external research funding and income e.g. from international educational offers, which may contribute to ensuring the financial framework that facilitates the implementation of the School’s strategy. The School is to ensure continuous financial autonomy and latitude for organising and thus prioritising the academic and professional development of a School that fosters difference.


Strategic objectives and focus areas

KA Vision og Strategi 2017 Focus areas • The School is to give priority to ensuring that the financial resources and reserves are continually available to make it possible to pursue strategic objectives for research and teaching.

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Strategic objectives and focus areas

4.7 FacilitiesKA Vision og Strategi 2017 The School is to develop its facilities further as an open, attractive and actively cohesive research and educational environment of international standard. The School’s facilities are to support the strategy’s focus on fabrication and reflect the objective of achieving differentiated research and teaching environments. The School will continue to manage its buildings in a way that provides space for individual research and study stations. The facilities are to support the methods, techniques and media of the individual professional competences.


Strategic objectives and focus areas

KA Vision og Strategi 2017 Focus areas •The School’s settings are to be sufficiently differentiated to support many different ways of researching and studying. • The School is to have efficient workshops, studios and exhibition rooms that support the experimental practise of research and education. • The workshop capacity is to be increased to accommodate the needs of researchers and students. • The School is to allocate space for full-scale workshops. • The School is to develop innovative IT workshops that can support the academic diversity. • The library is to develop and support accessibility to all forms of knowledge. • The School’s canteen and café are to support the School’s research and educational environment through maximum opening hours.

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Preparation Vision and Strategy 2017 is devised on the basis of contributions from the whole School and agreed to by the School Council in September 2010. Editorial team Sven Felding Jørgen Hauberg Anders Abraham Thomas Bo Jensen Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen Asger Høeg Mette Mejlvang Sørensen Uffe Hundrup External editorial consultant Birgitte Kleis


Design E-types Susan Gregers Jensen Photo Susan Gregers Jensen


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