Abstract:
Instilling ethical development and a regard for the production of urban space
through vertical and horizontal curriculum participation may equip architectural
graduates with the capacity to engage with the complexity and temporal fluidity
of urban citizenship. Creative outputs of four academic year groups in an
Architecture department who engaged with a particular township community in
South Africa were considered in terms of Perry’s Scheme of Intellectual and
Ethical Development and how this relates to Lefebvre’s notion of lived space.
The students’ levels of engagement and recognition of the complexity of social
structures were reflected in the levels of ethical development presented in the
models used. In this paper we argue that it is necessary to distribute curricular
participation vertically throughout the curriculum to ensure that students are
able to transcend from one level to the following in order to resolve the complexities
they are confronted with in the spatial and ontological challenges inscribed
within urban citizenship.
