This paper examines the potential development of architectural education and its current studio practices through the creation of a new type of course model that involves learner entanglement in multiple networked learning environments. A course model created for the postgraduate course of urban design at the National Technical University of Athens challenged the spatial and the conceptual notions of where and how new knowledge is produced. It did so by creating immersive learning experiences where all the individuals involved in the process and despite their current status could become active learners and renegotiate their presence and their notions in relation to each other and to the rest of the world. Course design draws from the theories of blended and networked learning to create an amalgam of different, yet interconnected learning events. Learners are called upon to interact with each other and with external agents in different physical or virtual settings and with different means and technologies. These include a series of formal or informal encounters within the physical boundaries of the area under examination and with people who are either its immediate stakeholders, or practicing professionals who can offer different insights on how to read and manage it. This is a model that promotes transdisciplinarity, by favoring cooperation in the space in between what is well known and defined. The role of the academy returns to its original immaterial form as cooperation; the studio's placelessness embraces all places as learning spaces. Knowledge production processes in this paradigm reside in the constitution of the network of multiple and conflicting realities where design is a product of experimentation, exchange, dialogue and cooperative work among interacting individuals. Cooperative practices are not simply called upon to facilitate design, but constitute the design praxis themselves as learners are called upon to transverse their networks of connections and meaning to create viable strategies for intervention. @en

The paper describes a research and practice teaching methodology developed for an urban design studio at undergraduate and postgraduate level and how it transformed the teaching and learning experience. The area considered in both cases was Elaionas: a degraded; chaotic; post-industrial landscape near the Athens centre. The aim was to engage students in city planning creatively using innovative tools of academic research and collaborative field work to interpret and manage urban complexity. A series of transdisciplinary analytic tools were employed for mapping such as tracking technologies and spatial analysis, design software and programming, while at the same time artists engaged students in the lived experience of the place. Live encounters were also realized with public sector representatives and other stakeholders. Course content was set up as a network of researchers and resources where learning is rhizomatic and therefore collaborative and contextual. In this framework, students were required to choose the resources they were interested in pursuing further and to form their own strategies; they were asked to establish connections with the local community; they were also encouraged to share and compare their findings and their respective representations via blogging and social networks thus creating their own creative networked research community. Enhancing communication between students, experts and stakeholders raised student awareness and created an environment of possibilities. As a result, their plans for the regeneration of Elaionas demonstrated a positive attitude by involving local communities and other institutional agents toward the creation of sustainable urban environments. @en

Elaionas is an area of extreme controversy; historically, it was the ancient Athenian olive orchard up until the '50s, when it became intensely industrialized. In later years all major companies were either closed or relocated leaving behind a highly polluted urban landscape full of abandoned buildings and derelict voids. Lack of political initiative and funds along with a rather complicated administration regime that includes numerous stakeholders with contradicting interests have halted the implementation of the related presidential decree along with any plans for redevelopment from private investors. The result was the further degradation of the area and its consequent occupation by marginalized social groups; ethnic minorities, illegal immigrants, gypsies and more recently, 2000 encamped Syrian refugees. The absence of a proper street network and the informal appropriation of land have led to the creation of a chaotic, introvert and uncertain urban landscape, in constant flux that appears to be inaccessible from the outside. The paper presents the creative efforts of the students of an undergraduate and a postgraduate urban design studio in NTUA to map the unjust distribution of land and the current interaction between the different social groups in Elaionas and to use public space as a tool to regenerate the area and establish spatial justice. Students originally perform a systematic reading of the area's social and spatial characteristics which includes in-field workshops, meetings with major stakeholders and experts in various domains and interviews with people that either dwell or work there. They are then asked to critically reflect upon the information they retrieved and prioritize. Their programs gradually reinstate public space to its immediate stakeholders to control land speculation and the impetuous placement of random, left over uses. They also seek to reestablish the lost continuity between Elaionas and Athens while restoring the natural elements of the landscape. @en

A workshop aiming to activate the sensory experience of individuals within the urban landscape was introduced to the students of a postgraduate course of architecture. The course seeks to explore city complexity by mapping the urban phenomena. These readings provide the base for the creation of integral strategic interventions. In the two years it has run, students have shown a preference for analytical tools. This time however, they were asked to perform a series of exercises that sought to increase their body awareness, to help them navigate and read the landscape through their sensory perceptions. The authors of this paper contemplate on the use of mapping methodologies, embodied topography and its relation to the more hidden and imaginary landscapes of the city. They present the reader with a description of the workshop articulation, segments of the student projects and its pedagogical outcomes.@en

An innovative version of the "New Fields of Design and Construction" (NFDC) design methodology course was set in motion at the Postgraduate Program of the NTUA last spring. The intention was to experiment with the existing design education framework of learning by doing in an extended learning environment of multiple mediums organized as a representation of the multiplicity of the design praxis. It also aimed at raising student engagement and making students complicit to the formation of the course content. This process has led to the systematic transformation of the content into both verbal and visual learning units. The course layout was also rearticulated to secure that student performance could be accounted for with a certain precision without shrinking its vast content or limiting knowledge exchange in order to control it. The student learning outcomes were examined upon the course’s completion to verify whether and how e-learning practices can be integrated into architectural curricula. Student attendance rates were closely monitored to register their engagement. The results show increase in course content, high assimilation and continuous interaction between parties. They also show a plurality of approaches toward design, due to the diverse types of students inscribed in the course. @en