Risk, Trust and Big Beautiful Mistakes*: Keys to Innovation in Architectural Education

Abstract

By presenting examples from Making is Thinking and other educational initiatives in the architecture programme at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU, this paper points to why risk-taking is especially needed in architectural education today, as global crises demand new and critical ways of working with architecture. From a Scandinavian horizon, the paper problematizes the paradox that educational systems instead of promoting education as the uncertain and troublesome business it is, tend to please students in their longing for predictability. The paper describes risky learning spaces where learners start by doing, preferably in teams and off campus, thereby counteracting predictability and opening up for unexpected mishaps to occur – mishaps with innovative potential. The paper shows that such risky learning spaces introduce collective, emotional and embodied dimensions in architectural education. Moreover, the paper contributes with experience-based knowledge regarding how trust – a precondition for risk-taking and a notion underexplored in research on higher education – may be established in educational settings. Building on the idea of a fruitful tension between risk and trust in educational spaces, the paper ends with a list of gutsy proposals for a pedagogy of mistakes. *“Big beautiful mistakes” is an expression used with inspiration from architect and educator Sami Rintala.