Creative architecture summer schools for high school student in Eastern Transylvania (2004-2022)
The annual architecture summer school is an extracurricular activity for high school student in Eastern Transylvania, where they can learn to think and work collectively using simple methods and materials. Projects created by students are responding to actual needs of local communities or offer an improvement of the built environment. The summer schools are organised in collaboration with local municipalities and aims to strengthen local bonds and a sense of belonging and collective identity.
National
Romania
Harghita, Mureș, Covasna
Mainly rural
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
Yes
As individual(s) in partnership with organisation(s)
First name: Klára Krisztina Last name: Máthé Gender: Female Please describe the type of organization(s) you work in partnership with: Nagy Istvan Art School Miercurea Ciuc Nationality: Romania Function: Teacher at Nagy Istvan Art School Miercurea Ciuc Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Bld. Timisoarei 28/28 Town: Miercurea Ciuc Postal code: 530212 Country: Romania Direct Tel:+40 744 774 425 E-mail:mathe.kitti@gmail.com Website:https://klaramathe.wordpress.com/
The annual architecture creative summer school has been organised for students of the architecture Nagy István High School of Arts for department since 2004. It is an extracurricular activity for learning architecture through experiential methods. It offers a way of learning, in which they are involved as active participants, through direct experiences in a setting without constraints. The schools have taken place in various rural areas in Eastern Transylvania and they involve collaborations with local municipalities or actors of civil society. During the summer-school participants are expected to collectively design and build smaller structures and furniture out of simple and/or recycled materials. These objects have to be functional and should respond to local necessities or improve the built environment.
The summer-school promotes methods of collective and collaborative work. It aims to teach well organised group-work and to show the benefits of participation and inclusion. Nonetheless it promotes sensitivity towards both the built and the natural environment and a sustainable architectural approach. By creating situations of collaborations between local actors and students it creates important linkages and by allowing students to create long standing and useful works it highly enforces a feeling of belonging on a larger regional level.
architecture
cooperation
sustainability
accessibility
heritage
In terms of sustainability, we consider the following to be of importance. The subjects of the summer schools are chosen to meet actual needs of local communities working with local, found, or recycled materials. Participants are taught first hand how to use simple and/or scarce materials and to think in simple solutions that can be easily built and maintained. These objects are never purely decorative but primarily functional, sometimes even infrastructural. It promotes the idea of minimal intervention while also offering the necessary technical and safety knowledge for students to create and to repair with confidence.
An important element of the programme is for students to experience processes of negotiating and cooperating with others, a fundamental aspect of sustainable development, especially in rural areas. Architectural and design secondary and higher education programmes mainly focus on how to think and design on a theoretical level, as well as how to show these designs and how to express our ideas. But many young practitioners have no access to such down-to-earth processes or they engage in such experiences only later in their studies, and oftentimes as something of secondary importance. This project aims to change this hierarchy and to offer practical and collaborative experiences from the very beginning of architectural education. Many students will later decide not to study architecture but to move to other related subjects such as engineering, design and graphic design or arts, and there are even students who end up in completely unrelated professions. But this is exactly why in such a context the learning and understanding of design and problem-solving based on inclusive participation and cooperation can make a major change in wider social cohesions. Especially in poor and rural areas where high-tech sustainable technologies are less accessible, these aspects of cooperation are essential to sustainable development and a stronger urban-rural linkage.
Collaboration and participation play a key role to the participants' experience and inform the aesthetic of the end products. School and university projects made individually or in smaller groups can never offer the same experience in terms of complexity and intricacy but also of fun and a feeling of belonging. The cultural benefits of supervised and supported, but often organically developing collaborative work are obvious, but in these cases the fact that they are organised in the context of a summer school held over 5-7 very intensive days adds to it. Students spend a very different quality time together as they do in school, and they have to organise their life besides their involvement in the workshops, share tasks and organise their common work. A very different social space is created too, hanging out together day and night, playing games or joining the campfire in the evenings are all positive experiences that have an effect on how community, work and collaboration will be perceived.
The character of summer-summer schools also promotes a specific aesthetics that is characterised by a sensitivity towards nature and heritage, is informed by the use of local and recycled material, and reflects a simple functionality that embodies community and inclusion. It empowers experimentation with contemporary formal approaches implemented in highly renewable and sustainable ways and for timeless functions.
One of the key objectives is to learn to design for all and with all. Participation becomes both a design tool but also a lived experience as students learn to collaborate and to take advantage of collective knowledge while also identify with the product of collective work. Work is organised in different stages and in different working groups offering participants the best-fitting situation from drawing and think-thanking to actual physical work. All participation is seen as equally important which supports a sense of identity with the end product.
In order to sustain accessibility for a diversity of students summer schools are organised in facilities that allow but do not restrict participants to use specific tools or amenities, (for example to sleep in a tent). Participation is not restricted to students of the hosting institution, students from other schools can apply and participate.
Another key objective is to make the summer schools accessible in financial terms. As the summer schools are organised in the framework of a public school, students of a wider social strata can participate, and it is essential to keep the costs of participation as low as possible. This is mainly achieved through collaborations with municipalities, institutions and collectives that can host and provide the necessary materials. These partnerships can be very different but they would involve some form of public and/or collectively managed space. Accommodation costs are also mostly covered by local partners and other costs such as food are often supported by third party donors.
It is necessary to mention that the study programme that the summer-summer schools are part of already has accessibility as a key objective as it provides a free preparatory education for students who are planning to apply to architecture and design higher education but could not offer a private training offered in big cities.
The way in which these aspects can be best shown through the partnerships that are central to the initiative. With a few exceptions involving private producers of recyclable materials, these always involve either actors of civil society or local and mostly very small municipalities. The main focus is to find partnerships that involve some form of actual necessity or potential improvement and to develop concepts and ideas together. The rather obvious benefit is of course that these summer-summer schools always leave something behind, large scale outdoor and indoor furniture, small pavilions or even paths and bridges and crossing over small streams. Such interventions do not only have practical functions but also establish a sense of belonging and a memory of collective work. These memories are shared between the local actors and the arriving students which then creates new collective mental maps and identities.
From the point of view of a civil society there are also strong long term benefits of the work principles based on cooperation and participation promoted by the educational methodology and the summer-summer schools. It offers a fundamental understanding of why it is necessary to listen to each other and to work collectively, it teaches a flexibility that can be essential to complex societal processes and it promotes a collaboration with different actors. This latest aspect is not only learned by the students but also the involved municipalities and institutions are offered a useful precedent of experimental but productive collaboration. Many former partners have offered a second partnership and some of the summer schools were continuations of former ones.
The initiative strongly relies on partnerships on local, regional and national, not only in terms of organising and the logistics of the summer-summer schools but also because they define what and how exactly will be built. Partners are, in different depths, part of the decision-making and sometimes even in the execution. To give two examples, in 2016 and in 2018 we have been working at a municipality owned summer school next to a highly protected natural park at Sfânta Ana/Szent Anna Lake in Harghita county. The municipality trusted the students to come up with creative ideas of simple but interesting outdoor furniture that would enrich the landscape of the summer schooling. The work was rather defined by a freedom to create for the students, it felt like the space was lended to us and we can let our imaginations free to improve it while also being its guests. In another case the summer school took place at the Sugó natural park also in Harghita, managed by an association. At this summer school it has been essential that members of the association spent the entire week with us and the students had a strong exchange with them about the spirit and wildlife of the place. Both collaboration were successful but involved different participation with our partners.
In 2022 the summer school was organised in partnership with the Art School of Târgu Mureș (Liceul de Arta Târgu Mureș) and brought together students from different regions and with different mother tongues
Previous partnerships included:
2008-Lăzarea Village Concil
2009-Frumoasa Village Concil
2011-Asociația Gyilkostó Adventure Association
2012-County Council Harghita- Mountain Rescue Association Salvamont Harghita
2013-Commonage Sânmartin village
2016, 2018 - Commonage Lăzăreni village
2014- GORDIUS Rope Factory
2015-Mountain Rescue Association Salvamont Harghita
2017-ARCUS Association of monument restaurateurs
2019-Sugău tourist center
2021- MUMUSH Community, financed by OAR ( Chamber of Romanian
The annual architecture creative summer school is organised in the framework of the Nagy István High School of Arts "Nagy István" Miercurea Ciuc for the students of the architecture department as an extracurricular activity for learning architecture through experiential methods. It comprises local multidisciplinary and practical knowledge, usage of local materials and combining them with knowledge brought from the architectural studies at the high school study program.
The summer schools approach design/architecture education as a foundation for students that whom afterwards follow different creative paths (graphic design/product design/..). At a young age, through practical, hands-on learning, students are introduced to a process of design and creative production of tangible outcomes (a built structure), responding to the contextual needs of each place. (...) Instilling design thinking and collective work as an approach to problem-solving at before the beginning of formal university education can prove fundamental in offering students a spherical understanding of the multifaceted aspects of the design process. In a short period of time, students are expected to engage intellectually and practically with notions of understanding a new locality and its characteristics, respond to a societal question related to the locality in question, and work collectively in an environment of mutual respect and peer-learning in order to design and deliver an architectural solution, while taking aesthetic considerations into account.
-Add collective work, decision-making, and mutual respect as something innovative compared to other top-down, 'expert-led' education initiatives?
-The summer school methodology as a whole can be replicated in other locations, adapted to the characteristics of each location
With regards to individual characteristics:
-The aspect of bringing together students from urban and rural settings can inform any kind of non-formal education initiative
-The introduction of design education to high school students as a tool of promoting creative thinking regardless of what field of study or work they follow can be beneficial as an educational model for multiple disciplines.
-The aspect of bringing together students from different language/ethnic groups in the context of design education, working together to produce a tangible output can have a positive effect to social cohesion, and can be replicated in geographies that have experienced conflict.
These experiences actually comprise syntheses of their work at school, the whole creative process with the moderation of architectural teachers, starting from the concept, through the realisation of projects in teams, to the actual execution of objects or constructions, which involves connection to real situations, settings, materials, sites and crafts, belonging and attachment to the place and the feedback received from a community. Experiences must be: carefully selected, well organised, supported by evaluation and critical analysis. During the exercises it is important that students take initiative, make decisions, know that the final outcome depends on the decisions made. They need to be intellectually, emotionally and physically engaged, to face up to their own abilities. By teaching each other, recognising the values around them and being aware of their own experience, they will evolve towards autonomy and responsibility.
Each summer school has a given theme on an existing site, with the involvement of a partner, an association or a local organisation. The activities start with the presentation of the theme, and the presentation of examples that can be defining or that present similar situations. students should study the site, "getting to know the spirit of the place". Discuss controversial or exciting points that arise in relation to the site and the given theme and create a pretext for dialogue. Everyone should have a point of view. Each pupil sketches, draws as many ideas as possible. All ideas should be accepted without comment or criticism, so that students feel valued. Then the ideas are discussed, they can be grouped (similar ideas) and form a basis for subgroups of 5 - 6 students, which continue brainstorming. These rounds are repeated with the moderation of the teacher-architects until solutions are found that are accepted by all.
Global challenges such as climate change have a detrimental impact on people's long term thinking and can leave one feeling hopeless and unable to cope with the gravity of a situation that seems beyond their control. This is something that is felt progressively more by the younger generations. Design education through collective work and responding to local challenges, with a tangible outcome, can be beneficial in enquiping youth with the mindset and skills of a learning-by-doing, iterative approach to problem solving. Cultivating these skills through working on the local level, leads students to a developing an understanding that it's possible to employ similar ways of thinking when dealing with larger issues. What students learn through their participation in the summer schools - understanding and respecting the locality in question; responding to community challenges; working collectively based on notions of mutual respect and listening to each others ideas; coming up with solutions together; realising the proposed design; and finally reviewing and reflecting on the outcome and the process - can be extrapolated as a way of thinking to address regional, national, or even global challenges.
The architecture summer school has been organised since 2004 and has taken place anualy with a few exceptions. It is an ongoing educational project that has received national and international attention in the previous years. A major progress of the previous summer-school of 2022 is that it has been organised in partnership with another arts school, the School of Arts of Târgu Mureș. This partnership has opened several new possibilities and widened objectives of the school as it put more weight on a trans-regional and multicultural as well as bilingual collaboration. The next summer-school are envisioned to go further on this step and establish other collaborations with other Romanian and international study programmes.
The summer-schools have been shown in various national and international exhibitions and publications.
Exhibitions:
2014 - 14th Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia / Hungarian Pavilion - Summer school 2011 Șugău/Sugó cave and natural park.
2014-2016 - Miercurea Ciuc, Sibiu, Cluj, București, Bonțida, Tușnad, Odorheiu Secuiesc, Cegléd(HU) - Exhibition on the summer-schools between 2004-2014
2019 Miercurea Ciuc - "50 years of arts and 20 years of architecture education at the Nagy István School of Arts in Miercurea Ciuc / Csíkszereda
2021- University of Arts Eger (HU) (Eszterházy Károly Katolikus Egyetem Képzőművészeti intézet, Eger) - Creative architecture summer schools of the Nagy István School of Arts in Miercurea Ciuc / Csíkszereda
Publications:
Arhitectura (Nr. 50 / Nov. 2006, Nr.1-2 / 2022 ),
Zeppelin (Nr. 93 / Apr. 2011, Nr. 119 / 2013 ),
Oktogon (H, 2012/5.),
Building (Hungarian catalogue - 14th Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia 2014 ), BIUAR (3/2016, 4/2018).
On top of the outright aspect of equipping students with skills to design and build sustainably, in a manner based on collective work, the school aims to develop intercultural competencies and an ethos of understanding one another and working together with people from different backgrounds. Intensive cooperation creates links on many levels between students of urban/rural backgrounds, different school classes and specialisations, and even different institutions. But such cultural links can also involve different linguistic communities, in 2022 for example the summer-summer school was organised in collaboration with a similar architecture focused high school from Târgu Mureș with education in Romanian. In the context of the bilingual regions of Eastern Transylvania such exchange is extremely valuable and unfortunately way too rare. The participation of native speakers of Hungarian and Romanian was seen as a great success on both sides and is very likely to be repeated.
