Heuristic Pedagogy & Dramatic Discovery

Heuristic Pedagogy & Dramatic Discovery

Lisa Landrum & Tracey Eve Winton

How can dramatic arts infuse architectural pedagogy with Eureka potential, while fostering creative collaboration and ethical imagination? This dialogue among architectural educators and students reflects on recent theatrical experiments and dramatic approaches to design education.

This event is act 4 of 5 acts toward renewing architectural imaginaries – integrating sonic, mythic, poetic, heuristic and dramatic arts. It is part of the Theatres of ArchImagination contribution to SunShip: The Arc That Makes The Flood Possible, as part of the Arts Letters & Numbers exhibition in the CITYX Venice Italian Virtual Pavilion of the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale.

Lisa Landrum is an educator, architect, scholar and creative researcher dedicated to advancing social justice, cultural meaning and mythopoetic imagination. She is Associate Dean Research and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Manitoba. Dr. Landrum earned a professional B.Arch. from Carleton University, and an M.Arch (post-professional) and Ph.D. in Architectural History and Theory from McGill University, where she worked with Dr. Alberto Pérez-Gómez. She is a registered architect in Manitoba and New York State, an executive member of Building Equality in Architecture (BEA) Prairies, and a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. Her scholarship on architecture’s bonds with drama, democracy and philosophy is widely published, including chapters in several books: Reading Architecture (2019), Confabulations: Storytelling in Architecture (2017), Chora 7 (2016), Architecture’s Appeal (2015), Architecture as a Performing Art (2013), and Architecture and Justice (2013). She co-edited Narrating the City (2021), and is currently co-editing a book entitled Theatres of Architectural Imagination.

Theatrical imagination has animated her architectural research for 20 years – ever since participating in a drama workshop in 2001, while practicing as an architect in New York City. That workshop at the New School for Social Research was led by John Murphy, who trained with l’Ecole Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq and performed with the Swiss theatre company Mummenshanz. During her doctoral research on the roots of architectural agency in Greek drama, Lisa participated in acting classes with Complicité in London, Omnibus Théâtre Corporel in Montréal, and a Corporeal Mime Workshop with Thomas Leabhart in Paris. Since 1997, Lisa has collaborated with her partner Ted Landrum, creating group costumes, installations and events enacting the ‘body politic.’ This work has been exhibited at many venues, including the Confabulations Symposium (Alexandria VA), Winnipeg’s A2G Gallery, New York City’s Halloween Parade and Storefront for Art and Architecture, Strauss Gallery at Dartmouth College, and the Urbanism/Architecture Bi-City Biennale in Shenzhen, China.

Tracey Eve Winton is an architectural historian, scholar, artist and educator with an interest in architectural language and narrative. She holds a professional degree in Architecture and one in Environmental Studies. She earned a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Architecture from the University of Cambridge, where she studied with Dalibor Vesely, and M.Arch. in the History and Theory of Architecture from McGill University, where she studied with Alberto Pérez-Gómez. Her doctoral dissertation is titled A Skeleton Key to Poliphilo’s Dream: The Architecture of the Imagination in the Hypnerotomachia. She is Associate Professor at the Waterloo School of Architecture, teaching design studio and cultural history, and in the study abroad program in Rome, guiding architectural tours in Italy. Over the last 15 years she created experimental theatre with her architecture students, performed for the public in adaptively reused spaces.

Tracey recently completed a research-creation project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) which explored intersections between Balinese theatrical culture, landscape, tourism, and architecture. She holds a Creative Achievement award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), and a teaching award from the National Conference on the Beginning Design Student (NCBDS) for a project in which the class designed and ran an Alternate Reality Game (ARG). She is writing a book about the language of modern architecture in Carlo Scarpa’s Castelvecchio Museum in Verona, which discusses dramatization and narrative enactment in architectural settings. Recent publications discuss Giorgio de Chirico’s theatrical paintings, the Urbino library ceiling, modern architectural language in Rome, plus essays in Confabulations: Storytelling in Architecture, Architecture as a Performing Art, Architecture’s Appeal, and The Material Imagination. Links to writings, talks, and theatre can be found at: https://uwaterloo.academia.edu/TraceyEveWinton