Project Summary: 

Today’s built environment is increasingly shaped by interdisciplinary teams, working alongside digital tools and AI.  As the architectural profession evolves, collaboration plays a crucial role, shifting the dominant image of the architect from a solo creative practitioner to being more sociable and collaborative. However, architectural education still influenced by the Beaux-arts apprenticeship studio model, continues to train students with an emphasis on individual authorship. Given that the culture of design studios is shaped through a simulation of what happens in practice, pedagogical practices need to adapt to reflect these changing professional practices. Therefore, this thesis addresses the question, “What does collaboration look like within architectural design studios?” By investigating cultures of collaboration, this study examines how collaboration is conceptualised and implemented within architectural design studios.

This study employs a qualitative research design, drawing on documentary analysis, surveys, semi-structured interviews, and direct studio observations, guided by the Theory of Practice Architectures (TPA). Through this multi-method approach, the study investigates how collaboration is conceptualised, perceived, and practised in selected design studios across two universities in a single geographical region of Australia.

The findings show that collaboration within design studios extends beyond working with others, shaped by a give-and-take between collective and individual work. There is a significant cultural shift from the Beaux-art studio model with collaboration perceived through pedagogical, professional, relational, and experiential lenses and the educator’s role beyond the master extending into a facilitator, mediator and translator. The culture of collaboration is dependent on the specific actors and the interpersonal dynamics within the educational system, fundamentally shaped by discursive, material, and power dynamics. Within these cases, there seems to be a systemic gap between intent and practise: critical professional and institutional mandates, such as Indigenous engagement, interdisciplinary teamwork, and interpersonal skill development, are often diluted or absent, effectively lost in studio translation. Similarly, activities educators perceive or design as collaborative are experienced and implemented differently by students. Furthermore, the study shows that it is through the collaborative practices of explaining and understanding practical making, guiding and engaging in collective work and working together that educators, consultants and external stakeholders socialise students into the architectural profession. The study further demonstrates that collaboration requires pedagogical scaffolding and facilitation, rather than being treated as an emergent process. Crucially, facilitating this culture is dependent on providing digital tools, infrastructure and training along with the deliberate setup of physical spaces and pedagogical events to support collaborative work in studios.

This study makes four distinct contributions. Theoretically, it reframes collaboration from a singular, continuous activity to a multi-layered, oscillatory and professional socialisation process. Empirically, it demonstrates how collaborative mandates fail to materialise in studio teaching. Methodologically, it applies the TPA to observe collaboration in real-time, generating a transferable framework applicable to other studio-based disciplines, including design, engineering, and the performing arts. Finally, as a contribution to practice, the study intends to develop an evidence-based framework for incorporating collaborative design studios through an actionable roadmap for four levels of the educational system: educators, institutions, curricula and the profession.