Speculative Architecture: Adopting Critical Approach in the Architectural Learning Environment for a Better Future

Abstract

In a world of continuous and rapid evolution, inevitably, the architectural design needs the expansion of the boundaries and capabilities of it to respond the changing conditions. Especially by taking a role as a facilitator of thinking on the vision of the society and the world in the way of bringing alternative values, forms, and representations out, architectural design should allow of searching what is beyond its limitations to develop an attitude towards today's environment. Evaluating the architectural learning environment as a multi-layered and experimental research medium in which such a creative and critical act of architectural design can be adopted, this article focuses on speculative architectural thinking in the architectural educational context, as a way to explorations of possibilities of architecture. With the idea of producing speculative scenarios regarding all the political, economic, social, cultural, and technological changes of the world by offering an interdisciplinary and emancipated way to design, speculative architecture proposes an architecture conception based on a critical approach and an openended field of inquiry in the architectural learning environment. In this respect, in this paper, the aim is to discuss the potentials and effects of speculative architecture for architectural design education, within a theoretical base comprising three prominent principles of it. For this purpose, the study addresses two speculative projects developed at the 2020-2021 Spring term Diploma Studio at TOBB University of Economics and Technology (TOBB ETU), Department of Architecture, as the relevant case. Therewithal, the discussion makes enable to obtain an indepth evaluation of what speculative architecture provides in the way of expanding the purview of architectural design