The Night School^-W002

The Night School is a collaborative education platform to reimagine ways of relating, making, thinking, discussing and being in architecture.

In 2022 The Night School connected with dozens of practices, people, institutions and collectives locally and globally and ran a series of free, open events, each with a different strategy, but all with the intention of challenging some of our ideas about what architecture is and could be.

A school, freed from the limitations of the academy and commercial practice, can become an emancipatory space for experimentation and innovation. Like the upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s, we are witnessing cultural renaissance, spurred by social inequity, the climate crisis and the rapid changes of our technological age. This unrest within the architecture academy and profession can manifest as frustration and disenchantment, particularly among students and recent graduates who fail to see a just present or future reflected in the status quo. In order to adequately address the urgent issues facing humanity, focusing on the education of students is not enough - we must also provide the space for members of the profession and the public to explore other modes of thinking and being, and platforms for emerging practitioners to explore and share their practices.

The Night School developed content for the platform using three key strategies: Working with and replicating the workshops or actions of other practitioners; Inviting others to design and produce workshops; and generating new workshops as an individual or with collaborators.

The Night School is one small, collaborative, optimistic step to imagining and actuating a more hopeful, collective, aspirational and equitable future through an architectural lens.