ABSTRACT
Essentially, the atelier method of teaching involves a group of students (usually 10 to 20) working with one or two tutors, who are often practising architects teaching part-time, through a year-long cycle of design. In this chapter the focus is on what a psychoanalytical perspective might tell us about the psycho-dynamics of the atelier process, particularly in relation to creativity. Beyond that I make some tentative extrapolations to learning and teaching in higher education generally and how creative learning may
be inhibited in massified and modular institutional cultures. To justify the wider implications of studying the atelier method, we might note that both Donald Schön and Ernest Boyer have extolled its virtues as a model of learning and teaching that other disciplines might adopt or adapt (Schön, 1987; Boyer and Mitgang, 1996). Yet, as Ochsner has written:
Other than the work of Schön and a few other, there seems to have been surprisingly little examination in depth of the design studio as an educational environment. In particular, there seems to have been almost complete silence on two inter-related questions: (1) the precise nature of the creative processes in which students are asked to engage in the design studio; and (2) the character of the interaction between students and faculty that might enhance this interaction.
