Rethinking the Crit

As architecture students my peers and I noticed, and experienced first-hand, the amount of stress generated by the crit system of assessment and feedback. When I entered practice and worked abroad it was apparent that the crit system was fairly universal in its application. My career began as a lecturer eight years later, in a different higher education institution and I realised that there had not been any change to this method of feedback and assessment. This chapter is part of a long-term, mostly collaborative, action research process into alternative modes of feedback for students of architecture. This formally began when I pursued research that led me to realise that there were other academics and practising architects who shared doubts about the traditional crit method of feedback. ¹ Following a series of discussions with like-minded academics, I developed and led the delivery of an initial pilot year of crit-free feedback and assessment. ² This would not have been possible without the invaluable support of academic colleagues in my university. Having completed and evaluated the first pilot, we secured funding for an expanded research team, including academic colleagues in architecture and art departments from three other universities (the editors of this volume) to expand on and develop the initial pilot, with structured international inputs and peer review. ³