ABSTRACT

The constituents of what clearly defines the character of architectural education can be explicit or less apparent, undoubtedly legible to those who are or have been its protagonists. Studio work regularly culminates in – but is also often disrupted by – the final act of “the crit”, taking place in an environment which can influence it to a point where the act contained in its etymology becomes secondary, or relative to a variety of personal or material relational factors. This complex environment is viewed here as constructed by several groups of clearly identifiable actors whose relative position defines not only the subjective experience, but also general outcome of the final act of presenting one’s project: the student, the teacher/critic, the more or less engaged observers, greatly influenced by the physical setting and disruption of studio space. Experiments with the format illustrated here were conducted at the Faculty of Architecture in Zagreb, shifting the ubiquitous power trajectories by dividing the crit’s presentation processes from the curated staging, rendering it a happening.