ABSTRACT
The traditional design crit is a process with a structural power imbalance, a tendency for criticism rather than critique, a focus on fault-finding rather than solution-finding, and an environment that is set up for confrontation rather than dialogue. Fundamentally, however, the model understands creative production as an inherently individual process with the associated myth of the creative genius. This chapter discusses the round-table review, as developed through the Rethinking the Crit project, as a contrast to this viva voce-inspired model. The round-table review changes the physical format of the review process to bring all participants together, equally seated around a table in a shared idea-space, in which work is discussed and participants invited to draw alternative solutions, and different ways of seeing the proposed project response, using trace overlays. This innovative process is understood as viva co-disegno, or “living co-design”, in which the haptic, non-verbal activities of drawing and designing are at centre stage. The approach allows students (and indeed all contributors) an insight into “the artistry of ‘thinking like an architect’” whilst also introducing collaborative, co-design processes which shift the mode of enquiry from the dialectic between reviewer and critic to a more equal process of co-production.
