How design reviews work in Architecture and Fine Art: a comparative study across one school of Fine Art and two schools of Architecture.

This paper compares student design reviews in Fine Art and Architecture degrees. We describe the ways that reviews run in each subject, identify salient points of difference, and make suggestions for further developing design reviews. We found that 'crit' sessions in both fields reveal tensions between their dual functions of judgment and teaching. We think that this is better resolved in Fine Art because the hierarchy of expertise is less evident, and that teachers in Architecture could consider separating the two functions. We observed high quality feedback on the content of design projects and we suggest ways of further supporting the learning outcomes of listening, presenting, participating in the disciplinary dialogue, and justifying work created intuitively. We also discuss the range of language used to denote design reviews and how these emphasize different aspects of the review's purposes to students and their reviewers.