Campus hopping: Serial Teaching in Sydney

Sydney hosts a field of architectural schools within the city. This paper investigates teaching in first year architectural design courses of 3 city based universities from the point of view of a serial casual academic who teaches at all 3 every year for the past 18 years. This work explores politics at play within the studio setting and questions the role of the transient teacher in the maintenance of the universities' respective reputations and outcomes. It reveals unspoken rules and expectations which casual academics take on with each contract, and how these affect or infect learning outcomes in the studio. With three studios simultaneously at play, the potential for dialogue is always present with such close physical proximity, yet apparently so distant in methodology and ideology. Now that borders are more porous in terms of students and transient teachers migrating more freely between institutions, what will be the outcome of the education of the architect?