Ethnographic practice plays a key role in understanding the presence of planetary pedagogies with the SoA. Expressed in Sarah Pink’s Techniques (2010), it is seen as a way to obtain tangible information and knowledge with people about everyday processes and meanings (Pink, 2010). They can be seen as actions of intervention, providing space for narratives to emerge and shift structures (Pink, 2010). Part of the research aims to uncover the presence of planetary pedagogies and the student experience of the MArch Design Practice, marking an opportunity to highlight and amplify narratives that go beyond how the course is presented. The integration of the participatory allows for insight into student perspective in dialogue with the observed pedagogies. Thus, a series of interviews and workshops have been conducted to gain this insight and encourage participatory insights. As a result, an archival practice emerges as a bi-product through the development of a publication that includes student responses to planetary pedagogies on the course.

In conjunction with the above, Lost and Living (In) Archives by Annet Dekker (2017) provides a discussion point of the role of archives and how it has shifted. Dekker highlights the consideration of the archive “as a product of the anticipation of a collective memory” (Appadurai, 2010) expressed by anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, that moves away from considering an archive as merely traces (ibid) but active social constellations. As a result, it works in dialogue with my ethnographic practice in understanding the current archival practice at the Royal College of Art, and how I see the thesis as an intervention to reflect on new archival practices for pedagogies.

In January 2025, architectural education NGO re:arc institute launched their Center for Planetary Pedagogies, a series of online workshops covering a diverse range of topics that sit within this school of the planetary practice in architecture. They define the term as encapsulating “critical spatial practice, ecological thought and social design” (Center for Planetary Pedagogies, 2025). The intersectionality and interdisciplinary positions pedagogies as webs of entangled concepts and contexts. Perhaps it could be considered as complex but it allows for a reflective engagement with the relationship between architecture and the planetary, the human and the non-human. It allows us to re-evaluate our existing practices, and unlearn to learn practices that challenge and work within this intertwined and interdependent relationship.As a result, this research defines them as pedagogic tools that holistically interrogate (architectural) systems and their impact on both human and non-human entities.

Not only is the pedagogical approach constructed by the institution, it is informed by the expertise of academic staff. Within the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art, this ranges from Adrian Lahoud, Dean of the SoA, Thandi Loewensen, MArch Programme Lead and Amin Taha, ADS5 Lead Tutor. Each of them fall into the category of planetary practices, ranging from Lahoud’s emphasise on the role of scale in architecture (Lahoud, 2016), to Taha’s work with natural stone and decarbonisation in the construction industry (Taha, 2023). These are just a few examples of tutors that engage with concepts of planetary architecture and infuse their practice within the SoA in the form of planetary pedagogies.

Ethnography as method: Above, a small collection of the pedagogies within the SoA can be seen, such as examples of ADS pedagogical approaches during the 2025 MA Architecture WIP Show (top), : The MA City Design and Environmental Architecture programme hosted a series of participatory lectures that investigated the role of architecture in the realm of justice, whether that be political, geographical, climate or economic hosted by The MA City Design and Environmental Architecture programmes (bottom-left), and The super REuse platform on the MA Interior Design programme at the RCA ran a workshop in collaboration with Retrouvius, where students had to design with existing broken objects. The platform tutors Graeme Brooker and Kazumasa Takada can be seen laying on the floor with the objects to be amended (bottom-right). Furthermore, a workshop was conducted with MArch Students to uncover and locate where they had encountered planetary pedagogies on the programme (green sticky notes) and how they are documenting/archiving their learning (orange sticky notes).

As a basis for the understanding of the pedagogical ecosystems within the SoA, the School of Architecture Pedagogical Pollination Map (image below) has been developed through both ethnographic practice through observation of the MA Architecture WIP Show in January 2025, dissecting the Programme Specifications for the 24/25 Academic Year, participation in symposiums arranged by the MA City Design and Environmental Architecture programmes, and Instagram activity on the individual programme pages. Highlighting these ecosystems posed the question of the afterlife of these pedagogies in an institutional sense, from the perspective of memory and the role of the archive. Are they being preserved or archived in any sense,
or is it being thrown out like a one-time-use plastic straw? As this research dives into the case study of the MArch Design Practice, this thought lingered. Being the inaugural year on the course, are these pedagogies being documented? Expanding to the wider School, are we archiving pedagogical practice that reflects a crucial moment in planetary history and architectural practice?

The SoA Pedagogical Pollination Map: The SoA Pedagogical Pollination Map highlights the flows of pedagogical practices across the School and how programmes cross-pollinate and the student exposure and engagement with these flows.

The manifestations of archives can take form in various forms. The digital can be seen as accessible, and while the physical provides a tangibility that the digital can’t, yet it is constrained by space. The MArch has actively creates archives as responses to their core unit briefs such as a Material Library, currently situated in their studio at the College, that is made up of individual explorations into a range of materials. That in itself is an archive of learning and generated knowledge in response to a pedagogical approach.

These many reflections and manifestations led me to develop an archival piece in collaboration with the MArch Design Practice course, to illustrate how these planetary pedagogies are fostering new discourses and re-positioning the role of architectural education and practice. Echoing the thoughts of Appadurai (2003) that an archive is an anticipation of collective memory, ‘Planetary Dialogues’ is documentation of ethnographic practice, yet collaborative. Students submitted their work along with key images and a brief introduction, opening up for the inclusion of the student voices. It embeds both the range of planetary pedagogies on the course, both objective and subjective, as well as the embedded student voice and how the pedagogies have triggered student reflection.

After the development of this, it raised the question of the role of the publication. It is an archive of the inaugural year of the programme, and documentation of contemporary pedagogical practice. It is an archival intervention that provides a contextualisation of pedagogical practices and student responses, as a response to the lack of such practice in the archive at the Royal College of Art. It responds to this absence of care for the documentation of pedagogies. While most of what has been explored in this research is still to be moulded by the years to come, the MArch Design Practice remains a key example of how planetary pedagogies holistically re-frame the role of the architectural practitioner in the age of planetary crisis, how this is taking place in dialogue with the wider SoA, as well as the role of archiving shifts in pedagogical practice in times of planetary crisis.

Gemma Louisa Adeler-Bjarnø Holdaway is a British/Danish multidisciplinary researcher, currently investigating the presence of planetary pedagogies in architectural education. She has previously worked in educational institutions, focusing on student experiences of both digital and in-person learning environments, and is currently working in the built environment industry.

In 2022, she and Hong Kong-born architect Leroy Yuen established Studio What Waste and have since won competitions such as the 2022 edition of Pews and Perches by London Festival of Architecture, producing a bench made of locally-sourced recycled HDPE and crafted small domestic objects from the production waste.

Education

2024-2025 Master of Research (MRes) at the Royal College of Art (UK)

2020-2023 BA (Hons) in Design Management at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London (UK)

2019-2020 BSc in Business Administration and Sociology at Copenhagen Business School (DK)

Conferences

2024 College Art Association of America (CAA) 113th Annual Conference in Chicago, IL (USA).
Session ‘Highlights in Undergraduate Art and Design Research’ with paper contribution ‘Regeneration for Whom? The Question of Spatial Regeneration for Communities or Capital in Contemporary London.’