Panzano_Headshot.jpg

Pedagogy into Practice

2 feature articles on teaching design in relation to practice

Capture.JPG

Into Practice

Harvard Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning

In her Transformations course, Assistant Professor of Architecture Megan Panzano uses architectural design methods and concepts, and a workshop approach for giving feedback, to engage undergraduates from a wide range of concentrations. When students translate abstract ideas into physical form through a variety of materials and fabrication techniques (see photos), they confront limits, question assumptions, and expand their problem-solving capacity…

By working within material constraints, generating new options, and learning together, students’ perspectives are transformed. “This process is a micro-version of translating observations of the world into the world.

 
MP_Ts2017.jpg

Are You Ready to Teach?

Architect Magazine interview on teaching and practicing architecture, April 2018

For Megan Panzano, founder of Boston-based studioPM and a full-time assistant professor of architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, finding an overlap between design work and course work has been crucial to her success. “My practice has grown from the teaching,” Panzano says. “We are small by design and the types of projects that I take on are those that still have a real rootedness in things that I’ve been working on in the academic setting.”

Teaching can also offer an opportunity to step away from a project and clear your head. “It’s not like things stop, but I can think about the project in the background and not be forced to actively make decisions on it.” Panzano says, “Teaching always helps me be that much more decisive and committed to the next design edit or iteration I wanted to look at when I returned to that project.”