Place-Based Education in the Architectural Design Studio: Agrarian Landscape as a Resource for Sustainable Urban Lifestyle

This article highlights how place-based education can be used to raise awareness about sustainability and potentially influence design process decisions that have environmental and cultural implications. Place-based education is a term used to describe an educational worldview based on development of curriculum centered on the local, social, economic, and ecological resources of a community. The study shows results of Masters Students' research on situating a housing complex in the context of the agrarian landscape of Vojvodina, Serbia, considering it as a resource for a new sustainable urban lifestyle. During the first year of Masters Studies at the Faculty of Architecture, Belgrade University, an architectural design studio with 15 students had the task of exploring the potential of expanding the city of Belgrade across the agrarian landscape, as to affirm the role of place in contemporary everyday life. Students were expected to explore the possibilities and limitations of the relationship between man and agrarian landscape via architecture, re-thinking how various architectural design approaches could balance and harmonize the impact of the built environment on the agrarian landscape. The paper shows that place-based education possesses elements necessary for the inclusion of a wider spatial-cultural context in the process of architectural design and prioritization of environmental literacy and responsibility, as one of the main components of sustainable development.