Bridging the Gap studio combines twenty-five students and two professors from a US university and an Iraqi university together in a collaborative studio designed to develop cross-cultural understanding and the capacity to practice globally. Each studio group serves as information sources, eyes on-the-ground, cultural informants, fact-checkers, and design critics for their counterparts overseas. We share information, hold meetings, and offer critiques through multiple electronic means including WebEx video conferences, Google Drive, Messenger, and a private Facebook group that grows every year to include alumni of the ongoing studio collaboration plus practitioner mentors. The studio collaboration began four years ago, incubated by a multi-national architecture firm that has continued to provide advisors and critics to the studio and host our workshops and reviews. They offered internships to two students from each country, further building cross-cultural relationships. The architect mentors serve as role models for global practice, reinforcing for students the real-world application of their studio education. The studio is supported by the University of Maryland’s Global Classrooms Initiative.
Students tackle parallel sites in the capital cities of each other’s countries. Both sites are linear districts focused on commercial streets that are major thoroughfares. Karrada Dakhil is a lively marketplace night and day with people strolling, shopping, eating, drinking tea, and smoking hookahs. Located in the historically most diverse district in Baghdad, it is a vibrant cultural destination where people buy paintings and discuss literature in cafes late into the evening hours. This district has experienced the worst sectarian violence in Baghdad with devastating loss of life; it is still rebuilding from the destruction of the bombed mall and mourning the dead. K Street spans different districts of Washington DC. It is known as a prime location for business and politics that comes alive from 9 to 5 on weekdays, but shuts down on evenings and weekends. Both Karrada and K Street would benefit from new visions.
Each team researched their local site and exchanged information with the team abroad. Students next proposed tactical urbanism projects for each other’s sites, quick studies to begin to get to know the places and their problems, raise questions, and elicit rapid responses. Students next launched into a set of research projects on topics including climate, geography, demographics, history, sustainable traditions, urban planning, and architectural history. Based on the new cross-cultural knowledge of people and place, student teams worked on proposals for urban redevelopment. Finally, individual students selected sites within their study districts for architectural design of an urban institution. Students were encouraged to propose urban strategies that would unfold over time, freeing their thinking from the constraints of present-day feasibility to imagine how incremental change could lead to improved futures.
This studio was awarded the Architect Magazine Studio Prize 2019. Read our article and see the Architect Magazine for detail.
