Many of us at Design Engine enjoy loose or formal associations with UK Schools of Architecture.  Whether examining at Kingston, Portsmouth or the AA, running a unit at Oxford Brookes or acting as a guest critic at Bath, Plymouth, Huddersfield or The Bartlett, we embrace the opportunities that sharing our experience brings.

The discipline of ‘teaching’ has many facets.  It can include formal lecturing, but can also involve instigating and leading research, running group seminars and workshops, running field trips and study tours, acting as review critic, or providing one-to-one tutorials.  Most of all, perhaps, it involves the role of mentor, which can be defined simply as ‘an experienced and trusted advisor’.

At present, Design Engine represents alumni from fourteen different Universities. The ‘mentor’ role provides a segue between teaching and practice, since we extend the mentorship approach for our graduates once inside the company.

At its most fulfilling, the experience of teaching has a two-way reward. Contact with students reminds us of the creativity that comes with a mind uncluttered with increasingly stringent codes, standards and regulations. However, these things can be learned by an energetic and enquiring mind and put to good effect along with nascent design skills.

Our passion for teaching also extends into our education sector design work, where we are fortunate to have built a strong reputation in the field of schools, colleges and universities.  In all cases, we consider our buildings a facility for learning and we enjoy finding out how pupils and students use our spaces (and the spaces between the spaces) to their own enjoyment.