Transnational design education for future architects: reflections from Sino-Italian joint studios

In the increasingly interconnected contemporary world, there exists an unprecedented demand for architects to possess an awareness of the global diversity and multiplicity of values, cultures, politics and habits. Transnational design studios aim to educate future architects to face this challenge. After exploring collaborative learning in transnational contexts, this research presents two Sino-Italian joint architectural design studios that the authors organised and tutored in 2019. Through on-site observation, semi-structured interviews, self-reflection and a follow-up survey, this research reveals that the universal language of architecture can overcome linguistic barriers in transnational contexts and the collaborative learning atmosphere allows students to learn the advantageous skills from their peers rapidly, particularly in inter-university mixed group learning. This experience significantly enhances the mutual understanding between Chinese and Italian students, not only in terms of design, but also with reference to wider cultural and societal issues. This study contends that establishing transnational design studios is an effective approach to enable future architects to acknowledge unfamiliar contexts and acquire design skills from peer-learning. It allows architects to build upon and understand the fascinating power of diversity in architecture from a young age.