Collaborative Cultures of Architecture Teams: Team Learning and Reflective Practice

OVERVIEW

This project explores learning and reflection practices in architecture teams. When architects use reflection-on-action, they learn from experience. When they use reflection-in-action, they learn from experiencing. Such reflective practices help architects build project knowledge and deliver their project. But most architects work in teams, alongside individuals with different ways of learning and knowledge perspectives. This begs the question: how does learning and reflective practices affect architecture teams? This project addresses this question by 1) using reflective practice, team learning and design collaboration literature to frame how architects learn as a team; 2) exploring how team learning influence the competitive performance of architecture teams; 3) measuring how team learning affects architecture team performance; and 4) experimenting a reflective workshop to help architects improve their team learning skills and thus, team performance. The report concludes by discussing its theoretical contributions and practical implication in their field of architecture and design.

Keywords:

• team learning
• reflective practice
• design collaboration
• architecture

Acknowledgements

I thank my supervisors, Professor Jane Burry, Associate Professor Eva Kyndt and Professor Anita Kocsis from Swinburne University of Technology for their contribution and discussions through the development and delivery of this work. This work was supported by the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.

Disclosure statement

The author declares no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Linus Tan

Linus Tan is a PhD Candidate at Swinburne University of Technology. He researches on team-oriented strategies to improve design collaboration efficiency. Pillared by Reflective Practice theory and Team Learning Behaviour theory, his broader research is on understanding how team learning strategies leverage architect’s tacit knowledge to win projects.