Dr Anika van Aswegen

Staff Profile

BHHK(Int) MInt PhD(Pretoria)

Coordinator: Postgraduate programmes in Interior Architecture, PhD Support Group

Contact no: +27 (0)12 420 2095

Email: [email protected]

Office: 4-8, Boukunde Building, Hatfield Campus

Bio

Dr van Aswegen joined the Department of Architecture in 2016 after coordinating the Interior Design programmes at Nelson Mandela University (2003-2009). The interval allowed her to facilitate creative and community development initiatives in the Klein Karoo. She initiated creative art with children and innovation projects with communities. She also worked as a glass artist, designer and gallery curator in the Southern Cape.
 
Dr van Aswegen recently completed her Ph.D. focusing on the intersection of transformative learning, human-centred design and productive provocations. She has played a leading role in establishing an empathetic approach to architecture in the department, challenging the role of the architect by shifting perspectives and ways of thinking. Her emphasis on human-environmental relationships considers design at human scale to improve quality of life across diverse contexts. She is the coordinator for the postgraduate programmes in Interior Architecture and the Design Project and Discourse module at the MProf level.
 
Dr van Aswegen is a reviewer for two international journals and serves on the advisory board of a private design school. She is the departmental Exhibition Committee coordinator and a member of the Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology’s Curriculum Development and Transformation Committee.

Course involvement and teaching philosophy

List modules

Design Project and Discourse (DPD 803)

Design Investigation (DIT 803)

Research Field Project (RFP 732, RFP730)

Research Field Studies (RFS 710)

Design (ONT 303)

Teaching philosophy

Dr van Aswegen follows a student-centred approach to teaching through the lens of transformative learning. Her keen interest and research into design pedagogy highlight the importance of multiple points of view when students construct meaning in their own learning. She introduces progressive ways of engagement and critical reflection to expand and deepen understanding of complex societal issues embedded in design projects – empathy mapping, personas, role-play, storytelling, scenarios and various immersive and arts-informed inquiries.
 
She is the coordinator for Engaged Learning as a member of the department’s Unit for Urban Citizenship, which oversees community engagement briefing and debriefing in design projects across undergraduate and postgraduate years. Her design projects and themes relate to cultural exchange, relational learning, human-environmental interface, inhabitation and belonging, identity formation, and temporal architectural interventions. She encourages students to foster engaged design values as future change agents through this approach.

Research profile

ORCID ID: 0000-0002-7511-9570

Department Research Focus Areas: 

  • Architectural Design Education
  • Inhabitation of Place
  • Urban Citizenship
Dr van Aswegen is an inductive researcher using arts-based research to unsettle conventional and
dominant ideologies to reveal multiple meanings and perspectives. Her approach includes poetic
and narrative inquiry, visual art activities and kinaesthetic empathy to gain new and deeper insights into transformative development. Her teaching approach and research focus are interlinked, as she uses productive disruptions as provocation to trigger the affective domain of student development. She believes learning is relational and that arts-based inquiries can expand the conventional understanding of how we make meaning of the complex life layers we experience daily. A constructivist-interpretivist foundation enables her to explore and reveal the importance of various understandings. She aims to transfer these skills to her students to equip them to gain their insights as future practitioners.

Research interests: Arts-based inquiries to interweave research themes across various contexts. Themes include identity formation, belonging and meaning-making towards design citizenship.

Research projects 

Anika is a member of Team Mzanzi as part of the International Innovative Learning Environments + Student Experience (ILE+SE) Scoping Study managed by the University of Melbourne’s Learning Environments Applied Research Network (LEaRN). The study is aimed at establishing knowledge about pedagogical and architectural design, and how to evaluate the effectiveness of innovating learning environments. It furthermore focuses on diverse student experiences at school.

Recent publications

Van Aswegen, A. In print. ‘Human-centred and disruptive pedagogy in the architecture studio’. Innovate.

Van Aswegen, A. 2021. ‘Refocusing the interior lens: other methods of critical and creative inquiry in the architecture studio’. In Smith, C. Progressive studio pedagogy: examples for architecture and allied design fields. London: Routledge, pp. 54-77.

Ghillino, N & van Aswegen, A. 2019. Innovative designs provide the homeless with a form of urban domesticity. Innovate 14, pp. 20-23.

Grobler, A. 2018. ‘Relational encounters:  meaning-making of the intangible through emotional attachment. Stories of Interior:  Multiple Perspectives on Interiority - [in]arch international Conference Proceedings, 30 & 31 January 2018, Universitas Indonesia, pp. 111-120.  ISBN: 978-602-72857-9-8.

Students currently supervising

Lebo Mokolane: Exploring the dynamics of informal trade and urban identity: a qualitative study of Church Street in Pretoria. MProf (Interior Architecture)
 
Cara Potgieter: Inhabiting the city: a study into the spontaneous formation of urban interiors in
Hatfield. MProf (Interior Architecture)
 
Wailana Kgatuge: Cascades of encounter: reimagining the conceptions of homecoming through spatial dialogues between narrative, urban memory and cultural resilience in Mohlakeng. MProf (Architecture)

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