Notes on the Architectural Education of Nomads

This paper deals with issues and possibilities of cross-cultural study in architectural education, especially the teaching of architecture history and theory in schools with students of diverse cultural background. The paper argues that responding to cultural diversity involves not only a more comprehensive curriculum, but also a correlated view of curriculum content, skills, course structure and interdisciplinarity, and a sensitivity towards differences that cannot be accounted for in a universalist frame of reference. Instances of the cultural possibilities offered by the Chinese tradition to contemporary architectural education are given as examples and these are related to a geo-cultural landscape of Chinese communities in which Western schools might exercise a significant role.