Books

Ashraf M. Salama, Celen Pasalar, and Zeynep Toker, Routledge, London, United Kingdom, 2026. ISBN: 9781041133452

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This book explores the enduring influence of Henry Sanoff's pioneering work in participatory design and community engagement. For more than six decades, Sanoff reshaped how architects, planners, educators, and communities collaborate in designing and planning environments that shape everyday life. Written by three of Sanoff's former students and close collaborators, the book offers a comprehensive and accessible account of his thinking, pedagogy, and practice across thirteen chapters. It examines the evolution of co-creation as both a methodology and a pedagogical commitment, tracing its roots in community design, its application in architectural education, and its continued relevance for contemporary practice. 

The book documents a rich body of participatory tools, frameworks, and case studies developed over decades of research and studio teaching. More than a reflection on a distinguished legacy, it is a forward-looking call to action, inviting educators, students, architects, urban designers, and scholars to continue advancing participatory and community-based practices in architectural and planning education and research.

Madhavi P. Patil and Ashraf M. Salama, Independently Published, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom, 2026. ISBN: B0GTZRP2GF

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This book critically examines the emergence of artificial intelligence and algorithmic tools in architecture and interrogates their potential to reinforce colonial patterns of knowledge production, design practice, and pedagogical frameworks. It argues that the uncritical adoption of AI in architectural education and practice risks perpetuating existing inequalities and marginalising non-Western knowledge systems, raising fundamental questions about whose values, aesthetics, and ways of knowing are embedded in these technologies. 

The book develops a conceptual and practical framework for decolonising AI in architecture, drawing on postcolonial theory, critical pedagogy, and evidence from architectural education and practice contexts across the Global South and beyond. It engages with the ethical, epistemological, and disciplinary implications of algorithmic design tools, offering a rigorously argued and accessible resource for educators, researchers, and practitioners seeking to engage with these technologies in a critically informed and ethically grounded manner. The book makes a timely and original contribution to the growing international discourse on decolonisation, artificial intelligence, and the future of architectural knowledge.

Ashraf M. Salama and Madhavi P. Patil (eds), ABC2 Publishing, Glasgow, United Kingdom, 2025. ISBN: 9781068436000

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This volume brings together critical reflections on more than one hundred books that have shaped the understanding of the relationship between people and place across architecture, urban design, and planning. Structured as a curated discourse, the volume revisits foundational and contemporary texts that have collectively defined the intellectual landscape of evidence-based design, human–environment interaction, socio-spatial practice, placemaking, and the cultural dimensions of the built environment. Each contribution offers a critical appraisal of a selected work, situating it within the broader trajectory of people–place research and identifying its enduring relevance for contemporary scholarship and practice. 

The volume is organised thematically to reflect the diversity and richness of the person–environment discourse, drawing on perspectives from architecture, urban design, environmental psychology, anthropology, and social science. It serves as an essential reference and intellectual companion for scholars, students, and practitioners seeking to navigate, reinstate, and advance the epistemological traditions that underpin human-centred approaches to the design and assessment of built environments.

Kathleen C. Albright, Jennifer Syvertsen, Celeste von Weise, Andrew Balster, Ashraf M. Salama, and Kathryn Dupre (eds), ORO Editions, California, United States. ASIN: 1966515502

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This book brings together critical reflections on more than one hundred books that have shaped the understadocuments and critically reflects on more than twenty-five years of the Chicago Studio, a sustained and distinctive model of collaboration between architecture educators and practitioners that has served as an exemplary framework for integrating professional practice into architectural education. The book examines the pedagogical principles, design processes, community engagements, and built outcomes that have characterised the studio across a quarter century of activity, offering a rich and layered account of how long-term partnerships between academia and practice can transform the education of future architects. Contributors include educators, practitioners, critics, and former students whose diverse perspectives collectively illuminate the studio's evolving identity, its responses to changing urban and social conditions in Chicago, and its broader implications for architectural pedagogy. 

The volume makes a compelling case for the studio as a site of intellectual exchange, civic engagement, and design innovation, and offers practical and conceptual insights for those seeking to develop or sustain similar collaborative models in architectural education worldwide.

Harriet Harriss, Ashraf M. Salama, and Ane Gonzalez Lara (eds), December 2022 / January 2023, Routledge, London, United Kingdom, ISBN: 9780367893705

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The established canon of architectural education and design pedagogy has been predominantly produced within the Northern hemisphere and transposed into schools across the Global South with little regard for social or ecological culture and context, nor regional pedagogic traditions. Architecture's academic community throughout the Global South has been deeply affected by this imposition, how it shapes and influences proto-professionals and by implication architectural processes and outcomes.

The Routledge Companion to Architectural Pedagogies of the Global South resituates and recenters an array of pedagogic approaches that are either produced or proliferate from the Global South while antagonizing the linguistic, epistemological, and disciplinary conceits that, under imperialist imperatives, ensured that these pedagogies remained maligned or marginalized. The book maintains that the exclusionary implications of architectural notions of the 'orders', the 'canon', and the 'core' have served to constrain and calcify its contents and in doing so imperiled its relevance and impact. In contrast, this companion serves to evidence that architecture's academic and professional advancement is wholly contingent on its ability to fully engage in an additive and inclusive process whereby the necessary disruptions that occur when marginalized knowledge confronts established knowledge result in a catalytical transformation through which new, co-created knowledge can emerge. Notions of tradition, identity, modernity, vernacularism, post-colonialism, poverty, migration, social and spatial justice, climate apartheid, globalization, ethical standards, and international partnerships are key considerations in the context of the Global South. How these issues originate and evolve within architectural schools and curricula and how they act as drivers across all curricula activities are some of the important themes that the contributors interrogate and debate.

With 34 contributions from 55 authors from diverse regional, racial, ethnic, gender, and cultural backgrounds, this companion is structured in four sections that capture, critique, and catalog multifarious marginalised pedagogical approaches to provide educators and students with an essential source book of navigational steers, core contestations, propositional tactics, and reimagined rubrics. The Routledge Companion to Architectural Pedagogies of the Global South pioneers a transposable strategy for academics from all disciplines looking to adopt a tested approach to decolonising the curriculum. It is only through a process of destabilising the hegemonic, epistemological, and disciplinary frameworks that have long prescribed architecture's pedagogies that the possibility of more inclusive, representative, and relevant pedagogical practices can emerge.

Marwa M. El-Ashmouni and Ashraf M. Salama, July 2022, Routledge, London, United Kingdom, ISBN: 9780367703622

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This book is an effort towards an in-depth understanding of the architectural discourse in Egypt developed over more than eight decades. It offers a distinctive theoretical interpretation of the forces shaping the kaleidoscopic shifts in Egyptian architecture through the analysis of the micro space of architectural representation of twentieth-century Egyptian architecture. Predicated on historical contextualization, theoretical integration, and global conceptualization, Edward Said's analytical method of contrapuntal reading and the spatial discourse analysis posited by C. Greig Crysler are lucidly assimilated to generate insights into the various voices within the architectural discourse in Egypt. The analysis and critique of two important professional magazines, al-'Imarah (1939–1959) and 'Alam al-Bena'a (1980–2000), which shaped the collective psyche of both the academic and professional communities in Egypt and the wider region, coupled with the exploration of two other short-lived magazines, M'imaryah (1982–1989) and Medina (1998–2002), and other less-influential professional magazines, discloses the structure of attitude and reference — the exclusions and inclusions that defined the boundaries of the space of the discourse.

Influence and Resistance in Post-Independence Egyptian Architecture paves the way to genuinely debate a yet-to-mature twenty-first century architectural discourse in Egypt. This book is a key resource for architects, architectural historians, and critical theorists and will appeal to academics and to both graduate and advanced undergraduate students in architectural history and theory, and Middle East and Global South studies.

Part of the Routledge Series on Architecture and Urbanism in the Global South

Ashraf M. Salama, Routledge Revivals Series, Taylor & Francis, New York, United States, March 2021. ISBN: 9780367690175

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First published in 2009, Transformative Pedagogy in Architecture and Urbanism is a detailed round of pedagogical dialogue on architecture and urbanism that reset the stage for debating future visions of transformative pedagogy and its impact on design education. Structured in five chapters, the book presents a wide range of innovative concepts and practical methodologies for teaching architectural and urban design. It traces the roots of architectural education and offers several contrasting ideas and strategies of design teaching practices.

The book includes five chapters: 1) A New Theory for Transformative Pedagogy in Architecture and Urbanism; 2) The Architect, the Profession, and Society; 3) The Conventional Approach to Studio Teaching Practice; 4) Against the Conventional Studio Pedagogy; and 5) Empowering Transformative Pedagogy.

Transformative Pedagogy in Architecture and Urbanism speaks to those with an interest in architectural and urban design, and architectural and design education.

Part of Routledge Revivals Series

Ashraf M. Salama and Marwa M. El-Ashmouni, Routledge, London, United Kingdom, July 2020. ISBN: 9781138482555

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This book discusses architectural excellence in Islamic societies drawing on textual and visual materials from the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT, developed over more than three decades. At the core of the discussion are the efforts, processes, and outcomes of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA). The Award recognises excellence in architectural and urban interventions within cities and settlements in the Islamic world, which are continuously challenged by dramatic changes in economies, societies, political systems, decision-making, and environmental requirements. The book uncovers architectural and place production away from Orientalism and colonial chauvinistic views by constructing narratives unique to various contexts within the Islamic world, while discussing the role of the Award in setting values of architectural and urban excellence. 

The examination of more than sixty awarded and shortlisted projects developed in more than thirty-five countries delineates decolonised narratives on the enduring values of architecture; architectural and urban conservation; built environment sustainability; and architectural pluralism and multiple modernities. The oeuvre of award-winning figures and projects unveils the critical cognizance of the Award in acknowledging materialised accomplishments that represent the best and most worthy ideals of architectural values in Islamic societies. These accomplishments, including a spectrum of heritage, cultural, educational, communal, and social projects, establish clear connections between the socio-cultural aspirations of Islamic societies, values of excellence, and architectural and urban responses to social and environmental needs and challenges.

Part of Routledge Series of Architectural and Urbanism in the Global South

Hisham Abusaada, Ashraf M. Salama, and Abeer Elshater (eds), IGI Global, Hershey, Pennsylvania, United States, June 2020. ISBN: 9781799838562

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New technologies have the power to augment many aspects of society, including public spaces and art. The impact of smart technology on urban design is vast and filled with opportunity and has profound implications on the everyday urban environment. Only by starting new conversations can we develop further contemporary insights that will affect how we move through the world. Reconstructing Urban Ambiance in Smart Public Places is a pivotal reference source that provides contemporary insights into a comprehensive interpretation of urban ambiances in smart places as it relates to the development of cities or to various levels of intervention in extant urban environments. 

The book examines the impact of architectural design on the creation of urban ambience in artworks and how to reflect this technique in the fields of professional architectural practice. While covering a wide range of topics including wellbeing, quality-related artistry, and atmosphere, this publication combines smart technological innovation with creative design principles. This book is ideally designed for civil engineers, urban designers, architects, entrepreneurs, policymakers, researchers, academicians, and students.

Florian Wiedmann and Ashraf M. Salama, Bloomsbury I.B. Tauris, London, United Kingdom, 2019. ISBN: 9781788310680

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Human history has seen many settlements being transformed or completely erected by an expatriate workforce and foreigners arriving from various places. Recent migration patterns in the Gulf have led to emerging airport societies on unprecedented scales. Most guest workers, both labourers and mid-to-high-income groups, perceive their stay as a temporary opportunity to earn suitable income or gain intensive experience. Unveiling the multiplicity of factors producing urbanism in the fast-growing region of the Gulf, this book provides an in-depth overview of housing and migration dynamics in major Gulf cities. It shows that a top-down approach devised to control urban development patterns is a crucial element in understanding both migration and housing dynamics in Gulf States. 

The book thoroughly examines the role of governance, from initiating a development vision, to reorganising decision-making frameworks, and to implementing distinctive strategies. It takes a considered approach to and an objective examination of how investor-driven patterns, emerging new economic sectors, and demographic transformations have impacted the demand and supply as well as the specific characteristics of housing in the Gulf. The direct interactions between inhabitants and their home environments are also explored by demonstrating the divergent living standards and new lifestyle tendencies and their manifestations in the overall urban environment of these migrant cities.

Ashraf M. Salama, Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Surrey/London, United Kingdom, February 2015; Routledge, London, United Kingdom, July 2016. ISBN: 9781472422873

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Design education in architecture and allied disciplines is the cornerstone of design professions that contribute to shaping the built environment of the future. In this book, design education is dealt with as a paradigm whose evolutionary processes, underpinning theories, contents, methods, and tools are questioned and critically examined. It features a comprehensive discussion on design education with a focus on the design studio as the backbone of that education and the main forum for creative exploration and interaction, and for knowledge acquisition, assimilation, and reproduction. Through international and regional surveys, the striking qualities of design pedagogy, contemporary professional challenges, and the associated sociocultural and environmental needs are identified. 

Building on twenty-five years of research and explorations into design pedagogy in architecture and urban design, this book authoritatively offers a critical analysis of a continuously evolving profession, its associated societal processes, and the way in which design education reacts to their demands. Matters that pertain to traditional pedagogy, its characteristics, and the reactions developed against it in the form of pioneering alternative studio teaching practices are examined. Advances in design approaches and methods are debated including critical inquiry, empirical making, process-based learning, and Community Design, Design-Build, and Live Project Studios. Innovative teaching practices in lecture-based and introductory design courses are identified and characterised including inquiry-based, active, and experiential learning. These investigations are all interwoven to elucidate a comprehensive understanding of contemporary design education in architecture and allied disciplines. A wide spectrum of teaching approaches and methods is utilised to reveal a theory of a 'trans-critical' pedagogy that is conceptualised to shape a futuristic thinking about design teaching. Lessons learned from techniques and mechanisms for accommodation, adaptation, and implementation of a 'trans-critical' pedagogy in education are conceived to invigorate a new student-centred, evidence-based design culture sheltered in a wide variety of learning settings in architecture and beyond.

Wolfgang F. E. Preiser, Aaron T. Davis, Ashraf M. Salama, and Andrea Hardy (eds), Routledge, London, United Kingdom, December 2014. ISBN: 9780415725330

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For the first time, this book demonstrates that the two paradigms of architectural criticism and performance evaluation can not only co-exist but complement each other in the assessment of built works. As architecture takes more principled stances worldwide, from environmental sustainability to social, cultural, and economic activism, this book is an examination of the roles of perceived and measured quality in architecture. By exploring in tandem both subjective traditional architectural criticism and environmental design and performance evaluation and its objective evaluation criteria, the book argues that both methodologies and outcomes can achieve a comprehensive assessment of quality in architecture. 

Curated by a global editorial team, the book includes contributions from international architects and critics based in the United Kingdom, United States, Brazil, France, Qatar, Egypt, New Zealand, China, Japan, and Germany; global case studies which illustrate both perspectives addressed by the book and comparative analyses of the findings; and a six-part organisation which includes introductions and conclusions from the editors to help guide the reader and further illuminate the contributions. By presenting a systematic approach to assessing building performance, design professionals will learn how to improve building design and performance with major stakeholders in mind, especially end users and occupants.

Ashraf M. Salama and Florian Wiedmann, Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Surrey, United Kingdom, November 2013; Routledge, London, United Kingdom, July 2016. ISBN: 9781409466345

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Over the past decade or so, the wealth produced by Qatar's oil and gas exports has generated a construction development boom in its capital city of Doha and the surrounding vicinity. Since the late 1990s, the number of inhabitants has grown from less than 400,000 to more than 1.7 million. In many respects, Doha is portrayed as an important emerging global capital in the Gulf region, which has been positioning and re-inventing itself on the map of international architecture and urbanism, with a global image of building clusters of glass office towers as well as cultural and educational facilities. While focusing on the architectural and planning aspects of Doha's intensive urbanisation, this first comprehensive examination of the city sets this within the socio-political and economic context of the wider Arabian Peninsula. 

The book features a comprehensive discussion on contemporary architecture and urbanism of Doha as an emerging regional metropolis and provides a critical analysis of the evolution of architecture and urbanism as products of the contemporary global condition. Issues that pertain to emerging service hubs, decentralised urban governance, integrated urban development strategies, image-making practices, urban identity, the dialectic relations between the city and its society, and sustainable urbanism are all examined to elucidate the urban evolution and the contemporary condition of Doha. The book concludes by suggesting a framework for future studies of the city as well as for investigating the future of similar cities, setting out an agenda for sustainable urban growth, while invigorating the multiple roles urban planners and architects can play in shaping this future.

Ashraf M. Salama, Umbau-Verlag, Solingen, Germany, December 2009. ISBN: 9783937954042

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Re-published by Routledge in 2021 as part of the Routledge Revivals Series.

As a new round of pedagogical dialogue on architecture and urbanism, this book resets the stage for debating future visions of transformative pedagogy and its impact on design education. This is a forward-looking effort that comes to amalgamate concerns, concepts, and practices that Ashraf Salama explored and introduced over a period of two decades. It is about balancing the creative act required for creating responsive environments and the social and environmental responsibilities that should be embedded in this act. It is also about understanding how knowledge is produced, what the components of such knowledge are, and what learning processes and social practices can be used to transmit it. 

Structured in five chapters, the book presents a wide range of innovative and practical methodologies for teaching architectural and urban design. It traces the roots of architectural education and offers several contrasting ideas and strategies of design teaching practices. The book includes five chapters: 1) A New Theory for Transformative Pedagogy in Architecture and Urbanism; 2) The Architect, the Profession, and Society; 3) The Conventional Approach to Studio Teaching Practice; 4) Against the Conventional Studio Pedagogy; and 5) Empowering Transformative Pedagogy.

Ashraf M. Salama and Nicholas Wilkinson (eds), Urban International Press, Gateshead, United Kingdom, July 2007. ISBN: 9781872811093

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This groundbreaking book is a new comprehensive round of debate developed in response to the lack of research on design pedagogy. It provides thoughts, ideas, and experiments of design educators of different generations and different academic backgrounds, who are teaching and conducting research in different cultural contexts. It probes future universal visions within which the needs of future shapers of the built environment can be conceptualised and the design pedagogy that satisfies those needs can be debated. 

Addressing academics, practitioners, graduate students, and those who make decisions about the educational system, over twenty contributors introduce analytical reflections on their positions and experience. Two invited contributions by N. John Habraken and Henry Sanoff offer visionary thoughts on their outstanding experience in design pedagogy and research. Structured in five chapters, this book introduces theoretical perspectives on design pedagogy and outlines a number of thematic issues that pertain to critical thinking and decision making; cognitive and teaching/learning styles; community, place, and service learning; and the application of digital technologies in studio teaching practices — all articulated in a conscious endeavour toward the betterment of the built environment.

Donatella Mazzoleni, Giuseppe Anzani, Ashraf M. Salama, Marichela Sepe, and Maria Maddalena Simone (eds), Edizioni Intra Moenia, Naples, Italy, August 2005. ISBN: 9788874210541

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Architecture as Language of Peace was released in August 2005 and published by Edizioni Intra Moenia, Naples, Italy. The book is jointly edited by Donatella Mazzoleni, Giuseppe Anzani, Ashraf M. Salama, Marichela Sepe, and Maria Maddalena Simone. 

The contents of this volume were developed in the early months of 2003 and brought together two components: the achievements of the Design Laboratory involving fourth- and fifth-year architecture students at the Università di Napoli Federico II in 2001–2003, featuring spaces for encounters with Arab culture; and the proceedings of the 2nd International Seminar on Identity and Differences in Architecture, held in Naples in December 2002. The book features scholarly articles by academics from Europe, Australia, North Africa, and the Middle East. Full papers are published in their original language with abstracts in Arabic and English.

Ashraf M. Salama, William O'Reilly, and Kaj Noschis (eds), Comportements, Lausanne, Switzerland, October 2002. ISBN: 9782940075072

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Recent literature on architectural education notes that there are continuous attempts to massage architectural curricula, to reconfigure the structure of the educational process, to test accepted ideas, and to probe future visions. However, research findings reveal some fundamental disagreements over the goals and objectives, structure and contents, and tools and techniques required for architectural education today. Since education is the cornerstone of the profession and since the approach to and the content of that education is the backbone of architectural practice, it is essential to encounter the subject in its broadest sense and to deal with it as a rich field of research whose knowledge base, content, and methods can be examined, questioned, and debated. Very few attempts have been developed over the last decade or so by individual scholars to explore the rituals of education in a systematic, visionary, and research-based manner, indicating the need for more published research and experiments on architectural education and practice. 

Architectural Education Today is a response to this need and is divided into four parts, each of which seeks to provide an exploration of answers to critical questions that pertain to knowledge, professional practice, educational experiments and experiences, and their supporting tools. The intent is not to provide a blueprint on how improvement might occur or to offer ready-made or definitive answers, but to further open architectural education to discussion — a subject that for many years received sparse attention.

Ashraf M. Salama, The Anglo-Egyptian Publications, Cairo, Egypt, October 1998. ISBN: 9789770518247

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In this book, environmental design is defined in socio-spatial and socio-behavioural terms. The book is aimed at students with little or no experience in environmental design and emphasises the strong relationship between human factors and environmental design. It is based on ideas and approaches developed by leading theorists in the field, with an attempt to simplify those ideas for beginning design students. The book includes four chapters: 1) Design, Culture, Architecture, and the Human Science; 2) Design Components of the Built Environment; 3) Designing Built Environments; and 4) Concepts and Principles in Architecture and Urban Design.

Ashraf M. Salama, Tailored Text and Unlimited Potential Publishing, Raleigh, North Carolina, United States, July 1995. ISBN: 9780964795006

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This book presents a wide range of innovative concepts and practical ideas for teaching architectural design. It explores different aspects of studio teaching and their impact on the attitudes, skills, methods, and tools of architects. It offers a comparative analysis of contemporary trends committed to shaping and identifying studio objectives and processes. The book includes five chapters: 1) Introduction: Problems in the Practice of Architecture; 2) The Architect and Society; 3) Design Education and Studio Work in the Conventional Approach; 4) Revolutionary Concepts for Teaching Architectural Design — Design Studio Teaching Models; and 5) Expanding the Knowledge Base in the Architectural Design Studio.

Ashraf M. Salama and Meike Schalk (eds), Urgent Pedagogies Reader #,3 vol. 050.AR, IASPIS – The Swedish Arts Grants Committee's International Programme for Visual and Applied Art, Stockholm, Sweden, 2025. No ISBN Assigned: Open Access.

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This volume presents a collection of contributions that interrogate and advance emancipatory and decolonised pedagogical practices in architecture and the built environment. Published as the third in the internationally recognised Urgent Pedagogies series — a platform committed to advancing critical and socially engaged art and design education — the volume draws on contributions presented at the conference Learnings/Unlearnings: Environmental Pedagogies, Play, Policies, and Spatial Design, held in Stockholm in September 2024. It addresses the conditions under which co-creation and decolonisation can become structuring principles of architectural education and practice, engaging with questions of knowledge production, disciplinary power, and inclusive futures. The reader challenges the canonical frameworks of architectural pedagogy and makes a compelling case for pedagogical models that are participatory, reflexive, and grounded in social and environmental justice. It offers a timely and freely accessible resource for educators and students seeking to rethink the values, methods, and structures that shape architectural education in a rapidly changing world.