Exploring pedagogical opportunities between architecture and planning: the case of University of Nevada, Las Vegas

This study critically explores collaboration opportunities between architects and planners. Architects typically emphasize site design, whereas planners stress prospects for community engagement. The collaboration opportunity prompts these professions to learn from each other synergistically. This case study outlines the efforts of two groups of architecture and planning students who, despite divergent pedagogical emphases, hone their integrative skills. Devising a set of evaluative criteria (permeability, stability and connectivity), enabled the planning students to rank and predict the university–community partnership impacts of eight projects proposed by the architecture students. The three expected partnership models (fortress, developer, and catalytic) enlightened the architecture students to also think about the social impact of their designs. There is a long history of debate about pedagogical and practice divides between planning and architecture. The paper contributes to those debates by examining how disciplinary divides might be overcome through collaborative teaching.