Looking back, moving forward: University-industry collaboration for architectural education, innovation and transformation

In the context of a rapidly changing higher education landscape, and an evolving world of work, no less so in the global South, universities and industry are looking for new ways to collaborate to achieve sustainable and relevant educational solutions. The case explored in this chapter is situated in architectural education in South Africa, where the aim of the collaboration was not to produce research, artefacts or profit. Instead, the university-industry collaboration (UIC) was motivated by the shared pursuit of demographic transformation of the architectural profession. Using a critical action research approach, the authors reflect on the collaboration of Cape Peninsula University of Technology with Open Architecture, a non-profit educational transformation unit linked to the South African Institute of Architects. The authors show that industry can play a catalytic role where university systems fall short, to implement educational innovation for transformation. This case revealed a different kind of bi-directional educational UIC-one that follows an organic process which relies on the informal social interactions between the organisations, and the unique contributions of the individuals and teams involved-producing results that would not be possible through the individual efforts of the respective collaborators.