19. Secret Life of a Degree - a podcast by Stories about cities and urban life

The Sydney Bachelor of Architecture degree has a lively history. It was open to men and women from its first offering in 1918, but the inclusion of women was controversial. In 1972 a student strike shut down the school for two weeks; students demanded the degree be remade.

"In 1926... the University of Sydney put forward Marjorie [Holroyde nee] Hudson, a female student, for the award; and this really set the cat amongst the pigons. And the document we have from the Board of Architects minutes effectively gives every single battle that women had to fight in terms of equality in the profession." Daniel Ryan

You might think that university degrees are fairly static cultural products, that change slowly and in line with the often-lethargic institutions they’re created within. But university degrees perhaps reflect the world back to us, just as much as their purpose is to shape the world around us. In this sense, university degrees are firmly located in society. They’re a cultural product of society. They ebb and flow with the times. They adapt and change to suit the current social and political mood; and they should always be on the frontiers of the latest ideas. But sometimes these ideas need to be challenged.

“When we look at the history of the school - the history of any institution - we can recover the motivations behind the decision that have been taken over time”. Professor Andrew Leach

This episode of City Road is not your usual fare. We're talking with Professor Andrew Leach, Associate Professor Lee Stickells, Daniel Ryan and Catherine Lassen about a book on the history of the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney. The book is edited by Andrew and Lee, and our four guests have all written chapters. We’ve pulled four excerpts out of the book to tell you about the secret life of the Architecture Degree at the University of Sydney. And it’s a story that goes in some strange directions.

From the way the 1960s and 70s counter-culture movements and the ideas around free speech, civil rights, feminism, and anti-war dissent radically reshaped what was happening inside the university;

"Architecture schools around the world are also impacted by this broader dissent, they're often part of it." Lee Stickells

To the way the ideas within the academy of architecture more broadly shaped the degree program. Writing about the work of Professor Jennifer Taylor (1935-2015) and her 1972 book Australian Identity: Houses for Sydney 1953-63, Catherine Lassen says;

"In good architecture, absolutely, there's an internalising of the questions, and those things are up for grabs". Catherine Lassen

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