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Alexandra
Noble
Biography
Dr. Alexandra Noble is a qualified architect and Lecturer in Architectural Technology and Interior Design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. She completed her PhD in 2024 at the University of the Western Cape, where her research explored posthuman and decolonial approaches to socially just pedagogy in architectural and interior design education. Her work proposes a process-oriented curriculum framework that challenges conventional teaching practices and supports transformative learning. She also holds an Honours degree in Visual Arts from Stellenbosch University and a Master of Architectural Studies from the University of Cape Town.
Learning and Teaching the City Otherwise: Artivism, Walking Methodologies, and Spatial Justice in Post-Apartheid Cape Town
Keywords: walking methodologies, research-creation, spatial design pedagogy, decolonial, posthuman
This paper reflects on the authors’ ongoing research into Cape Town as a contested site of memory, inequality, and transformation, and asks how such a site might function as a pedagogical ground for artivism in higher education. Building on prior co-authored investigations into memorialisation and visual redress, the authors examine how questions of memory, erasure, and spatial power can be carried into architectural and interior design pedagogy within a technical university context.
The paper takes the form of a reflective dialogue between the two authors, revisiting methodologies previously embedded in their students’ learning and teaching and more fully articulated in Dr. Noble’s doctoral research. While these projects are extensively theorised in Noble’s research, certain components were collaboratively implemented, providing the basis for a shared critical reflection. This reflection considers possible future ideas on process and examines how these approaches could be adapted and expanded upon.
Central to this discussion is how walking methodologies and research-creation practices, understood here as forms of artivism, re/configure students’ engagement with the city. Rather than treating the urban environment as a neutral backdrop for design, they position it as a co-teacher—layered with histories of struggle, displacement, resilience, and change. Through curated walking routes, site-responsive sketching, cognitive mapping, and reflective journaling, students are encouraged to read and respond to the material and political conditions embedded in the built environment. Movement becomes method, foregrounding embodied inquiry and spatial witnessing, while blurring distinctions between studio and street.
Grounded in decolonial and posthuman theory, this paper argues for a shift from product-driven education toward process-oriented, ethically responsive pedagogies. By critically assessing their past approaches, they seek to identify and extend pedagogical methods for artivism that can inform decolonial curriculum development in architectural and interior design education.