Professional Documents
Culture Documents
DESIGNingDESIGNEDUCATION
d es i g n t r a i nC O N G R E S S
PROCEEDINGS PART I
DESIGNingDESIGNEDUCATION
d es i g n t r a i nC O N G R E S S
Amsterdam, The Netherlands 05-07 June 2008
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www.designtrain-ldv.com
DESIGNTRAIN ORGANIZERS
KTU
KARADENIZ TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE
TRABZON, TURKEY
FB
HOCHSCHULE BOCHUM
UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED ARTS
DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE
BOCHUM, GERMANY
PDM
POLITECNICO DI MILANO
DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE AND PLANNING
MILAN, ITALY
GU
GAZI UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE
ANKARA, TURKEY
ELIA
EUROPEAN LEAGUE OF INSTITUTES OF THE ARTS
AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS
Designtrain 2008
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INTRODUCTION
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
A VISION
THE DESIGN PROCESS - BETWEEN IMAGINATION, IMPLEMENTATION AND EVALUATION
FROM SOCIAL STUDIES CHAPTER III *TO NEVERLAND**...
RESEARCH AND TRAINING IN THE FIELD: AN EXAMPLE OF CAD-SUPPORTED DRAWING DOCUMENTATION ON THE MAUSOLEUM OF BELEVI / TURKEY
INTRODUCING DESIGN STUDIO LEARNING IN ARCHITECTURE TO NEW STUDENTS
ANALYSIS OF FORMS
STARTING DESIGN EDUCATION "BASIC DESIGN COURSE"
A PEDAGOGY
ARCHITECTURE & PHILOSOPHY: THOUGHTS ON BUILDING
AN EMBODIED APPROACH TO LEARNING AT THE BEGINNING DESIGN LEVEL
MANFREDO TARUFI AND JEAN PAUL SARTRE WALK INTO A BAR AND ORDER HALF A GLASS OF BEER
THINKING CONSTRUCTION AS DESIGN AND FUNCTION OF ARCHITECTURE
THE FIRST PROJECT (STUDIO) EXPERIENCE IN THE URBAN PLANNING EDUCATION: THE TESTING OF A METHOD
FIRST CLASS / FIRST PROJECT: TO RAISE INQUIRY ABOUT DESIGN THROUGH MAKING
FLEXIBLE SOLUTIONS FOR SMALL SPACES IN SPATIAL DESIGN TEACHING
THE COTTBUS EXPERIMENT THREE FIELDS OF COMPETENCE
EXPERIMENTATION VERSUS READY-KNOWLEDGE
BASIC DESIGN STUDIO IN THE ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN EDUCATION
FROM TRADITIONAL TO MODERN; METHODOLOGY OF NEIGHBORHOOD UNIT DESIGN
THE DANCE OF DESIGN AND SCIENCE IN FIRST YEAR STUDIO: CONTRIBUTIONS OF BILGI DENEL TO BASIC DESIGN IN TURKEY
THE EFFECT OF THREE DIMENSIONAL VISUALIZATION ABILITY ON BASIC DESIGN EDUCATION: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY IN A TURKISH PLANNING SCHOOL
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INTRODUCTION
Welcome to DESIGNTRAIN
Dear participants,
I would like to welcome you all to our second DESIGNTRAIN congress in
Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
The DESIGNTRAIN Congresses are organised by DESIGNTRAIN, a project
named as; Training Tools for Developing Design Education and is
supported by European Commission, Leonardo da Vinci Programme.
The DESIGNTRAIN Project started in October 2006 and will end in the end
of 2008.
The core of the DESIGNTRAIN Project idea is based on the adaptation
problems experienced by the students/design students who have studied in
their present education system, when they focus on the process of design.
The DESIGNTRTAIN Project has double goals and is composed of two
stages thereof. The goal of the first stage is to test and develop skills for the
pro-professions and the goal of the second stage is to orient design students
to design thinking and improve their problem solving capacities by way of
conducive exercises. The far-reaching goal of the project is to render the
process of design education feasible and economic in terms of using human
resources.
In the aim of these two main bases, the first DESIGNTRAIN Congress;
Trailer I: Guidance in/for Design Training was organized in May 2007,
which targeted self-evaluation and design orientation tools for future design
students, and now we are here for the second DESIGNTRAIN Congress;
Trailer II: DESIGNing DESIGN EDUCATION.
The aim of this second congress: DESIGNTRAIN Congress; Trailer-II;
DESIGNing DESIGN EDUCATION is to search alternative ways to discuss
whether there can be some supporting modules in teaching and
understanding the rapidly changing design language and/or design
education, in the process of first year design education. Our aim as the
DESIGNTRAIN Team is to get retrieval of information related to design and
to analyse the design concepts again to make them more accessible, fast,
easy and user-friendly for the first year design students.
As we all know that, the public view on the role of architecture is more and
more affecting the approach and the design education of students of
environmental, architectural and interior design. Motivation, engagement and
knowledge of younger students seem to experience a deep reconfiguration
phase. The first year education process can be considered as the start of a
training process and consequentially a confrontation of the students in
design studios.
The matter finds a strategic evaluation and re-thinking moment in the first
year education process and it might be discussed starting from that very
harsh confrontation that take place in design studios.
Thats why we ask, how can architectural education approach in a positive
way the energy for better and various human urban models and designs to
get more attraction for skilled and motivated students?
In general the first year students in schools of architecture are not prepared
for studying the curriculum in a systematic way. Moreover students have
different learning styles individually. The way to motivate the beginners, to
make them open for creativity, phantasm and responsible planning should
be discussed. Since, there are numerous methods of education, especially
in the basic fields of architecture like design theories and practice,
fundamentals of technical construction and art & architectural history, each
school of architecture will lay claim to its special way and success, but what
are the future guidelines in a globalizing world that is in control of economic
structures?
Design might be considered as an instrument and a medium of expression,
a kind of international language; or as a non-neutral actor that internationally
tries to equalize taste, needs, as the modern building structures disregards
national, regional and local culture and behaviour. The awareness of such
facts is indeed very important in teaching and learning, both for
academicians and students, not only in universities but also in high schools
and secondary schools.
The congress now accentuates this global effect and also the protection of
the individual characters of design education and practice.
Although, design is a kind of international language, learning and adaptation
process to this language of students can not be standardized at ease, since
the students have different tendencies to disparate learning styles. Moreover
standards and characteristics of schools are different as well. Also the
concerns of the first year design education might differ according to regional
demands and culture as well as the methods of teaching.
Sharing those methods are now challenging in the DESIGNTRAIN
Congress; Trailer II: DESIGNing DESIGN EDUCATION. The congress now
also helps and demonstrates new thinking and experimenting in this large
field.
According to these, we tried to have some titles that best exemplifies the
approaches in finding some solutions to our main problem. These are:
First Experiences: Open Day - Get together, First Day, First Tasks,
First Actions
Education:
Activities and
Contribution
by
We received over a hundred abstracts for this aim, and selected 65 original
papers from different countries all over the world, from Europe, Asia and
USA.
It is a great pleasure for me to thank to those who supported us in making
this event to an unforgettable one. First the keynoters - Bryan Lawson from
the University of Sheffield, UK, Alexandros N. Tombazis from Greece and
Sengul Oymen Gur from the Karadeniz Technical University, Turkey.
Also I would like to thank the DESIGNTRAIN Project partners and their
representatives - Heiner Krumlinde from Hochschule Bochum, Germany,
Manfredo Manfredini from Politecnico Di Milano, Italy, Nazan Kirci from Gazi
University, Turkey, Joost Lanshage from the European League of Institutes
of the Arts, The Netherlands and my dear colleagues Nilgun Kuloglu and Ali
Asasoglu from Karadeniz Technical University, Turkey, this great job would
not have been possible without your help.
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Iakovos Potamianos from the
University of Thessaloniki, Greece, Frances Hsu from Georgia Institute of
Technology, USA and Greg Watson from Mississippi State University, USA
for all their help and contributions.
Id like to thank to you all, the DESIGNTRAIN Congress; Trailer II
participants, for realizing this important event by sharing your valuable
knowledge.
On behalf of the DESIGNTRAIN Congress; Trailer II organizing committee,
WHAT IS CREATIVE?
CREATIVITY IN ARCHITECTURAL THEORY, PRACTICE AND EDUCATION
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Prof. Dr. Sengul Oymen GUR, Ph. D.
Karadeniz Technical University
Faculty of Architecture
61080 Trabzon-Turkey
Tel:
+90
Fax: +90 4623250262, +90 4623772692
Email: sengul@gur.com
4623262818
Abstract
In this keynote speech I will expound on creativity in general. However,
rather than dealing with the ways and methods of fostering creative thinking
in architecture or in architectural education, I will question what creativity
actually is and how exactly one discriminates the creative from the noncreative in architectural works. What are its features and properties and how
can they be distinguished and/or traced?
Introduction
In architecture the term creativity equally pertains to subheadings such as
design practice, design process, design research, design education and
those social issues architecture is entangled with. Therefore there are many
aspects of creativity in our discipline. Also, different phases of design
process require particular creativity in themselves (Fig.1). For this matter
creativity bears significance in theory, practice and criticism of architecture
and is the subject of many ongoing discussions on architectural education in
general and design studios in particular.
Since creativity is an important issue in designing I must render a brief
review of design activity as it is practiced today. Today design activity
retreated to the old, mystic, black-box approach again due to a lack of
confidence in design methods which had caused tremendous turmoil among
professionals around 60s. Later they fell into disuse as outmoded interests
of earlier generations. Nigel Cross (2006) gives an excellent account of the
Forty years of design research: studies had flared up by the 1963
conference on design methods held in London and others had followed
(Jones and Thornley, 1963; Gregory, 1966; Broadbent and Ward, 1969).
Some notable architects had rejected the professed design methodologies
from the very start as they perceived them as a menace to their creativity.
Soon major pioneers of the proposal have admitted that their approach to
design did not work. Only after two years of having published his major work
on the synthesis of form (1964) Alexander confessed that the city was not a
tree (1966; 1971). Jones (1970) unwittingly demonstrated especially how the
proposed design phase approaches were not operable. Broadbent
described the progress in 1969 and retreated in 1973.
After 1980s some significant books concerning design thinking in
architecture appeared (Lawson, 1980; Schn, 1983; Rowe, 1987); design
congresses and journals proliferated; societies and associations were
founded and some are still successfully active today. Horst Rittel (1973) had
considered the endeavors of 1960s, which were based on systematic,
rational and scientific methods as the first generation of methods implying
10
Problem
Recognition
Identification
of Human
Behavior Sets
Identification
of Problem
Situation
Goal Setting
Prediction
Design of
Objectives
Programming
Feedback
PHASES
1 Intell igence
Phase
Requirement
2 Design
Phase
3 Choice
&
Development
Phase
Field
4 Implementation
Phase
5 Evaluation
Phase
11
12
What is creativity?
Systematic inquiry into creativity occurred from 1950s onwards and aimed
towards a more fundamental understanding of human creativity. These
researches adopted psychometric, cognitive, psychodynamic and pragmatic
approaches to define creativity (Durling 2003). Only the last one deals with
design fields, to a certain extent. In fact, very few researchers from a design
background have undertaken studies on creativity and have investigated the
knowledge about the underlying intellectual and social drivers of creativity.
13
different for its own sake; they prefer style over practicality; they make
unusual associations; and they sometimes deliberately break the rules set
by the tutor, for example by pushing a brief to the limit.
14
4.
5.
Things
Concepts
Events-flows &
behavior
Percepts
Images
Affects
Language of
Architectural
Composition
Cultural Conventions
Knowledge of other
disciplines
History and Theory of
Arts &
Architecture
Preperatory Milieu
Mental
field
Word
Inscription
Line
Form
Pattern
Color
Texture
Dimension
Shadow
Light
Relation,
etc
Communication
field
th
the 11 Century are identical, but all mosques of a certain period are the
same; so are all the churches, with imperceptible differences which defer the
imminent changes. The identifiability of the mark in its repetition and its
differentiality is what allows them to hop about from context to context. By
introducing the word diffrance into philosophy Derrida has proposed a
powerful modification of the ordinary notions of identity and difference: Any
single meaning of a concept or text arises only by the effacement of other
possible meanings, which are themselves only deferred, left over, for their
possible activation in other contexts. When the deferred takes over the text
is not the same any morea new identity, a new meaning, a new building
style might have been achieved is that which is implied.
Trivial insignificance signifies a possibility Insignificant trace is the mark of
a difference a priori posits Derrida. This may be likened to MA (a short
imperceptible interval) in Japanese dramas by which the subject matter
changes or to the term inflection point in Deleuzes philosophy which
implies an insignificant signifier of drops and rises in speech (Cache, 1995).
Saussure (1915) had already emphasized something very similar in
linguistics:
Inaudible is the difference between two phonemes
which alone permits them to be and to operate as
such. The inaudible opens up the apprehension of two
present phonemes such as they present themselves
In architecture the identity of conventional buildings is based on essential
and integrated unity where differences are subordinated. At the point where
the inaudible is heard, that is, differences can no more be subordinated then
the building type has moved into another state of being. A noticeable break
up with the past takes place. It betrays itself by the absence, reversal or
trivialization of the past canons and conventions at the level of major
taxonomies of architecture.
These taxonomies might be the most fundamentals such as the foundation
system, structural system, wall system, fenestration system, enclosure
system; a more hard core level might be floor system, circulation system,
service system; more abstract still, the order of nature, culture and
community,
individual
experiences.
Sub-taxonomies
such
as;
interior/exterior, positive space/negative space/anti-space also exist in
architecture.
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18
19
Concepts/words
which designate
differenc e
Content of
transformation
Element of
transformation
Who
Where and
wh e n
Vatikan
Museum, 1932
Guggenheim
Museum, N.Y.,
1959
Reichstag,
Berlin, 1999
Unitarian Chu r c h
absenc e
stairs to ramps
Giuseppe
Momo
F. Ll Wright
Norman
Foster
absence
space organization
disappearance of
walls and doors
into partition s
F. Ll. Wright
absenc e
office space
organization
disappearance of
walls and partiti o n s
F. Ll. Wright
absenc e
fenestration
Corner s
absenc e
space syntax
absenc e
space syntax
absenc e
space organization
Giuliano da
Sangallo
S. Maria della
Carceri, Prato,
1485
Leonardo da
Vinci
S. Maria Della
Consolazione,
Todi, 150 4
Daniel
Libeski n d
German
Pavillion,
Barcelona, 1928
Daniel
Libeski n d
Jewish Museum,
Berli n
absenc e
fenestration
absenc e
space syntax
(non-directedness;
confusion;
depredation)
reversal
outside/insid e
space organization
columniation
anonymou s
reversal (fulc r a )
ground-building
relation s
Foundations
(pilotis)
Le Corbusier
Oscar
Niemeyer and
Soares Filho
staircases (from
main hall to the
wing s )
reversal:
Location of book
space organization
Table 1. A Few Examples
of Marksshelves
of difference:
marginality/centrality
reversal
Disappearance of
layout organization
freedom/domi nance
central dominance
reversal
marginality/centrality
space syntax
20
Buffalo Building,
Johnson and
Wax Compa ny
Buildi n g
Crown Hall, IIT,
Chicag o
Andrea
Pallad i o
Greek vs.
Roman
Swiss Pavilion
Paris, 1932
Interbau
Apartment
House, 1957
Villa Godi Porto,
1540
Louis Kahn
Exeter Library
Creativeness
Bernard
Tschum i
Parc de La
Vilette
Concepts/words
which designate
difference
reversal:
servant/served
reversal
(bridges within)
Content of
Element of
Who
transformation transformation
space organization
Corridors
spatial connections
circulation models
Peter
Eisenman
origin
unknown; i.e.
Mecanoo
Henri
Labrouste,
Biblioteque
St. Genvieve
(origin)
Mario Botta
Rem Koolhaas
Where and
when
Frankfurt
Biology
laboratories
Delft University
Library, Holland
Museum of
Modern Art, San
Francisco, 1995
Uthrecht,
Holland, 1997
reversal
(of materials)
material of building
component
floor cladding
dislocating the
ideos
space organization
additional subsystems
to the major
(conventional) axe
systems
Walter
Gropius
Bauhaus
Building in
Dessau
space syntax
grids at play;
geometry
Peter
Eisenman
Kochstrasse
Socail Housing,
Berlin
space organization
Richard
Rogers &
Renzo Piano
Pompiodu
Centre
space organization
Peter
Eisenman
Houses 1-10
expression
Jos Louis
Sert
Weekend
House,
Garraf Spain,
1935
house to house
relations
gardens
Moshe Safdie
Habitat67,
Montreal, 1967
dislocating the
ideos
dislocating the
ideos
dislocating the
ideos
dislocating the
ideos
dislocating the
ideos
expression
ground/figure
relationships
configurations
structural system
industrial modes
Mario Botta
Breganzona
Single-family
house,
Tadao Ando
Ticino, 1988
dislocating the
Kiyou Bank Ltd.
voids as mega
Sakai Branch, ,
ideos by way of expression
elements of design
Osaka,1989
Johan Otto
metaphor
La Grande
von
Arche de La
Spreckelsen,
Dfense,
Paris, 1989
Arata Isozaki Kitakyusyu
Conference
Center
Eric Owen
Fukuoka, 1990
ground/figure
dislocating the
Moss
The Box in
relations (refuting
massing
Culver City,
ideos
gravity)
California, 1994
Table 1 (continued). A Few Examples of Marks of difference:
Creativeness
Ufa Cinema
Coop
Center,
Himmelblau
Concluding statement
Dresden, 1998
21
answer all. I believe the question what is creative deserves a better answer
than this one because of its importance in architecture. Nevertheless, I
would feel content if further research might depart from where I left and
interpret the tryouts here from their specific standing. What we can not
speak about we must pass over in silence said Wittgenstein in Tractatus
(his dissertation at Trinity College) but if this grave question remains
unanswered I am afraid no discussion on fostering creativity can prove
fruitful.
References
Alexander, Christopher. (1964). Notes on the synthesis of
form. Cambridge: Harvard UP.
Alexander, Christopher (1966) The City is not a Tree. AD
Berkun, Scott. (2003) How To Run a Design Critique.
January. www.CHlplace Interactive Discussion Forum.
Benedikt, Michael (1991) Deconstructing the Kimble. New
York: Sites.
Broadbent, Geoffrey and A. Ward (Eds.) (1969) Design
Methods in Architecture. London:
Lund Humphries.
Broadbent, Geoffrey (1973) Design in architecture. New
York: John Wiley
Bruner, Jerome S. (1962) The Conditions of Creativity. In
Contemporary Approaches to Creative Thinking. H. Gruber et al. (Eds.) New
York: Atherton. 1-30.
Cache, Bernard (1995) Earth Moves: The Furnishing of
Territories. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Coop Himmelblau (1993) The End of Architecture. In The
End of Architecture: Documents and Manifestos. Peter Noever (Ed). Munich
and the MAK-Austrian Museum of Applied Arts. Vienna: Prestel-Verlag.1725.
Cross, Nigel (2006) Forty Years of Design Research in
DRQ 1(2), Dec. 3-5.
Culler, Jonathan (1982) On Deconstruction: Theory and
Criticism after Structuralism. New York: Cornell UP.
Dean, Andrea. (1991) Socially Motivated Architecture. In
Critical Architecture and Contemporary Culture. William J. Lillyman, Marilyn
F. Moriarty and David J. Neuman (Eds.) Oxford: Oxford UP.125-133.
Diehl, J. L. (1992). The Relationship between Creativity,
Imagery and Personality Types in Interior Design Students, Doctoral
Dissertation, Oklahoma State University. University Microfilms International,
1993. 93-21561.
22
Durling, David (2003) His response to a question in PHDDesign Discussion group newsletter; Feb.14.
Durling, David (2003a) Horse or Cart? Designer Creativity
and Personality, AED Paper Draft.
Eisenman, Peter (1988) The House of Cards. New York:
Oxford UP.
Feist, G. J (1999) The Influence of personality on artistic and
scientific creativity. In
R. J. Sternberg (Ed.) Handbook of creativity. Cambridge:
Camb. U. Press; 273-296.
Frampton, Kenneth (1991) Reflections on the autonomy of
architecture: a critique of contemporary production. In Out of site: a social
criticism of architecture.
D. Ghirardo (Ed.) Bay Press: Seattle. (1980). Place.
Production and Scenography: In International Theory and Practice Since
1962. Modern Architecture: A Critical History. New York: Thames Hudson:
Gehry, Frank (1994) Keynote address. In Critical
Architecture and Contemporary
Culture William J. Lillyman, Marilyn F. Moriarty and David J.
Neuman (Eds.). Oxford: Oxford UP. 165-185.
Ghirardo, Diane (1991) Terragni, conventions and the critics.
In critical architecture and contemporary culture. William J. Lillyman, Marilyn
F. Moriarty and David J. Neuman (Eds.). Oxford: Oxford U. Press; 91-104.
Gur, Sengul Oymen (1978) Social Sciences in Architectural
Education: a
Proposed Approach. Ph. D. Dissertation, U. of Pennsylvania.
Microfilm Labs. Ann Arbor. Microfilm Laboratories, Michigan.
Gur, Sengul Oymen (2007) Modernity vs. Postmodernity in
Architectural Education. JAPR. Vol.24 (2). 91-109.
Israel, Frank (1994) Montage, Collage, and Broken
Narrative. In Critical Architecture and Contemporary Culture William J.
Lillyman, Marilyn F. Moriarty and David J. Neuman (Eds.). Oxford: Oxford
UP. 104-125.
Jones, J. Christopher (1970) Design Methods. Chichester:
John Wiley and Sons.
Jones, J. Christopher and D. J. Thornley (Eds.). (1963)
Conference on Design Methods. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Lawson, Bryan (1980) How designers think. 2nd Edition.
Butterworth Architecture. Oxford.
Lawson, Bryan (1997) How designers think-the design
process demystified. Oxford: Oxford UP.
McCaulley, M. H. (1990) The MBTI and Individual Pathways
in Engineering Design. In Engineering Education. Vol. 80(5). 537-542.
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Education
The Pennsylvania State University, U.S.A.
Ph.D. in Design & Decoration
Pratt Institute, U.S.A.
Master of Sciences in Interior Design
Baghdad University, Academy of Fine Arts, Iraq
Bachelor of Fine Arts
Experience
Ajman University of Science & Technology, U.A.E. from 1999
Associate Professor
Department of Interior Design
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ABSTRACT
This study looks into the training program, which is an integral part of the
Interior Design Program at Ajman University of Science & Technology
(AUST). The Department of Interior Design has established training
cooperation with many local offices and a number of design related
companies and organizations.
The training program is implemented in two parts, each with duration of 8
weeks. The 16 weeks training is considered as 4 Cr.Hrs.of a total of 134
hours of the program. The aim of the training is to expose the student to
work environment and practice what is learnt in class and design studios.
During training, the students will be able to:
Apply theoretical knowledge to solve real design problems.
Enhance active factors to give a hand in helping and improvement the
aesthetic qualities of the environmental aspects.
Improve their practical skills.
Help them to develop his artistic abilities in design, and to gain aesthetic
design experiences in factual life serving community needs.
Develop a strong foundation and help the students to achieve their full
potential, and to develop a self-motive approach to perform work in a team.
Ajman University of Science & technology places strong emphasis on quality
assurance and quality control. The same applies to the Department of
Interior Design .The quality of the training program is assessed from different
aspects. Evaluation and recommendations based on the assessment .The
main goal of the assessment is to modify/ update the program on a continual
basis to ensure that the graduates of this program are of high quality and
have achieved the desire objectives. For this, feedbacks are sought from the
sites companies, training advisors, academic advisors, training students
surveys, and Alumni.
Developments / actions are taken following, the recommendations from
evaluation..
This study highlights the importance of training program in preparing
students for a successfully professional practice.
Key words:
Teaching Methods.
Design Program.
Ability and Motivation.
Training.
Evaluation and Feedback Assessments.
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Introduction
Training is an essential and an integral part of the curriculum of Interior
Design program at Ajman University of Science &Technology . Student
should spend a period of 4 months working in offices or related institutions in
order to gain practical skills and to get an understanding of the work
environment. The Department of Interior Design has established training
cooperation with many local offices and number of design related companies
and organizations.
The training period is 16 weeks taken during two summers (training1 &
training2), each of 8 weeks duration. The training accounts for 4 credit hours
and students receive grades based on their performance during both
external training sessions.
A training manual is prepared to provide guidelines to students concerning
their external training. The manual is made up of four parts:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Training Plan
Guidelines for Trainee Students
Guidelines for Practical Training
Evaluation and Feedback Assessments.
Kilmers (1992) stated that Interior Design is one of the most stimulating and
creative professions. As a mixture of art, science, and technology, an interior
design manipulates space, form texture, colour, and light to improve the
quality of human life.
The purpose of the training is to equip the student with basic practical skills
needed at design sites and to provide them with theoretical and practical
information needed to help them take maximum benefit from their training.
Training gives the student new techniques and methods needed. Training is
so necessary for development of material and plan. Capabilities that help
them to achieve what they want on their own level. Trevor Bentley (1992)
stated that learning is a process which takes place as an interaction between
learners and their environments. Training provides students with knowledge
to develop confidence, integrity, and enhance artistic abilities by giving them
the necessary aesthetic design experience, and to prepare them to become
more productive in providing services to the community, keeping in view its
interests and needs.
29
Training objectives
30
Training program
The purpose of the training is to equip the students with basic practical skills
needed at design sites and to provide them theoretical and practical
information needed to help them take maximum benefit from their training.
Training gives the students new techniques and methods needed, to be able
to relate the learning to their own experiences and needs. Training is so
necessary for development self-confidence and helps them to achieve what
they want.
Training help to develop and enhance the artistic abilities by giving them
necessary aesthetic design experience, and to prepare them to become
more productive in providing services to the community, keeping in view its
interests and needs.
Ajman University of Science & Technology considers practical training as a
very important and a vital part of the design curriculum, and students are
required to finish the training parts of the program requirements to have the
bachelor in interior design. The Interior Design students are required to
complete 16 weeks of external training at interior design firms. The external
training is taken during two summers (training1 & training2), each of eight
weeks duration Therefore, Ajman University established a training policy to
bridge the gab between academic and professional practice, in order to
enhance the artistic and design abilities of the students, and give them the
opportunity needed to apply them academic knowledge.
Training activities has to monitor the following lines:
Training 1:
The training policy of the design program at Ajman University obligated the
student to start his first part of training at the end of his completion of the
studio course (interior design 5) at the program.
The training will last two months (eight weeks), seven days a week, with an
average of eight hours a day in one of a chosen design office.
The training will focus on:
Conceptual design procedures
Basics of working drawings
Site supervision
Presentation skills
Training 2:
The training policy of the design program at Ajman University obligated the
student to continue this second part of training at the end of his completion
of the final project presentation (Graduation 2) at the program.
The training will last two months (eight weeks), seven days a week, with an
average of eight hours a day in one of a chosen design office.
The training will focus on:
31
Site supervision
Working drawings & technical installations
Contracts
Specifications and quantities
Advanced presentation skills (e.g. 3D modelling)
Guidelines for trainee students
Practical training is an important part of design education. It will help
students to relate the theoretical knowledge learned in classrooms to
solutions of real-world problems, experience the working environment before
graduation, and learn how to act responsibly and efficiently in carrying out
assigned tasks, etc. Before staring t the practical training, Trainee must
attend the Training Preparation Meeting (TPM) with appointed Academic
Supervisor. The purpose of this meeting is to ensure the fully understand of
the training requirements in general and the training objectives in particular.
Duties of trainee students
A field supervisor will guide and supervise the duty at the site of practical
training. Conveying tasks on a daily or weekly basis, evaluate performance
accomplished. An Academic Supervisor from the faculty of design will direct
the achievement of practical training, and will also monitor the progress.
Providing guidance during the course of the training, to insure an effective
presentation of the work, both orally and in writing. However, personal effort
will play the most important role in this training program. Trainee student
must fulfil a number of duties in the most effective manner. These duties
must be taken very seriously to get the maximum benefit out of the practical
training.
Once the Trainee start training program, a certain demands has to be
followed:
Should be regular and punctual and carry out all assigned tasks in
the best possible manner.
Must follow all safety instructions and other guidelines from the field
supervisor.
32
33
Method of Analysis:
For each question six options were provided as Excellent, V. Good,
Average, Fair, and Poor. These options were expected to provide the
committee a flexibility to express their opinion with a wider choice. However,
for the sake of analysis, the responses were divided into two categories by
grouping the first three [Excellent, V. Good and Average] as category A
and the last three [Fair, Poor e] as category B. The sum of each category
was calculated as a percentage of the total number of responses for each
question.
Grading
At the end of practical training period, will be given a grade based on the
following:
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
INTRODUCTION
Design can be understood as a collection and combination of different
physical and mental techniques. On the physical side, there is the
formulation, translation, and presentation of possible approaches to various
artefacts, such as drawings and models. On the mental side, there are
comparisons, interpretations, definitions and evaluations of such artefacts.
The implied link between physical and mental operations is often neglected
in educational settings. This deficit may be illustrated by two exemplary
situations from the typical academic environment:
1. Brainstorming: sitting before a blank page, the student is assured: "I just
need an idea. Then I will implement it."
2. The group critique: The students works are lined up along a wall. Sitting
in the front row, a panel of lecturers and faculty members critiques the
works. Not one student says a word.
In the first scenario, the student assumes that brainstorming is mostly
mental. This mental task must first be completed before the solution may be
materialized in the physical world. The student believes: "No artefact without
an idea first."
In the second scenario, the teachers assume that their knowledge and
experience may be simply communicated in the form of a verbalized critique.
They believe: "Without expertise, there is no standard of excellence."
These statements demonstrate that both teachers and students starkly
differentiate between physical and mental operations. This is directly linked
to the over-valuation of verbalized concepts and appraisals and an unequal
allocation of value judgement skills between students and teachers.
Material
The thesis presented above shall be illustrated in detail by introducing some
basic didactic elements used in design classes. Among those elements
there are typical tasks, sequences of assignments and different
communication-scenarios. All elements were used over years in several
design-studios in landscape architecture and urban design at the Berlin
Institute of Technology and at the University of Kassel. They were subject to
an intensive reflection and adaptation.
43
Results
1. If design incorporates both mental and physical operations, ideas and
implementation cannot be separated within the design process. Design
education should therefore encourage students to experiment with as
many different viewpoints and working methods as possible. This is
linked to exploring different presentation techniques. In a broader sense,
perspectives of other related disciplines might also be included. A handson, discovery-oriented working method is to be established, in which
potential solutions may arise in the 'translation' between different
referential frameworks.
2. Students are most definitely in a position to evaluate their own work.
They develop and defend their own positions - at the same time, they are
confronted with a variety of different opinions. Encouraged to articulate
their opinion, their assessments are often sharper and more
sophisticated than those of their teachers. Through their involvement in
quality assessments, theoretical and practical topics (explicit and tacit
knowledge) may easily be linked.
Conclusions
Tasks, assignment sequencing and communication scenarios influence the
role-playing behaviour of students and teachers. They generate a starting
point from which a professional self-image is to be established. To develop
and refine the learning process in design education, it is important to us to
discuss typical didactical elements and the underlying educational
objectives.
APPROACHES TO DESIGN
According to Cross (1984), the design process may only be insufficiently
captured with words. "Only a relatively small (and perhaps insignificant) area
of that system of knowing and conceiving which makes designing possible
may be amenable to verbal description. (...) The way designers work may be
inexplicable, (...) simply because these processes lie outside the bounds of
1
verbal discourse: they are literally indescribable in linguistic terms." Despite
these substantial limitations, the following two positions seek to approach
the concept of 'design.'
ENDNOTES
1
2
3
4
5
Rittel (1992), p. 22
Gnshirt (2007), p. 45 continued
Ehrlich (1999)
Reinborn and Koch (1992), p. 36
45
6
7
8
9
10
Ehrlich (1999)
Ehrlich (1999)
Rittel (1992), p. 136
Reinborn and Koch (1992), p. 34 continued
Palmboom (2004), p. 19
46
11
12
13
established in which a jury of students and teachers select the best plans.
These are then subdivided into smaller areas to be developed in more detail.
In this way, the students' individual work is collectively interrelated. Through
this overall approach, the need for adaptation arises. Students learn to
adjust their individual concepts to fit the bigger picture.
Within the overall process, the repetition of similar processes is averted. At
the same time, excursive assignments are suited to unexpectedly interrupt
the predetermined schedule. Such excursive assignments could be short,
impromptu exercises, so-called Stegreife, which help provide diversion and
enrich the design process with fresh new ideas. Such exercises may focus
on a specific aspect of the greater design problem, but are not necessarily
linked to the main task at hand. Relevant aspects may be investigated in
isolation from existing commitments. These include:
- Exercises dealing with design concepts (borders, collage, order, structure,
material,...)
- The collection of thematic, on-site impressions, such as light and shadow,
structures, site use, typical places for the area, borders...
- The identification of structures and their subsequent translation into
landscape architectural or urban design patterns.
- Exercises that anticipate pending design questions (typology, access and
infrastructure, ground plan organization, ...)
Working techniques and variations on the theme
All design assignments are inevitably linked with certain media and
presentational techniques. Over the course of the semester, various
techniques will be introduced and tested out for each thematic design
assignment. Some assignments call for the rapid translation of the design
concept into different media. The inclusion of different model building
techniques, digital and manual visualization methods, or photographic
abstraction allows for a broader examination of the design problem. At the
same time, happy accidents and shifts in meaning enrich the development
of the design.
In essence, multiple variations need to be developed for all assignments. In
this sense, selections can be made from a larger pool of possibilities during
the evaluation and decision-making process. The variations document the
development of the design process over a series of steps. They allow the
designer to move back and forth within a seemingly hopeless design path
and to rediscover or reanimate previously neglected solutions.
49
II. EVALUATION
Description of the practice
According to Rittel (1992), evaluation is an essential part of the design
process. The established method of evaluation and selection for architects
and planners at the college level is demonstrated by the 'critique.' Students
present their design ideas in the form of models, sketches and plans.
Following the presentation, a panel of 'critics' reflect on the state of work and
give advice and feedback on how to proceed. The panel usually consists of
professors and invited guests.
In order to protect themselves from particularly harsh critiques, Harvard
Graduate School of Design students compiled a list of 160 possible
responses, which they published on-line under the name Blowfish. For
example, proposal No. 10, boasting the caption "Postmodern simulation,"
suggests reacting with the following line: "Leaf through your sketchbook and
then look up and say, "I'm sorry, that's not in the script. What page are you
on?"
Obviously, the confrontation that arises between students and professors
during a critique is perceived as role-playing. All suggested reactions deliver
their punch lines by questioning the typical division of roles between
teachers and students.
This described communication setting is characterized by a highly
asymmetrical distribution of roles. Only the students who are presenting
work engage in discussion with the panel. The other students withhold their
comments. On the one hand, they wouldnt want to strain the relationship
with their fellow classmates on stage - on the other hand, they wouldnt
want to prolong the process any longer than is necessary. If this role-playing
is constantly repeated, the students turn into passengers, guests or
consumers. The focus of their interest is mainly on their own work.
The role of the critic, on the other hand, is characterized by her privileged
interpretive jurisdiction, by an unlimited right to speak and an exclusive
vocabulary. Frequently, the technical terms that are used are private
17
neologisms or hover over the discussion without any theoretical context.
Moreover, the qualifying criteria are always derivative of the personal
attitude of the critic.
Because the quality assurance of the project lies in the hands of the
professor, the evaluation criteria of the students remains unspoken and thus
uncontemplated.
17
Kuhlmann (2006) "If educators do not provide enough help and insight on the
criteria of the evaluation process involved with architectural practice and theory, it
often happens that the students come to believe that mysticism is an indicator of
the quality. Kuhlmann calls this phenomenon the "mastery-mystery".
50
the interests of the students as designers and their work as members of the
advisory board. The professors are members of both boards.
Design ideas are to be presented weekly to the advisory board in the form of
sketches, drawings, diagrams and models. The board is to evaluate the
designs and where necessary suggest adjustments or changes. Whether the
designer follows up on the boards suggestions depends on the persuasive
power of the ensuing arguments.
All referenda are chaired in turn by each student on the advisory board.
Among the chairs tasks are the concluding summarization of discussion
results, the moderation of speakers and the monitoring of speaking-time
limits.
As members of the advisory board, the professors are also integrated into
the described discussion format. In order to not overly influence the course
of the discussion, they often save their input until the end. Their task is to
supplement the discussion with missing aspects, to clarify obscurities, to
contradict one-sided judgements, or to introduce additional alternatives.
Consequences for the evaluation process
Several changes in the behaviour of the students have been observed as a
result of the described shift in roles. These are described as follows.
Communicability of Design
The role of an expert or critic involves the ability to express her opinion. This
eliminates the typical inhibition of students to discuss each others work.
For the evaluation process, the entire group must be able to recognize and
understand a given design. This requirement is no longer that of the
professors alone, as she is no longer the sole addressee of the
presentation. The attitude of the 'misunderstood artist' or the appeal to the
'imaginative powers of the teacher' can simply not hold up to the group
dynamic of fellow students.
For the students it goes without saying that their designs are to be presented
in detail, using all available techniques.
Variety of Opinions
The students criticism of their classmates designs are comparatively tough.
At the same time, they are more receptive to the criticisms of their peers.
Alliances of opinions arise during the discussions. Fractions of students who
share similar positions find common ground in the dialogue. Instead of one
school of thought, students are confronted with a wide range of opinions.
The student recognizes that a design solution can be assessed in a variety
of different ways.
52
18
19
20
The didactic elements presented here should ease the students entry into
the working and cognitive processes of design. The essential aspects of
these didactic elements include:
- the structuring of the semester plan and the formulation of complex design
assignments as a series of interrelated tasks,
- the sensitisation of the potentials and limitations of particular working
techniques in the design process,
- the linking of theoretical concepts and the evaluation process
- and the establishment of various communication scenarios with the goal of
allowing students to reflect on their own design progress
With the described shift in role assignments, students experience a
significant increase in competence and motivation. This also applies to
students with little experience and self-confidence in creative process.
The outlined teaching and learning scenarios have been inspired by various
theories and discussions in the context of educational workshops and
seminars. We believe that there is still much room for experimentation in this
area of education. It seems therefore important to us to exchange and share
experience and knowledge of design education in a broader context.
REFERENCES
Archer, BL, Whatever Became of Design Methodology, in Cross, N (ed)
(1984)
Bielefeld, B and Khouli, El (2007), Basics Entwurfsidee, Birkhuser, Basel
Blowfish Sammlung der Harvard Graduate School of Design,
http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/people/students/student_forum/blowfish.html
Cross, N (ed) (1984), Developments in Design Methodology, John Wiley &
Sons, Chichester
Curdes, G (1995), Stadtstrukturelles Entwerfen, Dortmunder Vertrieb fr
Bau- und Planungsliteratur, Stuttgart Berlin Kln
De Jong, Taeke and Van der Voordt, Theo (ed) (2002), Ways to Study and
Reasearch Urban, Architectural and Technical Design, Delft University
Press, Delft
Ehrlich, C (1999), Die Konstruktion der Idee und Ihre Werkzeuge,
Wolkenkuckucksheim - Internationale Zeitschrift fr Theorie und
Wissenschaft der Architektur, 4. Jg. Heft 1, Entwerfen - Kreativitt und
Materialisation
Gnshirt, C (2007), Werkzeuge fr Ideen, Birkhuser, Basel
Gnshirt,
C
(1999),
Sechs
Werkzeuge
des
Entwerfens,
Wolkenkuckucksheim - Internationale Zeitschrift fr Theorie und
Wissenschaft der Architektur, 4. Jg. Heft 1, Entwerfen - Kreativitt und
Materialisation
55
56
Education
1984 German High School
1988 B.Arch, Istanbul Technical University (ITU)
Faculty of Architecture
1991 M.Arch (Restoration and Conservation), ITU
1999 PhD (Architectural Philosophy) & MBA (Marketing). ITU
Present Affiliation:
Assist. Prof. Dr. at Halic University in stanbul
Lectures Basic Design / Introduction to Architectural Design / Design
Projects
Author of: Mekann Ruhu (The Spirit of Space) - 2005
Tasarmn Ruhu (The Soul of Design) 2008
57
ABSTRACT
Education of architecture calls for a different start than others. For the
student to forget everything he has learned until now and make a new
beginning, the educator must break some habits. The way to do this is in fact
simple. The student needs to get in touch with himself, that is, he needs to
concentrate on what hes doing rather than the outcome. He needs to learn
to be happy with what he has created, even if hes chosen a model, this
should not continue, he must learn to appreciate his own imagination. He
must stop following what others are doing and collecting data and instead
start being the actor, not the observer.
So, what is the role of the educator in the forming of this awareness and
sensibility?
What can be done beyond communicating a systemmatic and correct model
outside of the well known psychological approaches?
What can be said about how studio environments should be designed?
Firstly, studios should be Neverland -like places where a fine balance is
achieved and all hierarchies disappear in a second. These should be places
where you lose yourself, only surrounded by your dreams.
In Neverland everything is about believing. When you stop believing
Neverland disappears. But all the purity, innocence and naturalness that a
child-like spirit contains is present here. It is an environment purified of any
unnecessary information.
The conclusion here is definitely not leaving the student to his own devices,
but to make it easier to understand; the steps to make the new student who
does not remember find a path can be summarized as follows:
Discovering, understanding and perceiving communication pathways
Discovering yourself and your potential, learning to listen
Feeling the art of life and creativity
So we can summarize awareness as the increase in courage and vitality,
and the decrease in fear and doubt. When it is outlined this way, the model
of teaching that is used will be irrelevant because there will be the Neverland
that is emancipated and fuelled by the students imagination. Here, the true
nature of mankind, his feelings and his will to live are already present. In this
environment the student will create, his doubts subsided, he will feel himself
in the midst of his life and will love his profession.
The student should come not to a lecture room but to Neverland where he
will find everything he needs. Conversation, feeling nature, drawing freely for
hours and getting his strength from silence will be the way of this new
method.
The student who was told off for painting the daisy purple and its leaves
pink, will find the courage to do this again only through this method; which in
turn will give way to design and creativity. The aim of the this study is to find
58
* Social Studies Chapter III represents here the strict education system in
college which is not based on a free and creative thinking...
** Neverland is the fictional island and dream world, featured in the play
Peter Pan by Scottish writer J. M. Barrie. It is often seen as a metaphor for
eternal childhood, immortality, and escapism.
59
Introducing Architecture
Centuries ago, Gaoan said, : There are no smart or stupid students it is
only a matter of the teacher educating them to be virtuous, discovering their
potential capabilities and encouraging them to push these capabilities
forward (Cleary, 1989).
Yesterday afternoon I met a student who was there to register with his
mother. A family from Izmir. Father was an architect. Clearly proud and
anticipating following in his fathers footsteps the first thing he asked was
what do we need for our first class?
This is a typical question for a student who has left the safe arms of high
school, who is now aware of the fact that school is more than Social
Studies, Chapter 3, Page 20 but does not want to carry this awareness any
further. We talked for a while. The student naturally had some knowledge as
to what architecture was and what kind of an academic life awaited him but
as he had not faced these issues yet he did not know whether what he knew
was the truth or some other less favorable fate was waiting for him. On the
other hand there was something very clear in his eyes. I am willing to go
through sleepless nights, but dont expect me to work too hard, let me live a
little...
I have always thought that the most enjoyable period in the study of
architecture is the first semester, both when I was a student and an
assistant. My opinion did not change during the years that followed when I
started teaching.
The moment the student steps into the classroom is incomparable, you can
not capture the same moment ever again. The energy created by the
naivety, purity, pride and excitement disappears in the following years.
Especially for a student who has taken on a project, there is only a few years
of torture instead of education. (although there are exceptions.) But this is
the nature of the beast. You cannot feel the excitement or the beating of a
students heart any other time or place. Students wait a whole summer to
enjoy that first lecture. The moment when the student looks at you pen and
paper at hand, with a head full of expectations some of which may be a little
exaggerated, you have to take the right step because it is in this moment
that the students notion of being an architect will be shaped and even years
later this notion will not be erased.
60
Over the years I have read quite a few articles on what architecture is and
what an architect is supposed to do. I have come across comprehensive
research in these studies on how education systems should be revised or
which methods should be adopted in order to bring in certain capabilities.
Remembering what Gaoan said centuries ago, I realised the need to adopt a
different point of view.
Vitruvius was the first to understand the various forces that affect
architectural education from without. His broad list of subjects with which an
architect should be familiar locates the education of an architect within a
wider framework of knowledge ( Weiner,2005 ).
Following Vitrivius footsteps, it is necessary to build a new framework, which
includes not the answers but all possible questions in the first year
architectural education.
61
62
63
64
get an opportunity to make a self evaluation how they use their four
functions, which has to be increased, and vice versa
Booere indicates that Jungian functions have to be evaluated in such a way,
that each of us has a superior function, which we prefer and which is best
developed in us, a secondary function, which we are aware of and use in
support of our superior function, a tertiary function, which is only slightly less
developed but not terribly conscious,
and an inferior function, which is poorly
developed and so unconscious that we
might deny its existence in ourselves.
Most of us develop only one or two of
the functions, but our goal should be to
develop all four. ( Boeree, 2006)
Figure1. the four functions of Jung
(Boeree 2006)
Each process has its own particular
areas in which it performs better than
the other processes. Feeling excels at
well-being and belonging, thinking is excellent at logic, sensing excels at
discriminating ones immediate surroundings, intuition excels at generating
possibilities
( Stamps, 1994 )
As can be expected this process is not an easy one. But what the student
needs first and foremost is this state of awareness.
Krishnamurti describes an intelligent revolt which is is not reaction, and
which comes with self-knowledge through the awareness of ones own
thought and feeling. It is only when we face experience as it comes and do
not avoid disturbance that we keep intelligence highly awakened; and
intelligence highly awakened is intuition, which is the only true guide in life.
( Krishnamurti, 1953 )
By handing the student a pen and paper in his first design class you either
create a potential that develops on an acutely reasonable and intellectual
level or let the student live in the moment by opening the doors of
Neverland. The choice of the educator does not necessarily indicate the path
the student will take because he will have the right to make decisions
concerning his own life but it will point him toward a path.
The conclusion here is definitely not leaving the student to his own devices,
but to make it easier to understand; the steps to make the new student who
does not remember find a path can be summarized as follows:
-
65
Avoiding fear
It is important for the student to know himself and discover his potential.
High school has ended, the student has found himself at the gates of
university after a difficult period of exams. The first days are difficult for the
student, almost strange, and he finds it hard to make any sense of it all.
While the university=freedom concept he used to dream of is present, he is
still missing the safety of high school.
At this point the student will start to discover himself, firstly getting in touch
with himself.
The reactions given in childhood change over time. Children express their
happiness and sadness naturally without any plans in the background but as
they get older they feel the weight of environmental inputs, habits and values
and start filtering their thoughts and feelings. This filtering process causes
the student to ignore his creativity in the first few classes. The student needs
to dream...Nietsche says the day that dreamers are gone will be a disaster
for humanity.
The imagination of a student of architecture works differently or should be
made to work differently. He needs to think and feel what no one else has
thought or felt before or perceive these in his life. Life is beautiful when
meaning is created. Osho says meaning comes from creativity. Meaning
should be sought without any preconceived notions or expectations, only
then it can be created and this is only possible through taking part in life
deeply and completely. Anything is possible for attending life. Somebody
who wants to learn how to dance needs to dance instead of just watching
dancers. A person who wants to learn something needs to participate in it.
(Osho, 1999)
We can apply what Osho said to students of architecture. The student enters
the university learning how to collect data. Collecting data blocks creativity.
The student, as a result of learning about what others have done, puts
himself in the role of the observer. Whereas he needs to be an active
participant. Only then can he step out of whats already known and be
creative. The moment he lets go of his mind and reason will be a beginning
here.
The student who only tries to convey what he knows follows a well known
path, there is no creativity there, only a path thats followed, what the student
of architecture must be taught is not to follow down a path but to have the
courage to participate in life.
Going over what weve said so far, what is obvious is the need for the
student to get in touch with himself. Although the language of design is not
one he can understand, he can use color and lines the way hes used to and
will be allowed to do so for a while yet. Basic design studios will become his
first Neverland and his first interaction will be with white sheets.
66
67
Life in Neverland
These pictures are taken in
Neverland (Introduction to Architecture )
Studios / Halic University-2008
Lectured by Assist. Prof. Dr. Lerzan Aras,
Res. Assist. Eser Yac,
Res. Assist. Esin Sarman, Res. Assist. Bure Toku
68
Conclusion
Education of architecture calls for a different start than others. For the
student to forget everything he has learned until now and make a new
beginning, the educator must break some habits. The way to do this is in fact
simple, creating an original and free studio environment.
As Dutton states, the design studio is the central feature of architectural
education programs. It is the heart and head of architectural education.
(Dutton, 1991)
Architecture is among disciplines of possibilities. Though long overdue, the
disciplines of design have begun to emerge independently as neither subset
of the sciences or the humanities (Malecha, 2006). And because each
school is situated in a unique institutional context and influenced by its own
regional demographics, programmatic change must follow from a careful
self- assessment of the schools particular circumstances.
Perceptions of the school program, social dynamics and the ideal studio and
curriculum (Groat, 1996) are interrelated for creating this atmosphere. But in
every case there is one thing in common, and this is the reality that the
student needs to get in touch with himself, that is, he needs to concentrate
on what hes doing rather than the outcome.
He needs to learn to be happy with what he has created, even if hes chosen
a model, this should not continue, he must learn to appreciate his own
imagination.
He must stop following what others are doing and collecting data and
instead start being the actor, not the observer.
Awareness as the increase in courage and vitality, and the decrease in fear
and doubt is the are the basic aims of Neverland. When it is outlined this
way, the model of teaching that is used will be irrelevant because there will
be the Neverland that is emancipated and fuelled by the students
imagination. Here, the true nature of mankind, his feelings and his will to live
are already present. In this environment the student will create, his doubts
subsided, he will feel himself in the midst of his life and will love his
profession.
He will begin to sense, to think and to feel.. As Santayana writes, A sunset
is not criticized, it is felt and enjoyed This gives us the freedom to
appreciate and admire the beauty of something and take fuller responsibility
for it. (Santayana, 1988)
The student should come not to a lecture room but to Neverland where he
will find everything he needs. Conversation, feeling nature, drawing freely for
hours and getting his strength from silence will be the way of this new
method. The student who was told off for painting the daisy purple and its
leaves pink, will find the courage to do this again only through this method;
which in turn will give way to design and creativity.
69
REFERENCES
Boeree G.; (2006) Personality Theories: Carl Gustav Jung, online text,
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/
Cleary, T.; (1989) Zen Lessons, the Art of Leadership, Shambala Publication
Inc.
Dutton, T.; (1991) The Hidden Curriculum and the Design Studio: Toward a
Critical Studio Pedagogy in Voices in Architectural Education- Cultural
Politics and Pedagogy, Bergin&Carvey
Feigenberg, A.; (1991) Learning to teach and Teaching to learn in Voices in
Architectural Education- Cultural Politics and Pedagogy, Bergin&Carvey
Groat, L.; (1996) Reconceptionalizing Architectural Education for a more
Diverse Future: Perceptions and Visions of Architectural Students, Journal of
Architectural Education, Vol 49, No.3, pp 166-183
Jung, C.G.; (2006) Analytical Psychology, Analitik Psikoloji, translated by
Ender Grol, Payel Publication, stanbul
Jung, C.G.; (2007) Man and his Symbols, nsan ve Sembolleri, translated by
Ali Nihat Babaolu, Okuyanus Publication, stanbul
Krishnamurti, J; (1953) Education and the Significance of Life, Krishnamurti
Foundation, NY
Krishnamurti, J.; (2004) On Learning and Knowledge, renme ve Bilgi
zerine, translated by Anita Tatler, Ayna Publications, stanbul
Kurokawa, K.; (1991) Intercultural Architecture; Philosophy of Symbiosis,
Academy Editions
Malecha, M.; (2006) Architectural Education in Transformation: Evolving a
third Domain of Knowledge; European Association of Architectural
Educatiion News Sheet, Special Volume 76, pp 21-39
Osho; (2006) The Book of Understanding: Creating Your Own Path to
Freedom, Random House, NY
Osho; (1999) Creativity: Unleashing the Forces Within, Osho International
Foundation, NY
Santayana G.; (1988) The Sense of Beauty: Being the outlines of Aesthetic
Theory, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Stamps, A.E.; (1994) Jungian Epistemological Balance: A Framework for
Conceptualizing Architectural Education, Journal of Architectural Education,
Vol 48, No. 2, pp 105-112
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71
1977-1984
1985
From 1986
1997
1998-2006
2007
72
ABSTRACT
In this article, a broad documentation work will be presented, which we as a
team have led. The team comprised of two architects, 15 architectural
students, and four further interns from Turkey. The 15 students were in their
first to fourth year of their architectural studies at the Technical University of
Vienna and/or at Turkish universities, of whom some graduated during the
research year. The members cooperated for 42 weeks, a duration that was
divided into five campaigns of differing lengths from 2001 to 2005.
The object to be documented was the Mausoleum of Belevi, which belongs
to the best-preserved memorials from the Hellenistic period. It is often
compared with the Mausoleum of Halikarnassos, one of the Seven Wonders
of the World.
Through a new investigation at the site, the remaining in situ existence and
constituent parts of the rich architectural elements should be documented
and the reconstruction of the monument should be finally realized. And,
parallel to that, a new knowledge about the proposal, construction, and work
process of the Hellenistic period should be gained for the history of
architecture. The reconstruction is a contrary design process. The original
design will be regained by working on and reassembling several single parts
of the ruined building.
The documentation work became an interdisciplary cooperation between
architects, geodetics, archaeologists, photographers and skilled workers. For
the documentation, a CAD-supported method of drawing dokumentation was
applied. Drawings created by manuel measurements and subsequently
digitalized were fit in over identical points in the already existing digital
structure.
Our work encompassed various aspects, which were similar in
documentation, research, practice, and teaching, such as with the concept
that these fields are mutually dependent with each other and can only in
exchange come into their interrelation to an intensive efficiency. In this way,
it dealt not primarily with a collection of works of drawings, but rather also
with a documentation of our research activitities.
The documentation and research work surely brought new impulses for
students and experiences, which could not be gained within the scope of
normal class sessions. Some of them can be listed as following:
73
74
Introduction
As early as the 30s, Praschniker, Theuer and Keil (1933) had carried out
academic work on the Mausoleum of Belevi and submitted proposals for
reconstruction and from 1974 to 1978 Alzinger and Fleischer (1979) carried
out further investigations of the mausoleums architecture and sculpture, all
of which were jointly published [1]. Hoepfner (1993) produced one article
about the monument [2].
A more recent research project consisted of two part projects: Building
Research and Archaeology (Krinzinger, Ruggendorfer and Heinz, 2001)[3].
The recording and reconstruction of the entire complex was the task of
Building Research.
The challenge was to choose a method in such a way so as to master this
complex task in a relatively short and limited time but without allowing the
required quality to suffer as a result. That demanded a precise and efficient
procedure for the building survey. The decision was made in favour of a lowtech surveying procedure and the use of higher technology where it was
necessary. The method of manual surveying was selected, for which a large
number of staff were trained. After a comprehensive introduction, great value
was set on all the students being able to take on and perform their own parts
of the task.
Methodology
The level of accuracy (Schuller, 2005)[4] and the requirements made of the
surveying plans also to some extent determine the recording method.
Measurement and drawing on site, in particular with a common work process
in a joint operation, were the basis from the start. In order to achieve usable
quality of representation in the research task, which is especially important
to detecting the important details in the construction history, (only) manual
measurements could be considered. It was obvious that the pencil scale
drawings had to be produced on site (Cramer, 1984). The fine work on a
drawing board in front of the structure with the direct observation and direct
transfer of the findings are the most important work stages and the decisive
criterion in the building research (Weferling, Heine and Wulf, 2003)[5].
Computer-aided building survey procedures such as the set-up of networks
of points and photogrammetry were involved in the entire processing
procedure and combined with the recordings from manual surveying. This
gave rise to a hybrid technique both in the recording of ground plans and of
sections and views: in well-defined points on the building and on the edges
75
76
are relatively closely overlapping. Moreover, the various staff also have
different levels of experience and for this reason a scale of 1:10 offers a
greater degree of accuracy. In addition, there was a desire to do the stone
drawings on a scale of 1:10 since the artists should not be jumping from one
scale to the other and becoming irritated.
Structure of the geodetic fixed point field
To support the manual survey i.e. to be able to capture the actual situation
quickly and efficiently, the specialist knowledge of geodetic experts was
relied upon to set up the fixed point field (Hlzl 2003)[7]. Some preparation
work had to be done for the geodetic survey. So firstly noticeable marks had
to be made on the stones in visible positions and on the edges and corners
of stones that were as well preserved as possible. Selected reference points
were marked in red with paint sticks and serial numbers marked on them.
The points were calibrated with their coordinates by the technical surveyors
and entered into the computer file according to their absolute and relative
height information. Measurement points contain the serial numbers of the
measured points and their heights. At the end of the work, about 9,500
coded measurements had been taken (Fig. 1).
77
78
based on the simple reasons that the recorders could more easily learn to do
it or some of them had already managed to learn it during their training and
several staff could be used simultaneously in various areas and the required
equipment such as plumb line, tape measure, set square and spirit level
were still the cheaper alternative but also on the fact that the human eye is
still the best analyst that can extract important information from what is
there, present it graphically on paper and disregard or filter out the rest and
so also hold an intensive debate with the construction. Compared with the
use of procedures with instruments, the long time required and the longer
time spent with the structure are stressed as a disadvantage of the method
of traditional manual recording (Bruschke, 2005). Thinking of this another
way, one might argue that the traditional manual survey allows longer time to
be spent with the structure compared with the use of procedures with
instruments, which is an important aspect in adequate debate, involvement,
observation and additional reflection about the structure itself. The
advantage of manual processing is a more differentiated and accurate
representation in drawing. It may be the most labour-intensive process but
the construction deserves to be analysed with the best method so as to
exploit and use the opportunity of analysing it with the greatest precision.
The manual recordings were mostly made on to A3 transparent drawing film
on which grids and points were marked. The film should not change its
dimensions even in high humidity so that there would be no distortion
created when two sheets were laid side by side. With each drawing a certain
overlap area was necessary to prevent empty strips produced in adjacent
areas.
After the marked points had been found on the monument, a start could be
made on the manual recording. Once a very dense network of points was
available, smaller sections could then be produced during surveying. Based
on the points it was possible to conduct the survey in smaller manual
triangulation measurements including the recording of technically important
data [11].
It was not simply left up to the surveyors to decide what they would draw and
how but instead a standard presentation method was always adopted in
entering the surface work on the stone drawing [12]. After an explanation of
the principles by the building researcher there was ongoing contact,
enquiries and explanatory discussions on unclear points because surveying
and recording themselves are a way to broad academic discovery. Survey
drawings were not intended to speculate on what might be but on what could
be identified with certainty. The most precise approach possible in the first
stages of work leaves few open questions for later stages of work.
After the work was completed there was a drawing that could be copied and
which forms a very good basis for further processing but which is not yet
ready for publication.
79
Photogrammetry
A further procedure that was available was photogrammetry. This procedure
was preferred in flat areas of the faade. With the views of the south and
north and parts of the western faade, digital photo-aided equalisation could
be used in some sections. These positions proved to consist almost
exclusively of individual gigantic wall areas, each lying in a single plane
which, deprived of their cladding blocks, stood there as bare, straightened
rock areas that still provide much information about the fixings and the
heights of the layers. Thanks to their even surfaces they are ideally suited to
photo-aided digital equalisation in the production of view plans. The
reference points (Eckstein, 1999), which were marked in situ with red paint
sticks, were required again. The photography had to be as straight relative to
the surface to be equalised as possible i.e. the plane of the subject had to be
as perpendicular as possible to the direction of the recording. The equalised
photos aided the manual survey with recording as quickly and correctly as
possible, in particular in areas that have no structural peculiarities but show
traces of working over large areas. Structural peculiarities and fixings where
input from pure manual surveys, supplemented by remarks and descriptions.
Structural joints, positions filled with mortar, scratches etc., all these detailed
questions that photogrammetry cannot resolve, were subsequently manually
processed in order to obtain a valuable result for the building research. To
record the faade areas by drawing, scaffolding was erected in front of the
faades. With the aid of the scaffolding it was possible to investigate and
record the rock areas as regards the fixings and the heights of the layers in
detail.
Digitalisation of the survey sketches
In order to combine several drawing sheets, all drawings were scanned
uniformly. Images were created in TIFF file format with a resolution of 300
dpi for the pixel data. These TIFFs were stored on one layer for subsequent
CAD processing.
Pixel images which at first had no relation to the structure had to be
integrated into the coordinate system of the building via reference points.
Here we cannot speak of a method entirely free from further work. But
further work was not done by retracing sheets in the winter that had been
drawn on in the summer. The work of drawing was not repeated but right
from the next stage, work continued on matching the areas drawn with each
other. The aim was to convert the pencil drawing already produced into a
digital format. The idea was to try to produce a traditional clean drawing with
the facilities of the image processing program without having to draw the
recording sheets again in ink. As a result, documents with strong contrast
were achieved compared with the original pencil drawings, which was an
important precondition for printing. Combining the drawings in the computer
into a plan in this way represented the last stage of the survey work, the
80
recording of the structure converted into printable form, which then served
the building researchers as the basis for further processing and
reconstruction. Since the actual plan, representing the actual situation, was
not to be changed, it was laid down as the actual layer (without line
drawings) and then the planning, corrections or additions, classifications,
anastylosis etc. overlaid on it.
The distortions resulting from scanning were so slight that it was possible to
disregard them. Slight inaccuracies could be removed with the next sheet.
Because the sections were divided into relatively small areas by the A3
sheets, the deformations resulting from using a good scanner were not a
matter that had to be additionally dealt with.
Image processing
To prevent the cut edges from being visible, the images were processed as
original files in the image processing program the overlap areas, then
adjusted until these edges could no longer be distinguished. An attempt
was made to eliminate and harmonise the differences between the artists or
the years, between beginners and the experienced, even the differences in
style of the very same artist in the first and last years. Combination was
easy, for example, where a section was drawn in one year and at least most
of it had come from one person. Here the ground plan of the podium was the
biggest and most labour-intensive part.
Impurities on the documents such as dust or unclean or yellowed areas
create marks on the scanned images that were not part of the recording.
These required further processing e.g. the removal of these dirty pixels,
with the aid of various filters.
CAD reprocessing
The processed image in the image processing program was imported into
the CAD-drawing. The image was incorporated into the system by the
identical reference points and the guidelines by means of rotation into the
right orientation and scaling (Schumann, 2000). This allowed the images of a
faade, sectional views or the ground plan in CAD to be combined into an
overall plan.
The entry of all drawings as images on the same scale has the advantage
that one can combine all the meaningful and important details of the
monument that were recorded with a scale of 1:1 (such as the profile of the
podium, the profile of the nosing of the roof tiles or the edging profile of the
burial chamber wall cladding blocks) into a single plan and associate them.
Then the plans can be printed out at any desired scale. Thus for instance in
CAD the entire plan could be shown at a scale that provided an overview
and another important but smaller area shown at a greater scale or prepared
for the publication printing, depending on requirements.
81
Although the areas recorded were in some cases located at some distance
from each other, even from the start of recording they could be combined
into an overall plan with their correct distances from each other. So it was
possible, for instance, to combine the big facades or the ground plan that
were in some cases uncovered, cleaned and cleared of vegetation, surveyed
and recorded in sections in different years into one structure in the CADplan. In this way the plans recorded at a scale of 1:10 over several years by
various staff could be combined in CAD into one uniform plan (Fig. 5-6).
82
facilities of the drawing program, all the required information on the drawings
could be overlaid but then hidden again when printing so that they did not
appear either in processing or in printouts. These inputs were required in
order to establish their correct positions for reconstruction but it was often
unnecessary to represent them in the end product since the complicated
relationships would make it harder to understand the end product.
In the end, about 1,682 m2 of ground and elevation areas of the monument
had been recorded at 1:10. In addition some hundred displaced components
were recorded on the site by drawings 1:10 or survey sketches in terms of
technical construction according to their fixings, some being loaded into CAD
as line drawings for the reconstruction.
On the students and the results
The students came on regular or holiday period work placement to gain
experience and they took on the project enthusiastically and were very
committed during the work. Some of them applied for the work back during
their university terms and many joined in the work because of their
connections with the location.
In the first few days they were given explanations on and allocated to the
project and to their task, namely the manual surveying. As it soon turned out,
the opportunities were so wide that every student could find his own task.
The procedure and process of surveying and the conversion into drawings
were very soon in hand. With the guidance of architects, the students
performed their tasks. They also had a chance to learn to put the techniques
to practical use.
Although in general they worked alone, it was not long before experience
was being exchanged among colleagues. In this way they also learnt from
each other without this seriously affecting the progress of the work. The aim
of the project was to jointly produce a plan of the existing structure. With the
individual sheets being combined year by year, one could see how the
students were maturing. It was astonishing how seriously the students took
their tasks and how much some of them matured on the job. Everyone in the
field made progress in their techniques and skills.
For the group it was an opportunity to work under professional supervision
on a project in which everyone could contribute and gain new experience.
The group matured on the job although the work was not performed in
groups. Here the shared accommodation, staying overnight in the
excavation building clearly played a part. Doing something together in their
leisure time and discussing tasks and problems was obviously from many
points of view instructive for them.
There was no direct connection between their studies and the project
because the excavation stages take place in the summer months outside
83
study periods, which is usual, but they worked in the holidays so that normal
student life was not interrupted.
Using the reprocessed and combined drawings (from their own independent
work) as finished or in some cases partly finished plans, presentation folders
were produced and the work given a clear context. The experience of
success of each individual student was crucial to further successes. At the
same time there also developed the courage, confidence and persistence
required for architectural studies and careers (Baumeister, 2004).
It would be desirable for projects of this nature to be offered to the students
now and then. The work clearly provided new impetus and experience that
cannot be gained in the course of normal student training. For example:
Endnotes
[1] Theuer (1979) proposed two different reconstructions: a solution with a pyramidal
roof (in Alzinger et.al., 1979, 72 f. Fig. 51. 52) and one open-air with an inner court
(ibid, 57 Fig. 42a).
[2] Hoepfner revived the open-air solution and clearly improved the previous
reconstruction, without having had the possibility to be able to perform a detailed
investigation at the site.
[3] For the building research, Heinz was responsible, for archaeology, Ruggendorfer.
The general direction of the project was placed in the hands of the then director of the
excavations of Ephesos, Professor Krinzinger.
[4] Precision concerned the correct logging of the complex states of the construction
site and therewith besides precise measurements, especially also precision mapping.
84
[5] For the comprehensive discussion for and against the employment of modern
instruments in the area of historical construction sites, please see [Weferling, Heine
and Wulf (ed), 2003].
[6] Hdler (2005) made a division of levels of precision and ranked 1:10 among the
exclusive scientific objects serving construction close-ups.
[7] Hlzl (2003) negate the necessity of geodetical support in scale 1:10.
[8] This grid system has no direct connection with the axes of the monument. It is
rather an independently set-up grid system in order to attach the orientation of the
drawn plan in the foundation.
[9] There with, it concerns itself with a reality-true portrayal of the sized object.
[10] Under measurement, one understands the documentation of the state of an
object at a certain point in time, s.: Wangerin, (1992).
[11] Dowel-, lewis-, clamp-, pry-holes, score lines, etc.
[12] That means the different surfaces of the point, the toothed, etc. chisel were
illustrated.
References
Alzinger, W., Theuer, M., Praschniker C., and Fleischer, R. (1979), Das
Mausoleum von Belevi, Forschungen in Ephesos (FIE) Vol 6, Verlag
sterreichisches Archologisches Institut Wien
Bruschke, A. (ed) (2005), Bauaufnahme als Erkenntnisprozess
Anforderungen und Methoden vergleich,
Bauaufnahme in der
Denkmalpflege, pp 187-195
Baumeister, N. (2004), Abenteuer Architektur, Design und Architektur:
Studium und Beruf. Fakten, Positionen, Perspektiven, Internationales
Forum fr Gestaltung Ulm pp 125-133
Cramer, J. (1984), Handbuch der Bauaufnahme, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt
Stuttgart p 49
Dzierson, M. and Zull, J. (1990), Altbauten Zerstrungsarm Untersuchen,
Rudolf Mller Verlagsgesellschaft Kln
Eckstein, G. (1999), Empfehlungen fr Baudokumentationen: Bauaufnahme
- Bauuntersuchung, Arbeitsheft / Landesdenkmalamt BadenWrttemberg: 7, Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart p 13
Grossman, G.U. (1993), Einfhrung in die historische Bauforschung,
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt
Hdler E. (2005), Sanierungsvoruntersuchung und Bauforschung als Teil
des Planungsprozesses, A. Bruschke (ed), Bauaufnahme in der
Denkmalpflege, pp 45-49
Hlzl F. (2003), Genauigkeitskriterien und Anforderungen an Aufmaplne,
2
in: U. Weferling, K. Heine, U. Wulf (ed), Von Handaufma bis high tech
Koll. Mainz vom 23.- 26. Feb. 2000, pp 44-49. 45
Hoepfner, W. (1993), Zum Mausoleum von Belevi, Archologische Anzeiger
(AA), Deutsches Archologisches Institut (DAI) pp 111-123
85
Keil J., (1933), 17. Vorlufiger Bericht ber die Ausgrabungen in Ephesos,
sterreichische Jahreshefte (Jh) 28 Beiblatt, pp. 28-44
Krinzinger F., Ruggendorfer P., and Heinz R. (2001), Das Mausoleum von
Belevi, Anzeiger der philisophisch-historischen Klasse Wien 136 pp 143167
Krucker, B. (2005), Wechselwirkungen, interactions in teaching, research
and practice. Cavelti A6, St. Gallen, Zurich p 10
Rottlnder, R.C.A (1997), Achse oder Raster? Zur Grundrissgestaltung
klassischer und romanischer Architektur, in: Archometrie und
Denkmalpflege, Koll. Wien pp 59-65
Schuller, M (2005) Building Archaelogy Bauforschung, Bruschke A (ed),
Bauaufnahme in der Denkmalpflege, p 10
Wagner, S (2000), Bauaufnahme als Dokumentationsmethode in der
Baudenkmalpflege, D. Schumann (ed), Bauforschung und Archologie,
pp 348-363
2
Wangerin, G (1992), Bauaufnahme. Grundlagen, Methoden, Darstellung ,
Braunschweig (u.a.): Vieweg p 56
Weferling, U., Heine, K., and Wulf, U. (ed) (2003), Von Handaufma bis high
2
tech . Koll. Mainz vom 23.-26. Feb. 2000, Verlag Philipp von Zabern
86
87
ABSTRACT
The design studio is central to architectural education. It is the forum in
which students can apply and test their developing architectural knowledgebase and staff can evaluate the students understanding and competence in
formulating an architectural proposition. The studio also has a direct
relationship to the professional working environment of the architect and
therefore simulates the creative workplace environment that many of the
students aspire towards. Therefore one of the most significant challenges
for architectural education is the development of methods that are effective
in introducing studio-based learning to new entrants to courses in
architecture. Most new students will have had no or very little experience of
this method of learning. The process is of even greater importance when
the course itself is new. Established courses will have an existing and
evolving studio culture for new students to draw on in a process of passive
induction. For a new course there needs to be a more conscious and
structured mechanism to both induct new students into the process of
studio-based learning and encourage the appreciation of the benefits of a
lively studio culture.
Keywords: Studio-Based Learning, Induction Process, New Course, Taster
Day.
88
Introduction
The special importance of sketching in the design process as long been
recognised by design researchers. Lundequist (1992) exemplified this
position when he observed that,
It is virtually a truism to say the core of professional knowledge of an
architect lies in his ability to create solutions to design problems. This
ability to sketch is concerned less with being able to draw and more
with his ability to handle the ambiguous and indeterminate in the
problems he faces.
Also, Wahlstrom (1992) explored the relationship between the process of
sketching in design and professional knowledge before making the
21
connection between tacit knowledge , or the knowledge acquired through
experience and reflection, rather than through structured learning, and the
essentially personal means of design exploration through sketching. The role
of sketching in the process of generating, testing and developing a design
solution is self evident to a practitioner. And their relationship to a
collaborative process of design and construction is also implicit in
architectural practice. However, this is not the case with new students
entering courses in architecture who are unfamiliar with the relationship
between drawing, making and design methodology, especially in the
educational and professional context of studio practise. The introductory
student exercises discussed here are an attempt to address these issues.
In order to focus attention on the work of architecture as a material, made
thing, it is beneficial to introduce students to architectural design through the
use of models as representation rather than drawing. By engaging with the
spatial location of material, its form, texture and issues of scale, students are
then able to explore suitable methods of drawing to abstract and re-present
the material model in two dimensions.
Their unfamiliarity with studio-based learning may initially cause them to fall
back to the more traditional class-room based learning mentality of which
most new students are familiar. In the classroom the teacher is master and
21
90
the bonds are broken more easily, because the critical faculty is
22
depersonalized.
The studio has a central role to play in developing the unique character of
architectural design education. The students are central to that emerging
character so it is vital that attention is given to developing suitable means of
inducing new students to this pattern of education.
The Studio Introduction Workshop Exercise
The Arts Institute at Bournemouth (AIB) is currently developing a process of
induction that begins at the interview stage, before a student is offered a
place on the new course in architecture (commenced 2007). During a
Taster Day a short studio exercise is used to introduce the studio-working
environment to potential new students.
The tasks involve object
arrangement and discussion, drawing and scale appreciation. The materials
which the students are given are very basic and limited in variety, while the
results are not formally assessed. The atmosphere is deliberately kept
informal and relaxed to encourage social interaction between students. The
students are give guidance and assistance during the tasks but directed
tutoring is avoided. The resulting drawings and photographs of the students
structures form the basis of the project data and the outcomes are
compared with the developing direction given to the students at the start of
each successive session.
Although the Taster Day exercises are not considered to be part of a formal
process of induction to the first year course, they do assist in preparing new
entrants to the first year to think about architecture in a tangible way through
the direct manipulation and arrangement of objects (in this case wood
blocks) and their representation in drawings. Design through making is a
key element of the course and at the heart of the course philosophy (2007).
The architectural design course is clearly focused on introducing
architectural design as a specific field of design practice, with a
particular emphasis on the work of architecture as a tangible, built
(measurable) representation of human ideas (immeasurable).
This process will be introduced in first year (and developed through the
succeeding years of the course) where the making and use of models
representations of ground, wall, frame and canopy is the basis to
understanding origins of architectural form and design methodology. The
22
92
plastic models of people at 1:100 scale and 1:50 scale were positioned next
to, within or on top of the students constructions and they were asked to
consider the likely scale of their walls. Questions that arose included
whether their wall constructions were at the scale of part of a large building
or at the scale of a sculpture or small enclosure.
93
The blocks were designed and made in such a manner that their shape and
size allows them to fit together in a very specific way. The first exercise
asked the students to regard the blocks as chairs. The second wallbuilding exercise asked the students to regard the blocks as components to
be combined to construct a wall. Again, the jump from perceiving the blocks
as the single and complete object chair to a component to be physically
combined to create a more complex whole was something that proved
unexpectedly problematic at first. However, after they had made a few
95
grouped into pairs and asked to form a corner by bringing each of their wall
elements together. They had to work together to devise a way of locking
both elements together rather than just butting one wall element up against
the other. This proved to be very successful and encouraged a high level of
team working and cooperation in attempting to solve the problem. This
additional task provides an opportunity to expand this element of the
workshop to develop team-working exercises.
One other aspect of the workshop which proved to be rather more important
than was appreciated at the first instance was the choice of venue. The first
three sessions were conducted in a seminar room. The room is normally
used by many other courses and so cannot exhibit the particularities of any
one course that uses this room. However, once the venue was moved to the
studio itself, the value of being surrounded by the products and processes of
the studio (models, drawings, CAD stations, drawing boards, and students)
enhanced the experience for the students. On reflection, it may now seem
that the studio was an obvious choice for the venue, but it is precisely these
types of issues that evaluating the first set of workshops is intended to
address.
Implications for Future Workshop Exercises
The workshop was very much focused on the process of design and not the
product or solution. The drawings and models were vehicles which allowed
the students to gain a limited sense of learning how to explore design issues
as an architectural student (and architect) might within the particularity of the
studio.
The workshop allowed perspective students to assess their
suitability and reaction to studio-based learning by providing them with some
basic first-hand experience. It also initiated a process that can be built upon
during the early stages of the first year course. However, if suitable groupbased tasks can be included within the programme then the group dynamic
that is crucial to developing a studio culture can be generated in the
workshop and its value more readily appreciated by the participants. This
first series of workshops must be considered as a further pilot study with the
aim of developing a more rigorous approach to the workshops design and
evaluation for pre-course entrants to courses in architecture. The possibility
of developing a useful general framework for constructing specific
architectural design orientated induction/introduction courses for pre-course
applicants should be a longer term aim of this study.
97
References
AIB (2007), School of Design, BA (Hons) Architecture Course Handbook,
The Art Institute at Bournemouth, Poole, UK, pp. 7-10
Lawson, B (1993), The Art of the Process in RIBA, The Art of the Process,
Architectural Design Practice, The Building Group, London, UK, pp. 7-10
Lundequist, J. (1992), The Inexplicable in Architecture in Kazemian, A (ed.)
Proceedings-International Conference on Theories and Methods of Design,
13-15 May 1992, Gotenborg, Sweden, pp. 140-150
Wahlstrom, O. (1992), Learning Creativity in Design Some Impressions
from a Design Course Project on the Fourth Year Level at the School of
Architecture, Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, in Kazemian, A
(ed.) Proceedings-International Conference on Theories and Methods of
Design, 13-15 May 1992, Gotenborg, Sweden, pp. 190-198
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ANALYSIS OF FORMS
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the University of Navarre since his graduation. Guest academic at the GTA
Institute of the ETH in Zurich under professor Magnano Lampugnani. He has
published several articles in relation with the Spanish Modern Movement
during the thirties decade. His research is complemented with his
professional career.
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ABSTRACT
Introduction
Analysis of forms is the course that initiates the essential framework of
architectural students in projects discipline at the School of architecture in
University of Navarre.
Our teaching aim in this first course of studies in architecture plays a double
role: on one hand, to give the students the necessary graphic tools to
develop architectural projects and on the other hand, to initiate them in the
knowledge of architecture through the analysis of buildings.
Materials and methods
Our weekly schedule consists of a whole workshop day starting with a fortyminute theoretical session which helps the students to immerse into the task
they are due to deliver at the end of each session. Structure, construction,
light, space, function, form, landscape and environment is analysed by the
students along different tasks proposed to them.
In addition to this, a complementary homework is demanded each week to
ensure a deeper and continuous process of learning where the students
must choose their own motifs and practice different techniques.
Our one-year course also includes four weeks of a monographic theme
usually focussed on the analysis of a city area where they explore, in many
creative ways, the different scales of the urban space.
Another four-week period is spent on a group exercise of three or four
people where they experience working in teams and most of the times how
overall results usually exceed expectations.
Each proposed activity enables the students to rethink the architectural
project. Redrawing its plans and perspectives allows them to project,
interiorize and to have a better understanding of it. The task of redefining the
architectural project graphically proportionate them a deeper comprehension
of architecture.
The graphic exercise produces a personal encounter between students and
great masters of architecture of the twentieth century including their works
and thoughts. The design analysis becomes an additional effort to further
understand the idea, concepts and constraints that triggered the architectural
project.
Results
This double-side way of learning design skills by means of architectural
analysis provides them with the graphic ability to share and communicate
their creative thought. It becomes an essential tool in their permanent
process of generation of ideas that are triggered by the creative activity now
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and in their future. These graphic tools allow them to express their
architectural concepts and continually adapt their means and intentions to
materialize the creative thought made architectural form.
Conclusions
Learning design skills by means of drawing architecture builds their
architectural criteria from now onwards and develops their personal mature
with increasing analytic contents. Students discover which the fundamental
elements of architecture and the links and concepts that combine and
articulate them are.
The graphic quality improves notably when they abandon the drawing
conception as their main aim in itself and they focus on the architectural
object and its analysis.
There is, at the end, a personal fulfilment for the students, not just because
of the improvement they achieve over their graphic tools but for their first
immersion in architectural thought.
Five key words
Design education through architectural analysis.
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ANALYSIS OF FORMS
We would like to share with you our didactic experience in the first-year
studies at the School of Architecture at the University of Navarre. Our
subject is named Analysis of Forms and it is the course that initiates the
essential framework of architectural studies in projects discipline.
In this presentation we would like to introduce you a synthesis of the
methodology and the work we develop in our school, as well as our aims and
the future developments of the discipline as follows:
1. Introduction:
1.a. Aims
1.b. Analysis of Forms within the school
1.c. Analysis
2. Objectives
1st Design ability
2nd Design language
3rd Design culture
4th Design vocation
3. Methodology
4. End of the process
5. Future developments
6. Results and conclusions
1. Introduction
1.a. Aims
Our teaching aims in this first course play a double role: on one hand, we
intend to give the students the necessary graphic tools to develop
architectural projects and on the other hand, we initiate them in the
knowledge of architecture through the analysis of buildings.
1.b. Analysis of Forms within the school
This subject belongs to the introductory courses in the academic program of
the projects department that is divided in six sections and accompanies the
students during a five-year long training. Together with Elements of
Composition from the second year studies, Analysis of forms becomes the
foundations of the architectural degree before being fully introduced in
Projects I, II, III and IV for the third, fourth and fifth year.
This subject leads our students through a one-year process of intensive
learning of graphic skills and architectural projects that will become the
foundations of their future professional development, it constitutes their first
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contact with the architectural process of designing and the starting point of
the creative thought.
1.c. Analysis
The architectural project is a creative process that generates something that
did not exist before, the analysis starts with the result of that process and
from that point intends to show up its ideas and principles, it is meant to be
the way of going back to ascertain the circumstances that inspired the
project. This analysis is founded on hypothetical reasons however it shows
the student how architects operate, design and think their architecture.
In Mimetics Aristotle explains how in order to communicate an idea; you
need to construct an image, to articulate it. Thus, for him the way of
structuring the ideas is to write them. Assimilating the practice of architecture
to writing in Aristotle, we could say that architects articulate their discourse,
their thoughts and concerns through drawing. This is the reason why it is so
important to develop their graphic skills in these early stages of their training
and to mature as future creators of architectural ideas.
2. Objectives
1st Design ability
The first objective is to provide the pupils with the graphic ability to
communicate their creative thought. In order to learn project and design
tools, the following characteristics are essential:
Agility in sketching during the continuous flux of ideas and
perceptions of the reality that architects require as a graphic
thought.
Rigor and accuracy are crucial qualities in a geometric construction
associated with the formal dimension of architecture.
Motion and suggestion in the processes of analysis, representation
and production of the intentions of the author.
2nd Design language
The second goal initiates our students into the process of tackling the
comprehension and assimilation of a building by means of the graphic
language. The reconstruction of the architectural project by means of the
analytic drawing reveals the complexity of the elements, relationships and
laws that composes it.
They redraw the building in order to reprocess it and to rethink the
fundamental elements, laws, relations and concepts that materialize the
design process.
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The second part of the program is more plan or architectural drawings based
and it is structured as follows.
Part 2
The analysis of each project is aimed at partial studies selected for each
work related to the master architects of the twentieth century and its
aspirations that are considered by the students through different tasks
proposed to them.
Partial studies:
1. Structure and construction are the material dimensions of architecture
providing the architectural project with stability criteria and support.
2. Light is the mechanism that architects control by means of the section
devices, skylights, mechanisms and holes of regulation.
3. Space is understood as generation and relation established by the
building. Moreover, it embraces the concepts of scale and the geometric
dimension.
4. Function as the adequacy of the uses in architecture.
5. Form concerning composition, plans and volumes.
6. Landscape and environment as determinants of architecture and how
buildings respond to them.
In each theoretical session of the analytical part, early in the morning, we try
to introduce a concept in architecture through history and contemporary
works, we also aim at give them an overall idea about the architects career
and influences and finally we provide them with relevant information about
the project they are proposed to analyse for the rest of the day.
Individual research plays a crucial role in their training so we encourage
them to use the library to get a deeper understanding of the architectural
concepts, periods, precedents, influences and styles. This research routine
tends to be very useful for future courses and professional career, to be in
continuous contact with the library and to build up an individual research
which feeds up every architectural creation.
The methodology to study the building proposed under the partial studies
recommended to them is made up by three stages:
1. To compile information about the project deepening in the research
of the building, the author and the circumstances that conditioned it.
They discover the elements, relations and the intentions of the project.
In these initial phases it is important to combine different techniques of
drawings and to travel across the space by sketching quickly the first
stages of the analysis.
2. To define conclusions and fundamental ideas or concepts under the
specific aspect that has been researched.
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acrylic paint
Week 8: Figure drawing. Motif: themselves.
Transition part
Week 9: Guest artist. (ie: reproduction of figures of the Sistine chapel, to
study the composition of the bodies, proportionsin a big format)
Week 10: Guest artist. (ie: the students create their own sculptures with
tires and stools driven by the Guest artist)
Week 11: Complete representation of a complex building. They choose
their own techniques.
Week 12: Trip drawing. ie: They analyse the old part of the city with
quick and expressive hand sketches.
Part 2: Analysis part
Exams period: thematic motif, they analyse an area of the city form different
scales during four weeks.
Week 13: Representation of architecture from its plans. An architect is
invited to our session, explains them a project and they analyse it
graphically during the day.
Week 14: Architectural concepts- Structure: Farnsworth House,
Architect: Mies Van der Rohe.
Week 15: Architectural concepts- Function: Unit dhabitation Marseille,
Architect: Le Corbusier.
Week 16: Architectural concepts- Light: Riola Church, Architect: Alvar
Aalto.
Week 17: Architectural concepts- Funtion: Exeter Library, Architect:
Louis Kahn.
Week 18: Architectural concepts- Global analysis: Guggenheim
Museum New York, Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright.
Week 20: Group exercise. Presentation and research.
Projects:
Prefectural government office kagawa , Kenzo Tange
Rodovre Town Hall, Arne Jacobsen
TWA Airport, Eero Saarinen
Sydney Opera House, Jorn Utzon
Ford Foundation, Roche and Dinkeloo
Week 21: Group exercise. Public tutorial
Week 22: Group exercise. Public tutorial
Week 23: Group exercise. Deadline and public exposition.
Week 24: Analysis of a building in a natural environment.
Week 25: Analysis of an architectural project in its urban surroundings.
Week 26: Exam.
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the graphic skill. This is the reason why we intend to play down the
relevance of the punctual marks stressing the point that mastery in Analysis
of forms is acquired during the last phases of the course and the ideal
slogan that as students we are unable to admit: the main goal are not the
marks but the knowledge we achieve and that learning of design tools is a
matter of time which means mature and overall hard work.
Learning design skills by means of drawing architecture builds their
individual criteria from now onwards and develops their self-mature with
increasingly analytic contents.
Students discover the fundamental elements of architecture and the links
and concepts that combine and articulate them.
The graphic quality improves notably when they abandon the drawing
conception as their main aim in itself and they focus on the architectural
object and its analysis.
There is, at the end, a personal fulfilment for the students, not just because
of the improvement they achieve over their graphic tools but for their first
immersion in architectural thought.
For us, as tutors, it is always a reward to see how their efforts and
perseverance are translated in impressive improvements along their paths
and how comparing drawings from the first month to the last works, at the
end of the course, shows our students potential, enthusiasm and energy in
their future careers.
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works in Basic Design course and keep their design solutions in an orderly
fashion. The grades taken by each design work are combined with the
general interest and success of the student and his/her frequency of
participation in the class and the cumulative evaluation determines the
students grade for the semester.
.
Figure 1. Eray Koolu,
Lines and Direction Using
different characteristics of lines
(bold, thin, polylines, curves),
making spatial arrangements by
using harmony, contrast and direction
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Conclusion
The general aims of basic design course in our facultys interior architecture
and industrial design departments are to educate creative and skilled design
students by expanding their limits of conceptualization, enabling them to
think outside conventions, to express their thoughts through conceptual
designs, and to use time and materials in an effective way.
In this respect, the first differences of basic design education from
conventional educational methods that students come across are the
workshop studies, which is a distinguished method from their previous
experiences, and the possibility to share ideas and concepts with a number
of lecturers throughout the progress.
The observations from our basic design course throughout the recent years,
and with a total number of 250 students, are summarized below:
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can I do? as the classes advance. This shows that the progression of the
course improves their questioning and critical thinking skills.
Our basic design course begins with points and lines, and ends with 3
dimensional experiments. The design works produced by students
throughout this progress are collected in our facultys archive and classified
for further demonstrations. Between 4-10 September 2007, a number of
these student works are selected for an exhibition in Istanbul Design Week
on the old Galata Bridge in Balat. With the contribution and participation of
students, the exhibition reached a wide range of public, and attracted great
attention from the visitors. Consequently, the selected works are published
by our university and exhibited again, inside the campus, between 1-31
th
October 2007 to celebrate the 10 anniversary of Hali University.
Figure 14. Book cover of Basic Design Course Selected Student Works
th
(published in celebration for the 10 anniversary of Hali University)
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Bibliography
Denel B (e.d)( 1981), Temel Tasarm ve Yaratclk, ODT Mimarlk
Fakltesi Basn lii, Ankara
Grer, L and Grer,G (ed)( 1987),Temel Tasarm, Birsen yaynevi, stanbul
Usta, A and Usta, Kele , G and Ertrk, Z (2000), Mimari Tasarm Eitimine
Ba lamada Farkl Model Aray lar Strktr Tasarm, Arredamento Mimarlk
Dergisi No 2000/4 pp116
Teymur, N (ed, 1998),Tasa(r)lanacak bir dnya iin temel tasarm eitimi,
ODT Mim. Fak. Yaynlar, Ankara
Usta, K G; zdemir, M ; Kulolu, N; Ustamerolu, A A; Be gen, A and
Vural, S ( 2000), Mimarlk Eitiminde Temel Tasarmn Yeri, Mimarlk
Dergisi No293 pp42
aal, O; Kocaman, H; Salbacak, S and Yavuz, H (eds, 2007)Hali ansna
Gemi ten Gelecee-6 Mimarlk Fakltesi Mimarlk ve Endstri rnleri
Tasarm Blm Etkinlii, Hali niversitesi Mimarlk Fakltesi Yaynlar
No:3, stanbul
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A PEDAGOGY
Brian Dougan, Assistant Professor of Architecture
College of Architecture, Texas A&M University
Texas A&M University
3137 TAMU
College Station, Texas
77843-3137 USA
bdougan@tamu.edu
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ABSTRACT
To be playful and serious at the same time is possible and it defines the
ideal mental condition. Absence of dogmatism and prejudice, presence of
intellectual curiosity and flexibility, are manifest in the free play of the mind
upon a topic. To give the mind this free play is not to encourage toying with a
subject, it is to be interested in the unfolding of the subject on its own
account, apart from subservience to a preconceived belief or habitual aim.
Relations between students and teachers come in many flavors ranging from
heavy dogma to severe avant-garde. There is usually a sound rationale
behind the chosen stance, but the well-rehearsed justification does not
always benefit the learners. I work with a professorial reciprocity that
considers the teaching activity as if I were a design activity. The studio
agenda lies patiently suppressed until the context and comprehension
dictates direction. This lack of clarity usually tests the patience of everyone
involved, but at the same time keeps us attentive to potential we might not
have recognized if we established a rigid program in advance. Studio
choreography in flux is an arena set for fifteen weeks of active pedagogy. A
design studio does not take care of itself for there is no predictable trajectory
in design. If we present it as such, we are misrepresenting the case.
It is important to mention that pedagogy is not a curricular strategy or a wellbalanced degree plan even though it is often managed as such. It is also
not a successful collection of projects with proven successful outcomes.
Pedagogy as Dewey suggests, is about how the semester unfolds. How
much of the interaction between the designer, the teacher and the activity is
playful and how much is serious? It is about the designated professional
(professor) revealing the agenda, promoting curiosity, avoiding dogma, and
making the experience meaningful for the students. It is about the delivery
of information, the enthusiasm, the classroom ambiance, the choreography
of time, the logistics of space.
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A PEDAGOGY
teaching + pedagogy
The concept of pedagogy requires qualification because its use, even as a
label usually comes with hesitation. Few of my colleagues dare consider
themselves pedagogues while others understand a pedagogue as being
synonymous with a teacher and that teaching is simply considered
pedagogy. Despite the straightforward reciprocity, there is always the stale
debate about teaching being either an art or a science. In any other
discipline besides design the debate would not be essential, but in terms of
creative expression most of us are familiar with the poignant art/science
distinction. While certainly pertinent, the art and science debate lay outside
the scope of this particular discussion. I will focus on pedagogy beyond its
synonymous relation to teaching. I will provide examples of pedagogy as an
attitude adopted to make the design studio a fertile learning environment.
This collection of words was shaped in response to a concern for the
mysterious condition of the design studio and design education in general. I
am concerned because I have noticed some questionable pedagogical
activity within the confines of the typical design studio environment.
see + get cake + bird
I have a musician friend who refuses to use the adage, kill two birds with
one stone because he does not like the idea of killing birds. Despite the
associated dangers of soaring blood sugar and elevated cholesterol levels,
he prefers the expression, have your cake and eat it too. That is how I feel
about the design studio. I prefer the adage, what you see is what you get
as an appropriate label to attach to any design studio. I want to avoid any
mystery or misunderstanding because design is not mysterious. Design is
not the result of genius nor is it the product of only a talented few. Design is
teachable, explainable, and demonstrable. Too often the what you get in a
design studio or in other words the reality or product of the design studio
turns out to be a non-representational account of the collective time spent in
the studio. The simple reciprocity between having and eating often gets
contaminated. The what you get part of the spectrum is deceiving to even
the most competent designer because the produce usually looks quite good
or even better than it actually is and it is therefore hard to be critical. The
results in most design studios tend to be extremely product oriented and
most of the time cryptic in describing any obvious agenda. They tend to be
small facsimiles of real world conditions with no indication as to how they
came to fruition. The destination is celebrated while the journey is rendered
unimportant or mysterious.
I find this possibly imagined scenario
disconcerting because it is a negative reflection on Education. No matter
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behind the chosen contract, but the well-rehearsed justification does not
always benefit the learners. I work with a professorial reciprocity that
considers the teaching activity as if it were a design activity. The studio
agenda lies patiently suppressed until the context and collective
comprehension dictates direction. This lack of direction usually tests the
patience of everyone involved in the studio, but at the same time keeps us
attentive to potential we might not have recognized if we established a rigid
program in advance. A studio with choreography in flux is an arena set for
fifteen weeks of active pedagogy. A design studio does not take care of
itself for there is no predictable trajectory in design. If we present it as such,
we are misrepresenting the case. Design activity requires a diverse array of
informed decisions and contextual responses. The same is true of a studio
experience treated as a design venture. It unfolds in time and persistently
denies preconception and prescription.
It is important to mention that pedagogy is not a curricular strategy or a wellbalanced degree plan even though it is often managed as such. It is also
not a successful collection of projects with proven successful outcomes.
Pedagogy as Dewey suggests above is about how the semester unfolds.
How much of the interaction between the designer, the teacher, and the
activity is playful and how much is serious? It is about the designated
professional (professor) revealing and mapping the agenda, promoting
curiosity, avoiding dogma, and making the experience meaningful for the
students. It is about the delivery of information, the enthusiasm, the
classroom ambiance, the choreography of time, and the logistics of space.
This pedagogy is of course not unprecedented and cannot claim anything
new. What is new however is - every semester. Even though the intentions,
objectives, and studio learning environment remain the same, the tasks that
comprise the agenda are never rerun. The studio is always fresh, which is a
pedagogical edict in and of itself. When the studio agenda is new every
semester it is less likely to be a sterile routine. Those of us who love the
activity of design as verb never tire under its spell. A fresh agenda in a
designed design studio keeps the professor alert and insures a sincere
engagement. We cannot make the same claim when studio projects are
replayed for countless semesters. The misunderstanding that there is a
project or collection of projects worthy of being repeated as if design was a
recipe or a formula is an offense to the profession. Forging a new path
every semester that dictates a rich experience in process is a dangerous
professorial proposition, but designers and design studio teachers alike are
risk takers. Designers know how courage is necessary to reside in the dark,
to exist in a state of uncertainty, to deny the preconception so the unknown
can eventually be revealed. Facing uncertainty is the essence of what
designers do.
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We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have
gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known, we have only to follow
the thread of the heroic path. And where we had thought to find an
abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we
shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come
to the center of our own existence; and where we had thought to be alone,
we shall be with all the world. 3
As Dewey told us earlier, we learn when we are, interested in the unfolding
of the subject on its own account, apart from subservience to a preconceived
belief or habitual aim. We consciously avoid habits and preconceptions and
claim ownership of the event to control the way understanding unfolds. We
do not know the answer until we sufficiently investigate the question. In time
the semester unfolds, the project unfolds, and most importantly, the
students mind unfolds. Unfolding is a revelation for it reveals that which
was hidden or unknown before time was respected and utilized.
The process of unfolding includes scaffolding in terms of technology or
theory as is necessary. 4 When there is an obvious need for a particular
lesson concerning an immediate task, the design process appropriates the
fact to make direct use of the lesson, which is yet another independent
pedagogical edict. Learning is accommodated best when it can be applied
efficiently. If the teacher uploads a large dose of potentially useful
information without immediate application, it is usually neglected, as it does
not demonstrate its own necessity. The best intention is to capitalize on
exposure as directly and immediately as possible.
demonstration
In the spring semester 2007 at the American University of Sharjah in the
UAE, I taught a second semester foundation design studio that aspired to
reveal the didactic harmony between subject matter and its delivery. I
aspired to be the design studio professor who designed a design studio as if
it was a design. I anticipated a fifteen-week project and responsively made
responsible design decisions throughout the semester as the project
unfolded to reveal a path of activity. I did not predispose a plan about what
would happen over the course of the fifteen-week semester. It was
somewhat an administrative nightmare because there was essentially
nothing accountable about the studio until the students began to produce.
The initial push to activate the machine is always a struggle because of
either high school or the amount of time between semesters, but once the
momentum begins to accumulate the energy seems to be perpetual. This
particular semester I jump-started the adventure with a scavenger hunt in
search of lines defined by the juxtaposition of two unlike elements captured
photographically.
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ABSTRACT
It is a legitimate assertion that most major figures who have shaped the
course of architecture can be described as theoreticians who build. What
distinguishes these architects from their architect colleagues of lesser status
is the philosophical apparatus they have apprehended and made subject to
their disposition. Aldo Rossi, Robert Venturi, Peter Eisenman, Jacques
Herzog & Pierre De Meuron, Rem Koolhass, to name an incomplete list of
important architects of the last forty years and fit the description of
theoretician who builds particularly well, have been weaving philosophical
and architectural thought with their built work. Idea and object are two sides
of the same coin. In other words, good architects are in full intellectual
command of what they are designing.
Curricula in most architecture schools establish the architectural studio as
the largely unquestioned pillar in which architecture is coalesced by the
student. There is a belief at work that suggests that the individual student is
guided by inspiration as soon as s/he enters architecture school: The
students sits at his or her desk and is waiting for a supernatural force to
move their hands in such a manner that the sketch they produce will contain
the germs of the next masterpiece. This approach to architectural education,
practiced most naively in the USA in particular, is subject to the assumption
that the students are geniuses. But how many of us are geniuses? And what
does it mean to be a genius in the first place?
Therefore, architecture education should not be based on inspiration but on
a rational discourse with the major concepts that make architecture.
Architecture students have to encounter a discourse with the major concepts
of architecture not in their graduate studies but in the beginning year of their
architectural education because without that basic knowledge any more
thorough understanding of architecture is not possible. Why would one wait
to learn the intellectual basis of architecture until graduate school?
The course Architecture & Philosophy: Thoughts on Building examines not
examples of contemporary architectural production but rather intellectual
constructs from which they have arisen. The objective is to reveal the
linguistic richness and semantic complexity of the language used in the
discipline of architecture. Among the key words in the vocabulary of
architecture are: abstract, aesthetics, art, avant-garde, beauty, building,
construction, critique, deconstruction, form, function, genius, history,
landscape, language, mimetic, modern, nature, phenomena, postmodern,
program, representation, theory, topology, truth, typology, sublime, space,
structure, style, system, world.
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The students explore the revolutions of these key words in architecture and
learn to understand their shifting motivations, considering the work of
theoretical reflections, writings, manifestos, treatises in the disciplines of
philosophy, art, and architecture.
The aim is to erect an intellectual scaffolding for knowledge in architecture
and have available an apparatus to respond to the question What is
architecture? from the outset of the students architectural studies.
Keywords:
Architecture
Philosophy
Architectural Theory
Inspiration vs. Rational Discourse
Knowledge
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you just wait long enough until some God guides the architects hand in the
right way?
This is not an argument that denies the existence and the importance of
talent in the individual architect. It is a reasonable argument to make that a
great intellect, great knowledge, and superb dedication to architecture will
not necessarily bring forward desirable architecture whatever the persuasion
of that architecture might be. The argument of this paper is more in line with
the cautious position of the philosopher Friedrich Schelling. Schelling is
without much doubt the one thinker who attributed more to the effect of
genial inspiration than any other of his colleagues. Despite this valuation to
the power of genius, Schelling stated with much certainty that only a small
fraction of what makes the totality of the work of art is subject to genius:
what constitutes the aspect of art in the work of art, for Schelling, to use his
23
words, is subject to skill, practice, and imitation.
Endnotes
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have arisen. The objective is to reveal the linguistic richness and semantic
complexity of the language used in the discipline of architecture. Among the
key words in the vocabulary of architecture are: abstract, aesthetics, art,
avant-garde, beauty, building, construction, critique, deconstruction, form,
function, genius, history, landscape, language, mimetic, modern, nature,
phenomena, postmodern, program, representation, theory, topology, truth,
typology, sublime, space, structure, style, system, world.
The students explore the revolutions of these key words in architecture and
learn to understand their shifting motivations, considering the work of
theoretical reflections, writings, manifestos, treatises in the disciplines of
philosophy, art, and architecture. A basic understanding of these concepts is
a part of a solid education of every architect. An understanding of various
design concepts and expression of architectural language without that basic
knowledge is very difficult if not impossible.
References
Breitschmid, Markus. Thoughts on Building. Zrich: Corporis Publisher for
Architecture, Art, and Photography 2008
Breitschmid, Markus. Three Architects in Switzerland. Beat Consoni
Morger & Degelo Valerio Olgiati. Lucerne: Quart Publishers 2008
Hammermeister, Kai. The German Aesthetic Tradition. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press 2002
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Before joining UTSA Irina taught at Texas A&M University and University of
Idaho. Her research area of interest is emotional component of memory as
related to design, influence of autobiographical experiences of designers on
the product and process of design, and design pedagogy.
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ABSTRACT
The challenge of teaching design in an information age is that learning is
often confused with collecting a grab-bag of images that are available at the
click of a mouse. The speed of acquiring visual information, and producing
visual artifact, cannot be compared to immersive design. This speed and the
simultaneity of the immediately available abundance of visual elements has
been held accountable for a certain imbalance in our design objectives and
designed environments, causing a resurgence of sensory and embodied
concerns in design thought.
This paper catapults from these concerns in the context of design pedagogy.
It becomes vital to address these concerns at the beginning design level,
when students first develop conceptual as well as technical skills.
The paper is founded upon the design implications of certain perceptual
paradigms. We place particular emphasis on embodied experience and
embodied cognition to illustrate the formative role of the environment on the
cognitive processes and emphasize holistic perception and learning. We
then discuss the potential of application of embodied theories in our
pedagogical initiatives and suggest a three-step learning strategy based on
those theories.
We propose a three-part teaching and learning process that will embody
education within the existing format. Once interwoven in the existing fabric of
architectural education, students' embodied learning will be enriched,
allowing a balance of collateral and collective experience: immersionconnection-reflection-communication. Immersion involves dwelling in the
places of study. Connection allows students to establish a link between
architectural concepts and their autobiographical experiences of dwelling in
a place. And the last step consists of students reflection on learning,
expressing that learning via a variety of media and communication
techniques best suited to articulation of their learning.
150
151
our prior experiences, beliefs and values, and current goals. In architecture,
a realization of this personal dimension of knowledge is paramount (PerezGomez, 1987:58). In beginning design, the realization of this personal
dimension is vital. Personal grounding allows the embodied making of an
architect, and it is this personal grounding that must become the basis of the
education of an architect.
Professional education emphasizing technical knowledge and skills prepares
students poorly for practice (Yinger, 1987). We only touch the surface when
we teach students discrete disciplines of history, technology, and
techniques. It is not through usage of recognizable and marketable
architectural forms, nor refining of a couple of techniques learned in school,
nor fitting the current dogma or detached experimentation with new materials
and technology that one becomes a good architect. It is through deep
understanding of a human being in a dwelled place, and personal
reinterpretation of this understanding through an architects own techniques,
that one becomes a good architect. Beginning design education lays the
foundation for such understanding and development of the skills to be
manifested in material form.
Currently the curriculum in architectural education is derived primarily from
the Bauhaus tradition. Over the years, the architectural curriculum has
endured a myriad of transformations leading to more amorphous
pedagogical initiatives and continuous addition of new courses to meet the
demands of practice. Obviously, the onus of education cannot be on the
curriculum; it must be on the approach to learning. Unfortunately, the
emphasis on performance and evaluation targeted toward sustained
accreditation and improved ranking among schools, based on performance
and evaluation, is a deterrent to nurturing this emphasis. As a result, rather
than inculcate mediation between modalities, architectural education defines
boundaries between domains and students struggle to juggle among them.
Landrum (2004) stated: the overwhelming problem in education today is
students neglect in recognizing their own relationship to the very reality in
which they dwell. Space cannot be taught, it can only be learned through
ones sensory and emotional engagement with the world. Often, beginning
design exercises are meant to teach students to abstract. We give students
exercisesa set of rules guiding them through generalization and reduction
of information content to a concept, an image somehow distilled from a real
world to a pure form. Students learn the steps of getting from point A to point
B, but do they really learn to extrapolate and abstract learned experience
into future spaces? Instead, maybe we need to allow students to investigate
their own process of embodiment and develop their own process of
transforming those embodied experience into new architecture, whether
through abstraction or reflection.
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Embodied realities
When professional education discarded the apprenticeship model,
knowledge through analytical thinking superseded learning through practice.
The emphasis shifted from learning by doing and contemplation of activity
and consequence to pure thought, learning theory and techniques, and
abstract analyses of lectures by knowledgeable researchers (Hoberman and
Mailick, 1994). Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned from the fact that
vernacular buildings are commonly considered both humane and
sustainable (Sorvig, 2005); they are built from embodied experience. In an
age of information overload and technological sophistication, by the time the
student graduates his (her) tools are already obsolete, and therefore the
internship model in practice is firmly in place, where the student must relearn in context, and unlearn what is no longer relevant to the industry.
Students in design schools cannot win the race with technology. Education
must equip them for challenges in a swiftly changing world by relying on their
inner resources. As we become more connected to a shrinking world,
connections with our own embodied core become weaker, transient, and
heavily mediated. In this context, beginning design education must accept
the challenge to triangulate the what, why, and how of architecture with the
critical who of each of our own embodied realities.
Information vs. knowledge
This field (of architectural practice) becomes increasingly oriented to the
pursuit of symbolic capital and disconnected from the lifeworld of everyday
experience The values of the field also permeate architectural education
with an increasing specialization in the production of symbolic capital
(Dovey, 2005:293). We are all familiar with Internets tidy summaries, infinite
links to information and images (Beckett, 2007). It is so comfortable to open
your laptop and peruse through endless imagery on any subject readily
available through Google: it is irresistible!
Since students now have much more and easier access to information, it
seems like they have more knowledge. However, it is a mistake to classify
knowledge, the normative frame for our praxis (Perez-Gomez, 1987:57) as
identical to information. Today, people have overwhelming abundance of
information but very little knowledge. Internet allows seductive ease of
information access, profession puts pressure of informed design, but it is not
the collection of facts and figures that allows one to create good architecture.
Architecture is not the embodiment of information; it is the embodiment of
meaning Knowledge must be understood as a possession of embodied
consciousness qualitatively different from superfluous information (PerezGomez, 1987:57). Even now, in the digital age of fictitious realities, we live in
our bodies and create meaning through our bodies.
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can address beginning design education within the current format. Once
interwoven with the existing fabric of architectural education, students
embodied intuitions will be enriched, allowing a balance of collateral and
collective experience: (1) immersion, (2) connection, and (3) reflection and
communication.
Immersion
Students must dwell in the places they study. To make design decisions they
must immerse themselves completely within a built environment or draw
from the environment in which they are immersed. Such immersion would
mean elimination of abstract exercises, reducing studio time and increasing
travel, field trips, or sessions in natural/inhabited surroundings. Learning for
architects has traditionally involved exploring actual places, and learning by
actual interaction with clients, patrons and contractors, designing and
construction. Such learning is real, rich, and personal and can be drawn
upon in more abstract exercises such as the creation of a 2-dimensional
representation of buildings, or drawing. When directly experienced,
perception and actual experience of a space contracts and expands in
relationship to a persons emotions and state of mind, sense of self, social
relations, and cultural predispositions (Low, 2003:12).
Immersion must not be just at a physical, or merely cognitive level, but at an
emotional level as well, because human experience is grounded in emotion.
It is the embodied self which expresses feelings and disposition, and which
thus communicatively inhabits its places in the world. The body as action
and communication can only be so through emotion. Major educational
policy and curriculum discourses still tend to assume that there exists an
independent reason or cognition which operates independently to effect the
acquisition of knowledge within the minds of learners (OLoghlin, 1998:280).
In authors views, beginning design education in architecture should be preK style: learning about ones immediate environment through sensory and
emotional experiences, playing with building blocks, and reading books that
describe those experiences in a simple way but in architectural terms.
Immersion should also include exercises similar to Israels (2003) design
psychology toolbox, facilitating exploration of a persons intimate connection
with a place. Such exercises help to uncover the experiences of past places,
to draw upon those remembered places and their qualities, and to translate
their elements into the new design. Using such a toolbox can teach students
how to transform embodied experiences into a conscious design tool. Once
students are introduced to the process of immersing in the environment, and
in their own consciousness, they can create their own process of translating
those experiences into designs ..
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Connection
Bourdieu (2000) said that space frames social practice, McCann (2005)
called space the empty container of experience, and Dovey (2005:291)
wrote architecture is the practice of framing the habitat of everyday life,
both literally and discursively. Students must be exposed to architecture in
the context of real lifenot as an object of art, but as dwelled placesto
facilitate the connection of architectural experiences to their autobiographical
experiences. Immersive experience must be connected to the creative
endeavor that is at the foundation of architectural education.
In order to forge these connections, and understand them, students must be
encouraged to take electives in the social sciences such that they are better
able to connect the human experience of dwelling with the making of place.
Hands-on,
design-build
exercises
that
help
students
connect
autobiographical experience to the learned formal and technical concepts
must build upon the theoretical foundation studied in classrooms.
Beginning design should also offer connection-hubs, a range of spaces and
cultural settings for students to connect with people of different cultures,
different fields of education, and different points of view. A connection hub,
by definition, must be outside of the studio environment. It must take
students out of their studio-world into a world where ideas are exchanged
and experiences are lived. Through experience of other cultures, both
geographic and academic, students gain great insight into their own culture
and self within it. Universities allow students the opportunity to amass a
repository of embodied experiences to draw from when designing an
individual, unique pattern in language in their minds (Alexander et al, 1977;
Yinger, 1987). This pattern in language constantly changes, together with
experience, while allowing for recognition of the framework and providing
basis for communication. It is, rather, a structure of an imaginative process
that we bring to experience by way of anticipating recognizable forms, but
which is then re-formed by its imaginative instantiation in a particular
situation (Johnson, 1989:370). In other words, once we have a library of
embodied (in this case, architectural) forms, imagination can transform those
forms into new imaginary or real places.
Relying on a students embodied experience is crucial while teaching the
architectural language. The terminology students learn in academia contains
a significant amount of jargon shaped by assumptions, prior
conceptualizations, and academic traditions (Starr-Glass, 2002:228). In
order to translate this jargon into a usable language there is a need to
develop shared meaning (Starr-Glass, 2002), and the only way to do that is
through embodied experiences we share. When we teach new concepts and
terms in beginning design, references to students autobiographical
experiences are much more productive than academic readings of Kahn and
Le Corbusier alone.
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157
158
159
160
ABSTRACT
This paper investigates operations of substance and meaning for the
beginning design student by looking closely at the space in time before a
design concept is formulated.
Teaching the beginning design student involves the synthesis of myriad
concerns and considerations, from guiding the student to develop the eyes
of a designer, to the instructors continual questioning of architecture itself
(of the profession and the artifact) in order to determine for him or herself
how to create a relevant environment for learning. Immersed within this
environment, students are often confronted with the production of a design
concept: a guiding premise through which decisions are made and against
which ideas are tested, a concept that guides how their design will unfold
and structures how a project will progress.
But implicit in this production is a pre-condition, a sort of repository of raw
material out of which the design concept is to be constructed. Before the
design concept can be articulated and acted upon, there is (must be)
something else.
In that space before concept there is insight: a spark, a revelation, a
discovery--and insight can be taught.
Method
The place of insight is exposed through an exploration of its components: its
potential knowledge base, operation, and structure. Key points are
elucidated through examples of student work.
Conclusion
In this case, insight, the pre-condition of the design concept, is developed
through careful study of the embedded potential for transformation present in
a given context. Analysis and study lead to insight and synthesis.
Keywords
Observation, Insight, Design Concept, Beginning, Confidence
161
Benjamin, p 235-237.
162
been intrinsically linked. From this linkage there emerges a certain dilemma:
what kind of knowledge forms the basis of this didactic relationship? And,
how does this knowledge operate for the beginning design student?
The trap of the a priori
We can continue to pry open this brief space of insight by looking first at two
differing and complementary frameworks of thought: a priori knowledge and
empirical knowledge. The discussion of a priori concepts in architecture can
be as plastic and complex as a discussion of architectural history itself.
Manfredo Tafuri often points to how architecture operates in response to an
27
architects deep seeded need for legitimization. In this first clue from his
Ricerca (Tafuri 2006), he begins with the proposition that, Rather than
focusing on the formation of normsthe objective of a veritable avalanche of
studiesit seems more useful to examine the way in which the production
of meaning was conceptualized during the era that we have become
accustomed to call the Renaissance. He refers to the anomalous
exempla from the imperial era explored and dismembered by renaissance
architects and asserts that, the antique so often cited by these architects
represents a collection of disjecta membra that are read in a metaphorical
sense. Hence the impulse to innovate is grafted onto a need for rule left
28
unsatisfied by Vitruvius. The scattered debris was gathered for its
eccentricity, for its lawlessness, and made a case. The renaissance, or what
we call the Renaissance, was the avant-garde. Innovation with this need
for a rule eventually becomes a self-referential system for design. Meaning
comes not from the relationship of design with some-thing, but rather from
the relationship of one part to anothereach piece in the kit having an
assigned value that determines the complexity or eloquence of the
relationship designed. So then within this system, one must become an
expert on the value of each particular part. One could argue within this
context that it was not curiosity and a quest for understanding that founded
fields of study such as archeology, but rather a deep seeded insecurity
driving a search to fill in the gaps.
A priori study promotes the seeking of a body of knowledge in which to
become an expert. Study, in this case, is used to produce rules according to
which problems are solved. It provides the clarity of: yes and no, right and
wrong, or what to do, what not to do. As such, study within an a priori
framework produces two traps for design students. First: the sponge trap.
Students sense the right and wrong of the framework and they begin to cling
to those definitions. The yess are known and all one has to do is learn
27
Tafuri, p xxviii. This passage in the Preface is one example of Tafuris many
references to an architects need for legitimization.
28
Ibid., p 7.
163
them, absorb them, to become a good architect. The second trap follows
from the first: the expert trap. Students sense that the gaps in their
knowledge must be filled in before acting, before making a decision.
Becoming a good architect then becomes impossible. The realization
results in paralysis. In a way, one could say that a priori study disallows
insight, or rather, when it is allowed, this system cages it in a very strict
29
30
rubric, what both Tafuri and Perez-Gomez discuss as the self-referential
system referred to above. Often voiced as a shift from a priori to selfreferential, for this argument, the two systems can both be described as a
priori and the shift is one in kind: from referencing an outside system to
referencing internally determined rules that pre-date the design process.
Ibid., p xxviii.
Perez-Gomez, p 4. ...and composed of laws of an exclusively prescriptive
character that purposely avoid all reference to philosophy or cosmology. Theory
thus reduced to a self-referential system whose elements must be combined
through mathematical logic must pretend that its values, and therefore its
meaning, are derived from the system itself. This formulation, however, constitutes
its most radical limitation since any reference to the perceived world is considered
subjective, lacking in real value.
31
Perez-Gomez, p 11. but with a twist. What Perez-Gomez actually draws out for
us is that empiricism at its inception was intertwined with a priori concepts and
then was used in the attempt to proof a priori knowledge, such as mathematics.
With this distinction, the implicit irony that empiricism lead to the notion that, any
reference to the perceived world is considered subjective, lacking in real value
dissolves. The twist is outlined where he says, The eighteenth century rejected
30
164
32
33
Benjamin, p 222.
Ibid., at pp 236, 237.
166
Figures 3 and 4. Student, Whitney Ashley. Photo collage study and site
installation, Spring 2008.
The second twist
As students learn to see through new drawing media, their perception shifts.
Although quite separate from the final model described by Varnelis (1998),
this new medium of thought shares its roots with The Education of the
Innocent Eye. In The Genealogy of the Innocent Eye, Varnelis relays the
coining of the phrase by Ruskin and discusses how, According to Ruskin,
this innocent transparency of vision was displaced by conventions learned
from society: Having once come to conclusions touching the signification of
certain colours, we always suppose that we see what we only know, and
have hardly any consciousness of the real aspect of the signs we have
34
learned to interpret. Ruskins infantile sight was one of direct perception,
unaffected by memory. Varnelis further explains that, Ruskin emphasized
35
drawing perceptions rather than preconceptions of the outside world. Here
again lies a twist, the twist. For the change in sense perception sought by
Ruskin was taught, not with direct observation but with abstract formal
36
If at first we began close-up to Ruskin in thinking through an
lessons.
evolving sense perception, now we have been snapped away by his
abstract formal lessons. Next, the history draws us into Pestalozzis hope,
to help children learn perceptually, by doing, not by repetition. True
understanding of an object, he believed, would be gained when the student
37
would measure and draw it from real life. Only to then launch us back
when Varnelis explains that, Pestalozzis instructor would begin teaching
children an alphabet of geometric forms, such as lines, shapes, and angles.
The result, he believed, would be that the student would learn to observe
38
and represent abstractions. In Varnelis Genealogy, repeated whispers of
empirical study are enacted through a priori means. By the eighties, the
visual language had become codified in a series of textbooks of principles of
39
architectural composition. In each case, the innocent eye leads to
abstraction. The burden of signification is not ameliorated, but again shifts in
kind.
Perception and iconic memory
34
Varnelis, p 212.
Ibid., at p 213.
36
Ibid.
37
Ibid.
38
Ibid., at pp 213, 214.
39
Ibid., at p218.
35
167
Figure 5. Student, Sarah Dean. Multimedia texture analysis, Fall 2007. Left
to right: pencil, pen, charcoal, pastel.
For beginning design studio the scaffolding of insight was built around media
filters and study. The use of media filters began in the fall semester through
a series of direct observation drawing exercises intended to promote the
students engagement with the world around them as designers. Pencil,
charcoal, pen, and pastel each became a new analytical filter to think
through as students learned to use the bias of a particular medium with
intention. They learned to see with eyes that question, draw relationships,
extract conditions, and intentionally disassemble and reassemble their
environment, as they move through it. Iconic memory becomes transparent
through close, direct observation of detail. As Spear and Riccio (1994)
suggest, memory-as-process begins at some point in the perception
process, presumably near the end, or just afterward.
It should be
understood that the issue of exactly when perception stops and memory
processing begins is difficult and not yet reconciled, if indeed it is
reconcilable. Perhaps it is in this oscillation prior to consolidation where
insight begins to emerge.
169
As a new conscious attitude toward the site takes shape, insight comes as
43
With a variety of media filters at their
a release to the tension of inquiry.
disposal in the spring semester, students conducted studies to create new
knowledge gained directly from the site of their intended project. The
process moved form initial designed observations to critical research to
refined studies, all investigated directly on site. Through this study the
student collects the raw material to develop an insightful point of view.
43
Lonergan, p 4.
170
References
Benjamin, Walter (1968), Illuminations, The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction, Schocken Books, New York, US. (1936)
Lonergan, Bernard, J F (1978), Insight: A Study of Human Understanding,
Harper & Row Publishers, New York, US. (1957)
Perez-Gomez, Alberto (1996), Architecture and the Crisis of Modern
Science, The MIT Press, Massachusetts, US. (1983)
Ruskin, John, (1885), The Elements of Drawing in Three Lessons to
Beginners, John Wiley and Sons, New York, US.
Spear, N and Riccio, D (1994), Memory: Phenomena and Principles, Allyn
and Bacon, Boston, US.
Tafuri, Manfredo (2006), Interpreting the Renaissance: Princes, Cities,
Architects, Yale University and Harvard University Graduate School of
Design, Cambridge, Massachusetts, US. (1992)
Varnelis, Kazys (1998), The Education of the Innocent Eye, Journal of
Architectural Education Vol 51/4 pp 212-223.
Weingartner, H and Parker, E (ed) (1984), Memory Consolidation:
Psychobiology of Cognition, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers,
Hillsdale, New Jersey, US.
171
172
173
ABSTRACT
Introduction. The main educational line developed at the Department of
Architecture and Urbanism (Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi
Sad, Serbia) consists of several Architectural Design sub lines/courses
rd
starting at the 3 year of Bachelor course. Applied teaching strategy is
anticipated as a continuous knowledge upgrade. The strong emphasis is
made on personal development of architectural design brief and
understanding its importance for concept development, through
comprehension of its wider social role, specific users needs and overall
ideas about different levels of meaning in architecture. The complexity of
design process and its continuous evolution in nowadays practice stressed
the need for reconsideration of the architectural design education input. The
rd
first results we get design projects of the 3 year students - showed the
narrow scope of influences that reflect on design outcome. Our experience
derived from valorising students design projects showed that certain ideas
and skills concerning the position of available technology on design process
are not developed at all. Contemporary architectural production shows
redefined position of technology within design process where integral
approach is expected and expressive potential is outlined. That initiated idea
of expanding the Architectural Design course on the first year of studies,
by introducing the course Architectural Construction 1, that will combine
preparation of students for architectural design sub courses to come in the
higher years, by teaching them the basics of construction and service
technology, and expanding their comprehension of design process
complexity. The course will be considered as first milestone in Architectural
Design education.
Materials. The basis for course development is in depth analysis of design
rd
projects of 3 year students. Although some of them show strong ability for
concept development and its basic materialization, most of them do not
consider technology as a parallel line in design idea development. The
understanding of technology, both structural and service, is reduced to
application of skills for specific construction problem solving and rare are the
cases where contemporary technology motivates design itself.
Methods. Introduction of new course anticipates development of new
teaching methodology with various models of training and learning. The
st
lectures will broaden the scope of the 1 year student knowledge about
design process, while mentored studio practice will strengthen their
individual thinking capabilities and development of their own design process
methodology, through experiments, case studies, workshops and design
work.
174
175
176
177
Figure 1, 2. Master design projects, (on the left) Library Extension, author: Bojana
Mikeljin, (on the right) Centre for Philosophy and Arts, author: Ivana Mikeljin
Figure 3,4. (on the left) Master design project, Mixed Use, author: Marija Dori, (on the
rd
right) 3 year student design work, City Gallery, author: Mirjana Prpa
rd
Figure 5, 6. 3 year student design work, (on the left) Hobby Centre for Origami,
author: Vinja ugi, (on the right) Carpentry Hobby Centre, author: eljko Bari i
178
179
problem was that students knowledge from this field remained strictly onesided, for some reasons useless, because it simply did not show as the
supportive influence on architectural design in their design projects. Taking
all this into consideration, we formulated the idea of teaching constructions
that need to be shift away from linear, sequential design process that is
taught in these courses.
With new Architectural Constructions 1 course we hope to establish firm
basis for understanding and applying new technologies in architectural
design and to upgrade the way of thinking architecture through all parallel
influence lines. At the other hand, Architectural Constructions 1 should
represent a sort of connection between the design process led in the studios
and all the other construction courses (taught by civil engineers) that reflect
the state of the art of Serbian practice.
By introducing this course as the fist step in the reforms that are ahead of
us, hopefully we shall establish necessary link between concept design and
final architectural design projects. Applied teaching methodology is found on
vide spectrum of teaching and learning models from examining
contemporary architectural practice and technology, realizing the technology
and construction potential in expressing architectural form, evolving the way
of thinking and setting architectural concept, confirmation of these actions
through experiments and thematic workshops, to concrete work in studios.
This introduction into architectural design should provide us completely
different students input with the broaden understanding of all influential
forces on architectural design. The platform of continual educational upgrade
should give more competitive Master design projects of much higher quality.
Course Basis and Development
The slow changes in education methodology are much more restricted by
inadequate means but with narrow interests of participants. Our scenario for
course development involved larger groups of student, even 20 in the class,
in four hours time-format that occurs one per week. This way, the design of
the course program had to include development of each class scenario,
which will thoroughly regulate the time frame for each of the activities
planned.
Teaching construction as introduction for architectural design implied the
teaching methodology of design studio. The course lecture format was
basically oriented towards exploration of architectural concept and
comprehensive understanding of specific design issues, in this case with
emphasis on exploring the position of technology as the core and motivator
for development of a design idea. The main purpose of the students work in
the studio is to equip students with facts and skills and do that through
creative environment. If the facts are knowledge in different disciplines
related to architecture in different ways (directly and contextually)facts to
180
get an overview, facts to make an association from, and skills are different
means of expression, then the subject is somewhere in between these two
polarities (Bucholz, 2007). The major challenge of course syllabus
development was to evolve teaching strategy for the subject that is both
acquiring facts and developing skills. The body of facts needs to be
comprehensible to the first year student but to stimulate personal interest
and design research. Considering the fact that their skills are rather
underdeveloped, the question arises: how to implement facts by training
skills?
The main task of the students` studio exercises was to evolve architectural
design for thematic pavilions, from concept to details, where the technology
and applied construction system is embedded in design concept. This led to
the point where we had to make a certain compromise and emphasize the
importance of the process over the beauty of the artefact. This way, we
encouraged personal development of design process in early stages of
architectural education, in order to support the exploratory spirit. The
process oriented approach will change the comprehension of structural
issues, from the point where the structure is just applied bearing solution,
postproduction phase that does not necessary include architect, to the point
where it is integral part of design concept and solution.
Unsolved problems
Space is evolving through design and even through the
production/construction phase (Papalexopoulos, 2007) thus anticipating
integral approach with redefined positions of the acting influences, strongly
embedded in IT moment.
This affects architectural education and motivates our endeavours as close
participants in education process. However, few questions are fundamental
for further refinement of the strategy. If the realms of built environment are
showing traditional construction process, how far should we push the
education on construction technology? What are desirable criteria to be met,
European or Serbian? Seen from the point of education quality, these
changes are fruitful in terms of increasing our competitiveness among
European Faculties. With described changes and reforms still to come, we
shall produce architectural engineers as competitive profile for the European
market, but what happens with these super-educated engineers in the
realms of our domestic market? Would they be able to respond to strict
needs of investors and market that do not understand nor consider new
technologies and constructions?
Balancing knowledge base between these two extremes, we try to equip
students with facts about present state of play on the market but also train
them for creative exploration to meet the future demands. For that reason,
learning the process is a vital part of education that will infuse structure of
181
182
Ahmet Melih KSZ was born in 1961 in Trabzon, Turkey, and studied
architecture at the Karadeniz Technical University (KT), where he
graduated in 1985. From 1985 he spend three years working as "designer"
for architecture firm that was called NKY partnership in Trabzon. He began
his carreer as a planning (urban and regional) in 1988. In 1997 He
completed Ph D in Department of Architecture in KT. He has been working
since 1988 in the same university.
183
ABSTRACT
The studio experiences in the urban planning and the architecture education
in tertiary level have shown us that students grasping the urban project
topics in terms of scope and content is difficult. A similar comparison to be
made among the students of the urban planning, interior architecture and
landscape architecture will give us the same conclusion. This situation may
be because urban issues include a network of relations that can not be
easily observed at first sight due to its wide-ranging scope in physical, social,
economic, and culturaletc dimensions. For the students, the problem in
the studio is the planning of a design problem which they were unable to
comprehend. For this reason, the main purpose of the design problem
should be the step-by-step progress towards the concepts from the levels at
which students can render good comprehension of the topic, to the one at
which they are least familiar or unable to comprehend, and thus they are
made to discover these levels. This is called as induction.
Project 102 is the first studio study that has ever been made by the students
of Urban and Regional Planning Department at Karadeniz Technical
University. For such students who came from different regions of the country
and who have different cultural backgrounds and elements, an appropriate
level which they can define and comprehend must be essential. For this
reason, during the planning process of the Project 102, the family level
must be initiated since it can be defined and comprehended easily by the
students. This is due to the fact that Turkish people attach great importance
to the concept of family as well as the family is the smallest unit of the social
structure and the smallest planning unit in the urban planning
The family which the students imagined in a certain time and space will meet
all its needs for the urban living in their environment. This environment
follows a 3-step process that starts from the vicinity of the house, and then is
extended to a settlement area with a population of 15000.
In the first stage, a scale of 1/500 is used. At this scale, the functional and
the spatial needs of the family in the vicinity of their houses are defined, and
the students are asked to design this level in the studio atmosphere and this
level falls into the neighbouring unit in urban planning
At the second step, a scale of 1/1000 is used and primary school unit is
designed, where functional and spatial needs that have been determined by
the daily needs of the defined family are met.
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At the third step, the land use decisions of a small scale urban settlement for
nearly 15000 people are designed on a scale of 1/5000. This settlement is
the place where the defined family meets all its needs and where they live.
In all three levels that include inter-scaling transitions, the use of model
techniques for studies on a scale of 1/500 and 1/1000 as well as the use of
drawing techniques is required.
With the project under study, the adaptation process was observed to have
been fairly easy and nearly all the students made a good start. In the studies
with scales of 1/1000 and 1/5000 the general progress is as expected. When
viewed in terms of the achievement in the progress level, every student
made an achievement in different levels based on their own backgrounds,
skills and perceptions.
Finally, building the design in terms of definition, comprehension,
identification and control, and discovering the unknown spaces as the
knowledge increases all seem to be a safer and more reliable way for the
students who have only recently began their design and planning education.
Keywords: Planning Education, Planning Studio, Firs Project Experience,
Inductive method
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186
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The family that was constructed by the student will meet its needs for urban
life from the closest environment to the entire environment of the city. The
environment where the needs are met are composed of small
neighbourhood units, primary school units and urban settlement units of
1500 people and predetermined planning units, and these students are
made to discover these scales through the needs of the families of their own
construct. (Figure 2)
I.
ST
EP
II.
ST
EP
III.
ST
EP
SCOPE
POPULATIO
N
THE
NUMBER OF
HOUSE UNIT
AREA
(Ha)
SC
AL
E
Small
Neighbourhoo
d Unit
300-600
Max. 150
~ 0.40
1/5
00
Primary school
unit
3500-5000
300-400
~ 30
1/1
000
15000
2000-3000
~ 600
1/5
000
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The study topics were previously prepared as the parts of a whole and given
to the students at the beginning of every step. There are some similar points
in every step that is followed. (Figure 3) First of all students, in their level
(small neighbourhood, primary or small city) try to determine what kinds of
spatial needs of the families they can meet on the basis of the families they
constructed. Later, they search for this information from the literature and
then the responsible instructors complete these processes by giving a
general lecture on the topics. Here, daily, weekly, monthly, or seasonal
needs and the spatial needs are discussed with the guidance of the
responsible instructors. The functions to serve for the designed level are all
evaluated in terms of their sizes, standards, the functionalities, the distance,
availability etc. and ideal solutions are found within the planning and design
activities in the studio. All the naturally and physically limiting factors such as
elevation of the land, valley, flora, and season are all considered as much as
possible in the discussions and thus students awareness towards them are
increased.
In the project three study teams made up of nine people each were prepared
on the basis of department facilities and the number of students and every
study group was given a instructor with a PhD degree and a research
assistant. These instructors changed their groups in every step of the
research and in this way they were given the opportunity to meet all the
students and in this way, a classroom auto control mechanism was created.
Another regulation that made this mechanism possible and that paved the
way for the sharing of information is the establishment of juries that were
attended by all the teachers and students alike.
Juries are places where learning takes place more than usual and when the
students are questioned as to what and how much they learned (Webster,
2007). This period can be considered as an opportunity for the students to
get rid of their shortcomings and to step up. At the same time, they have the
opportunity to reflect all their knowledge and skills.
189
I. Step
In this step, the students think of the expectations of the defined families
from their close environment and design it on the basis of family needs. The
study is carried out in studio with drawings with a scale of 1/500 and with a
model. Here, the students seize the opportunity to learn how to use spatial
properties in the close environment of the houses, the design principles of
the recreational areas, their standards, spatial organization of the street and
urban spaces, pedestrian crossings and car park arrangements, and the
texture of the houses. They also develop their ability to arrange and design.
Moreover, they are given visual presentation techniques through the
drawings and models. Below are some of the examples about the project.
(Figure 4)
II. Step
In this step, the students see that their house group design is the part of a
larger group. Discussing the needs of the family again at this level, they
redesign the spatial arrangement in primary school level on the basis of the
information obtained in the discussions. This stage is the one during which
1/1000 scale is used and it is carried out both by drawings and by models.
Daily uses are questioned and the spatial organizations of the primary
school, trade, health, and social, sport and park areas are done and car
parks are arranged. (Figure 5)
Plan 1/500
Ferda Yazcolu (Student)
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Model 1/500
ehriban Gke (Student)
Betl Maden (Student)
brahim Kl (Student)
Figure 4. Neighbouring Unit and Model Samples from the First Step
191
Ferda Yazcolu (Student)
ehriban Gke (Student)
Plan 1/1000
Betl Maden (Student)
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Model 1/1000
Figure 5. Primary School Settlement Unit Planning Samples Prepared in the 2 Step.
III. Step
The third step is the minor settlement level. Here, the student proposes the
entire urban house accessories to be needed at this level, their properties,
and sizes on the basis of needs and functions. While doing this, they are
expected to use and reinterpret natural and artificial spatial data. At this
scale, the general decisions such as central trade, education, health
recreational areas for settlement and transportation systems are designed or
planned detail. (Figure 6)
Plan 1/5000
Ferda Yazcolu (Student)
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Betl Maden (Student)
Figure 6. Small City Settlement Unit Planning Samples in the Third Step
Benefits
The aim of the first project experience in the department of Urban and
Regional Planning is to create an atmosphere in which the students will
easily adapt to the education and the profession successively, and while
doing so, they will be equipped with all the necessary initial knowledge of the
field. The benefits to be reaped in this context are as follows;
* To inform about the settlement and the structure of the city.
* Teaching the relative relations of the house and its close environment,
primary school unit, and the settlements in cities with low scales and making
them realize the hierarchical relation between them and the settlement
systems.
* Giving theoretical and practical information about functional areas in each
proposed level, their properties, standards, and the arrangement principles,
and thus improving the skills of using this information.
* Bringing awareness for the natural and artificial data that can direct the
design and the planning in each level, and enabling them to use these data
in making design and planning decisions.
* Teaching the drawing techniques that are used in different levels like
1/500, 1/1000 and 1/5000
* Developing 1/500 and 1/1000 land and settlement model techniques
* Gaining them skills towards the presentation and oral defence of the
studies.
* Learning the managing time and the project process
Discussion
The studio study carried out here has been planned as the part of a whole
and it is in line with the basic principles (TUPOB, 2005) that are accepted by
the Planning Departments all throughout the Turkey and which is in
accordance with the teaching program of the Urban and Regional Planning
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expected the get as much information as possible, believing that the degree
of self development is infinite. For this reason, the knowledge of the
students, their enthusiasm for learning, and the effort they put determined
the scope and the width of the project process. Though there is a need for
providing those students with minimum knowledge and skills, there is no a
prerequisite for the maximum level of knowledge and this is determined
entirely by the student population.
On the other hand, the planning area is different than architecture and other
design areas in terms of the methods and materials it uses. This is why, in
the project studies during the planning education, the use of concrete
knowledge such as social, economic, and natural take place inevitably
earlier than the other professional education areas. The shortness of the
education period may be a factor behind this.
Conclusion
The results of the first project experience shows that the products and the
performance put forward by the students for all the three steps were
successful. Here, it can be said that starting the project with two familiar
subjects, these being the family and house, eased the adaptation period.
The end products that freshman Planning students produced in every step of
the project in terms of comprehension, understanding, and developing a
planning plan of the settlement were surprisingly successful. Here the true
success will be understood only after the data obtained is used in the future.
For this reason, there is a need for more time to understand the true benefits
of the process to the students
Thorough the questions to be asked to the students on the issue, the
evaluation of the project will be done, feedback, project time, and program
will be revised.
The change in the project process and in the planning should not only be
dependent on feedback from the students. The reflection of developments in
the planning to the education becomes possible only through adapting them
to the new developments as well as flexibility. The applied program for the
first project study in the Urban and Regional Planning seems like to be
adaptable to the new developments.
From the Author: In the construction and arrangement of this studio work I
would like to offer many thanks to the below mentioned persons; Dr. Dilek .
Beyazl, Dr. Yelda A. Trk, Research Assist. Sanem . Turan, Research
Assist Zeynep Niyazolu, Research Assist. Mesut Yeiltepe and thanks to
Mesut Yeiltepe for the photos of the 1/1000 scale models.
196
References
American Planning Association, (2006), Planning and Urban Design
Standards, John Wiley & Sons, Canada
Asasolu, A., Kulolu, N., ksz, A. M. ve Cordan, ., (2002), Tasarm
Eitiminde Balam: Amasya rnei, Yap Dergisi, Vol 244, pp 62-69
Barton, H., and Tsourou, C., (2000), Healty Urban Planning, Spon Press,
USA and Canada
Biddulp, M., (2007), Introduction to Residential Layout, Elsevier, Great
Britain
Branch, M., (1981), Continuous City Planning Integrating Municipal
Management and City Planning, A Wiley-Interscience Publication, New-York
Carmona, M., Heath, T., Oc, T., Tiesdell, S., (2003), Public Places Urban
Spaces, Elsevier, Oxford, UK
Wolfe, C., R., (1991), Streets Regulating Neighbourhood Form: A Selective
History, Ed. Moudon, A., V., (1991), Public Streets for Public Use, Columbia
University Press, USA
Frank, A, L., (2006), Three Decades of Though on Planning Education,
Journal of Planning Literature, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp 15
Hester, R., (1975), Neighbourhood Space, the Urban Design Reader, Ed.
Larice, M., and Macdonald, E., (2007), Routledge, Canada
Kulolu, N., Cordan, ., ksz, A. M., and Asasolu, A., (2001), Context in
Design Education: Amasya as a Case Study, Traditional Environments in a
New Millennium Defining Principles and Professional Practise, Second
International Symposium of IAPS-CSBE Network on, Amasya, Turkey, June
20-23
Ochsner, J, K., (2000), Behind the Mask: A Psychoanalytic on Interaction in
the Design Studio, Journal of Architectural Education, Vol. 53, No. 4, pp194206
Soygeni , S., Kr , ., M., (2007), Architectural Design Studio: A Case Study
For a Context-Conscious Approach, LIVENARCH III Contextualism in
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( H ) 210 805-8833
( W) 210 458-3023
Email: stemple@utsa.edu
199
ABSTRACT
Introduction:
Researchers at Kansas State University analyzed course
evaluations and found that 85% of students decide about a class in its first
two hours, making crucial that the first design class captivate students
imaginative inquiry. This paper proposes a hands-on in-class design project
and review as a substantive, stimulating first class / first project following the
notion that, Learning begins at the fingertips. Making is serious play that
simultaneously engages abstract conceptualization as our embodied
consciousness is involved with a task at hand. Making renders a total
embrace of sensual engagement, haptic engagement, mental engagement,
and imaginary engagement as decisions are made as a measure of the
resistance of materials. Making is activated thinking.
Materials: project: given a stone half the size of your fist and one meter of
tie-wire, design and construct an orderly support for the stone one fist from
the desk surface. Use no tools. Ten
minutes. Follow-up project is to design and make a place for a stone
substituting paper for wire retaining the concept of the orderly support.
Methods: Review of projects through cooperative inquiry, is shaped as
critical discourse that flushes out forms of observation (comparison,
grouping, differences, etc.) and forms of process, both invented and
discovered, in the context of conceptions and preconceptions (heuristics,
exploration, imaging, iterations, etc.). Students do most of the talking, from
the prompt, how shall we talk about these design projects?
Results: Opening dialog about design is critical to stimulating student
inquiry about design from the very first moment. The first project raises
questions from the personal immediacy of design decision-making. These
inquiries are a seed planted in the potential of each students design agenda.
Conclusions: This project precisely opens and prefigures issues of design
as the content of the individual design inquiry that is the body of the course.
Simultaneous concrete engagement and critical inquiry, making is design in
immediacy. Raising dialog between thinking and doing breaks a tendency to
preconception and acts of making are a transformative agent that empowers
more abstract design inquiry.
Key words: first project, making, materials, design inquiry, creativity
200
201
202
Methodology
Discussion of projects students have designed/made is a typical pedagogical
structure of the studio course, that is, experience followed by critical
reflection on experience. Cooperative inquiry through discussion is critical to
development of a studio culture. Students may have shared techniques or
even stolen each others ideas during the design and making of their work
but cooperative critical discourse will liquefy these indulgences into a
solution of new inquiries. Discussion of this project begins by simply asking
the students their opinion of the objects on the table. How shall we talk
about these design projects? The instructional methodology is to get
students to raise issues rather than instructors telling what to think or look
for. A conversation, a discourse about design, may then ensue from a
direction chosen by students. This has the effect of personalizing the
discourse and allows students to be free to use their own vocabulary rather
than attempt erudite concepts.
Since some 20 projects are collected on the tabletop, students can
visually scan all of the projects. This is a ploy on the part of the instructor to
allow comparison of other projects to their own but rarely is there a first
comment recognizing this comparison. Rather, the first comments typically
spring from the attractiveness or captivating qualities of one or two of the
works in relation to its lacking in the others as a whole. This is often an
appreciation of creative novelty - expressively curved wire or unexpected
shapes or associations with known forms like animals. This behavior is
playful adaptation to the uncertainty they feel in the lack of clear direction for
discussion, so they attempt humor to break the ice, so to speak. They will
also readily refer to what they like or prefer on a personal level. Personal
preference is something of a negative category, in that it usually leads very
broad categories (I like circles) and to little substantive discussion. But it is
important to have this discourse with new students of design for two
reasons, both of which lead to greater substance. It allows for the students
to feel good about what they have done so they are anxious for more and
are not disinterested. Secondly it allows the issues of personal taste and the
appreciation of the superficial to be purged amiably from deeper inquiry.
A more substantive discussion of the design projects typically
follows from a student comments that points out similarities between two or
more projects. A comparative analysis easily flows into the raising of
categories of criteria to judge the differences between the two designs.
203
Categories that emerge from the ensuing discussion flush out primary
decisions that had to be made just to make the project. How many
alternative ways are there to combine a rock and a length of wire? If the
rock is placed on top of a wire shape then this is the making of a base, or
pedestal for the object. If the rock has wire wrapped around it then the
construction becomes more integrated. The rock can be hung from a cradle
extending above the rock and back to the table surface. Some have
constructed a foil to the mass and weight of the rock in the form of an
enclosed shape in proximity to the rock. There are countless variations but
only a few alternatives, which is a lesson that is pointed out. Additionally,
comparison can be used to describe nuances that cause one variation to be
more interesting or raise more questions than another.
The rare student will hang the rock off the edge of the table. What
can be brought to light here is a rethinking of the nature of the design
problem in a form of problem-seeking.
While dispensing with the
conventional on the table solution a project hanging from the edge seeks to
redescribe the issues being addressed and redefine issues like gravity and
table surface. Hanging is a direct reference to gravity. A table is more than
just a surface. In fact, a surface is an infinite two-dimensional surface until its
edge is recognized. And the wire form necessary to hang the rock at the
edge either makes a gesture of grabbing and thereby specifying the
thickness of the edge or it performs a miracle of balance in hanging
precariously.
It is at this point that the source of their design ideas comes into
question in the form of the survey, How many of you designed your orderly
support by first having an image in your head? Typically about 70% of the
class will raise their hands. Then it is asked, How many did it another
way? so as not to ask a leading question. Most of the remaining group will
talk about playing with the wire, exploring its qualities to see what it can do
while the others will talk about wrapping the wire around the rock in an effort
to discover a relationship between the two materials. I lively debate can
follow about exploration versus visualization versus conceptualization as a
reasonable and inspiring beginning of design activities.
The issue of workmanship is usually raised after issues of form are
exhausted and is typically derived from a project wishing to emulate a solid
geometry. A cube or prism or cylinder takes shape but does not look right,
due to some distortion in the form or kinkiness in the wire or lack of precision
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Design is also a form of creative production and this first project can
point out many of issues necessary to creativity. Many students have
difficulties coping with the freedoms of creativity, though it is not likely that
students with these propensities can be determined from one design
experience. The creative path of design necessarily involves our perceptions
and experiences in the world and is manifest though our interest and
curiosity. Creative design must be incubated through convergent thinking
and problem seeking to develop a richness of impressions and fascination
with possibilities. Creation also involves divergent thinking and is excited by
openness and tolerance for uncertainty and taking chances. A creative
person cannot be afraid to be wrong and so design leads to being prepared
to be wrong. Design needs to be verified in comparison to an understanding
of norms in order for it to contain the novelty necessary to creative projects.
Design must be communicated, with its process being made available. A
designer must develop the ability to risk being laughed at and must
anticipate it in order to control it. And finally a design must survive
evaluation for effectiveness & relevance, for design, in its audaciousness,
6
connects us to the world of objects and to the world of others.
Conclusion
The Orderly Support for a Rock project is delivered in the initial class to
precisely open and prefigure issues of design as the content of the individual
design inquiry that is the body of the course. The initial design class
becomes an experiential microcosm of design activities and of the structure
of design studio methodology. Making is design in immediacy.
Simultaneously concrete engagement and critical inquiry, making raises
iterative dialog between thinking and doing and thus breaks tendencies to
preconception that shortchange design processes. More importantly, acts of
making are a transformative agent that empowers the more abstract design
inquiry that will be necessary as one moves through design education.
Finally, if learning design engages emergent creative activities that
encourage student self-development as a search for ones own intentions
toward design, then making something as the first project (and the entire
content of the first course) begins this process in intimate connection of what
is immediately, and literally, in the hands of the student him/her self.
206
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Bibliography
Bruner, Jerome S. Toward a Theory of Instruction. Cambridge Mass:
Harvard University Press. 1966.
Caine, R. N. and Caine, G. Unleashing the Power of Perceptual Change:
The Potential of Brain-Based Teaching. Alexandria, VA: Association for
Supervision and Curriculum Development. 1997.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Creativity New York: HarperCollins; 1996.
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208
209
210
ABSTRACT
Humans have created housing and humans mostly stand in the middle of
uncertain situations in their lives where they must decide or react in a certain
way. When we handle this stuation from the point of interior architect and
designer, we can not say that is possible to have a complete knowledge
concerning how our decisions effect the space during the housing design.
This uncertainty brings out the flexibility concept related to the thought that
there can only be choices, but not a fixed solution for future uses.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
The flexibility in space concept showed differences along the history. Users
have formed their housings depending on the period and the progressions of
the political, economical, social properties and the tecnology of that period.
Specifically if we think that most of the housing users consist of families, it is
realized how the flexibility concept for the housing design needs to be able to
adopt to growing and changing activities during all life period.
Today interior and fittings that can respond to a unique function are changing
into multi-functional elements. Users wants flexibility in his house. It is
considered the indoors that can support dimensional changes, user
changes, technology changes by means of using flexible structure and
flexible space will increase in the near future. So it is necessary that the
designer candidates should gain the consciousness of performing flexible
designs in their training.
In the spacial design lesson of the interior architecture training in MSGSU,
the projects taken place are based on the establishment of dynamic
solutions that can answer the changes of the measures in the fields like
social, aesthetic, economic housing designs in consequence of social
changes. The approaches used for the flexibility in the interior design are
categorized under the main topics in planing, structural system, installation
distribution, dividing inner walls and fitting elements flexibility. The students
relating with the flexibility concept supported by this theoretical data
commenced with their first sketch studies depending on the current structural
system and user features in the housing plan given equivalent to that of 50
m. It is required to be met with maximum requirements in minimum spaces
for the housing to be designed for the family consisting of adult individuals
mother and father and two children. The answer is discussed for the
question of how can I change the use of housing into a more functional
attitude especially in the small houses.
211
As can be seen in the student projects presented in the study, the flexibility
in the housing inner space can be achieved also by the freedom of spaces
as may be performed by the multifunctionality of the fittings. The aim for both
approaches is to establish empty spaces which users can form for their
requirements rather than trying to handle the housing as an organization
prepared previously.
CONCLUSION
In the study of which direction does the flexibility effect designs and what
solutions are made in the design of residential interiors and fittings, it is seen
that flexible interior design adopting to the needs of the user is more
sustainable both economically and environmentally.
It is possible that individual or group studies can be performed for the studies
under the topics of flexibility approaches. The approach to make one space
capable of many functions is especially seen in the projects for flexible
housing designs. The students in particular, can point out the elements used
by means of the perspectives that are to be made in the flexible fittings
design and can show how they work. What kind of process that is used for a
fitting in a space allocated for it when it is not used is pointed out by
drawings and a supporting presentation. Here, the type of expression and
the project presentation of the student is developed that the student uses to
express the flexibility concept.
KEYWORDS
FLEXIBILITY, SMALL SPACES, INTERIOR
TRANSFORMABILITY, RESIDENCE FITTINGS
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DESIGN
EDUCATION,
213
under the title of user needs. In the theory part conveyed through a system
composed of generally a main title and its sub titles, the said needs can be
explained via a simple diagram.
Human Factor
Psycho-social needs
. Social needs
.Aesthetic needs
. Behavioral needs
. Privacy needs
Physical needs
. Security needs
. Health needs
. Spatial needs
. Needs related to physical environment
Economic needs
Environmental factor
Technological factor
Interior spaces need to be flexible should be considered in particular in the
design of mass housings; because they are produced for unknown users
and all the same they will be private. Periods such as marriage, child
raising, childrens leaving family and old age in family cycle and changes in
social life have had certain effects on family life in the course of time. For
example factors such as transition from extended family to nuclear family,
womens entrance into business life and the growing need for privacy as a
result of increasing individualism have led to rise in demand for more rooms.
When there are not flexible space solutions, these demands can be satisfied
at the end of either very costly or very problematic operations.
As regards the creation of flexibility within a space, we can say that there are
many researches in this field. In its simplest form, changeability in terms of
structure is realized via dividers that can be folded or pushed and this is
called static flexibility. On the other hand, spaces in continuous flexibility are
divided into zones and separated into two one being server and the other
served. Flexibility is provided through portable walls. It is important to
achieve dimensional coordination and take decisions related to grids. For,
this operation enables different elements to arrange relations with each other
and the whole and prevents disorder. On the other hand, regarding another
type called growth flexibility, emphasis is given on the capacity of adding up
new spaces for different functions. Completely independent spaces in which
wet volume areas are free as well can be created. There are examples in
which column system covers installation space as well. In this way, since
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215
space. It is obvious that living in such areas which give more initiatives to the user
is much more pleasant and open to creativeness.
2.
The Project Phase:
Once the theoretical structure, which is thought to be sufficient for the
beginning is completed, the students are asked to start their preliminary
schedule works by respecting the current conveyer system and user
2
features in the housing plan of 50 m allocated to them. The plan is simply
defined as a plan having an aperture of 4x4 meters and 50x50 cm column
2
axes and the general utilization area can be expanded to maximum 55 m .
The main idea of this project was inspired from a social housing project
designed by Daliah Eliakim and used in the course. This project falling into
the scope of houses for public concept is indeed a prefabricated system
which can be realized in a short period of time with low lost and which is
composed of standard pieces and can be enlarged when required.
216
How these columns, as a restricting factor, will affect the space settlement is
an important issue to be touched upon. This is the question that we want the
student to decide on is whether he/she prefers the columns being perceived
as a part of the space or remaining as stand-alone special elements. This
decision determines the approaches that the students will adopt in flexible
space design. For example, it is in this stage that the decision on whether to
use accessory elements in connection with the structure elements or
independently can be given.
A nuclear family of parents and two children is selected as the user. The
features and needs of these 4 users are listed in a table and it is requested
that the housing in question meet the maximum of demands in minimum of
spaces. Here the goal in selecting 4 year old and 15 year old children as
users is to be able to answer the question of how different demands of
different age groups can be solved in the same place. Therefore, the
obligation of the utilization of the same room by two children is especially
mentioned. There being no restriction in the job selection of parents, among
other things, the students are asked to create hobby areas for parents and
design the spaces in a way to meet different needs both in day and night
time. When we take a look at the table used for this application method, we
217
see that several socio-cultural and economic factors from social features to
the establishment of family and income level lead to the diversification of
demands and requirements.
In todays space and accessory elements design, technological
developments are increasingly used. Because when technology is used
correctly and considering the needs and integrated with designs properly, it
shows up as a new source of opportunities. Students can offer more flexible
solutions by following up newly developing systems.
In the preliminary schedule of the project work, the focus is on the utilization
type of the housing. The things that are requested from students is the
design of the entree of the housing, storing place within parents room,
space allocated to the elder childs studying and bookcase, space allocated
to the younger childs playing and storing toys and space allocated to
washing machine in the bathroom, space allocated to dining and living,
storing element/space for cleaning materials.
Taking into account choices given under the title of approaches to flexibility,
works are carried out to divide the house into sections within the m defined.
It is seen that the flexibility level of each approach chosen is different. In
divisions, utmost attention is paid not to create a logical imbalance between
living room that is a general utilization area and rooms and areas covered by
wet volume and connections they have with each other. Sections should be
separated according to the level of privacy. Privacy should be at maximum
level in wet volume areas and in remaining areas, considering the
changeability of privacy level according to usage time, open planning should
be applied. There should be maximum of open space between areas
connected to each other in utilization, on the other hand dividers or
transformative elements should be used in multi functional areas.
It is aimed to gather installation channels used in particular in wet volumes
such as kitchen and bathroom in a minimum of area. In addition, within the
general logic, living room is the division open to outer world of the house and
the fact of guests is inevitable. In plan settlement and design of accessories,
the rise in the number of users should be taken into account.
After plans preliminary sketches prepared, studies related to plan-cross
section-aspect and perspective are conducted at the same time and
emphasis is given on perceiving the space in 3 dimensions. In this way,
aspects that have not been considered appear in the space perceived in 3
dimensions. Finishing 2 dimensional form of the plan, student begins to ask
him/herself how he/she can use ground plane and connected walls and
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dividing elements or how she/he can connect them with each other.
Furthermore, he/she understands to what extent the changeability of dividing
elements placed in the interior space and their use in constituting different
organizations depend on the existing systems level of openness to changes.
Student is provided with information related to the fact that when he/she
decides on the quality of materials to be used in the design of dividing
elements, construction techniques, their relations with structural elements
and connection elements he/she should ensure that all these things be light
and easily removable.
The significance of considering all aspects/sides and involving them all in
use particularly in a space design in which the flexibility concept stands out
is emphasized. When there are 4 users, the necessity, number and
positioning of storing elements in a space can be only possible through the
above mentioned joint use of ground and wall. In such cases, students can
express elements used via perspectives to be prepared for the design of
flexible accessory elements and display their working systems. What kind of
practices are applied to an accessory elements stored in an area spared for
it when it is out of use can be solely explained via drawings and a supporting
presentation. In this point, presentation and way of expression a student
uses in order to explain the concept of flexibility in his/her project are highly
significant.
CONCLUSION
The possibility of a "mobile way of life" is certainly an attractive feature of a
modern welfare society.
Nevertheless it seems as if architecture and
urbanism as a discipline has hardly found its role in this development yet.
The modern home does not reflect our modern life style in many ways. Our
life consists of dynamic systems of media, information, technology and
transport. These elements continually shape our epoch and define it as an
era of loose foundations and shifting meaning. Our homes do not reflect
this. They contain a variety of products that enhance our lifestyle through
their flexibility, fluidity and malleability. Yet our direct living environment
remains a static one. Mobility not only empowers the family and the
individual by allowing them to determine their living spaces, more so, it
allows them to explore new spatial and personal relationships as they
transform over time. (Maynard, A.)
The purpose of using the concept of flexibility is to constitute spaces that the
related user can shape in accordance with his/her wills rather than treating
the house as an organization previously prepared. In flexible housing
designs, the approach to produce in particular a single space in a size that
can respond to multiple functions is applied frequently in projects.
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At the end of this project in space design course, it was aimed to raise
students awareness in this issue. When the space is designed from inner
towards outer, user centered design comes out. Difficulties that students
experience in the studies were recorded to be in perceiving the related
space solely on the basis of the plan not in three dimensions. They were
observed to abstain from open planning and influenced to a great extent by
standard housing typology. One of the reasons for this is their taking their
own living areas as examples. However, even though we have very standard
spaces on these days on which we choose our houses to live in by analyzing
3 dimensional drawings, assuming that future is being experienced at the
present time, it is highly clear that the demand for flexible housing designs
will be in rise in a very short period. The number of interior spaces that will
be able to meet changes in dimension, user and technology through use of
flexible structure and flexible space will certainly increase. In order to
achieve this, studies/work aimed at this purpose should be given more
emphasis.
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REFERENCES
Altnok, H.Z. , 2007. The Influence Of The Concept Of Flexibility Arising From
Uncertainty On Residential Interiors And Fittings, M.Sc. Thesis, Mimar Sinan Fine
Arts University Institute Of Science And Technology, Istanbul
Bedk, D. ,
2003. Information/Communication
Age and Interior
Design, PhD Thesis, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Institute Of Science And
Technology, Istanbul
Benitez, C.P. , 2005. Small Spaces: Good Ideas, An Imprint of Harper
Collins Publishers, New York
Krat, . F. , 2006., Interior Design Methods in Small Residences and
Application Examples, M.Sc. Thesis, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Institute Of
Science And Technology, Istanbul
Mack, L. , 1995. Living In Small Spaces, Conran Octopus, London
Trulove, J.G. & Kim, I. , 2003. Big Ideas For Small Spaces Studio
Apartments, William Morrow and Co., New York
http://www.andrewmaynard.com.au
http://www.designmuseum.org
http://www.flexiblespace.com/xray.html
http://www.muji.net
http://www.smugmug.com
http://www.taylorsmyth.com
http://www.yenimimar.com
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Space
Space is the primary matter of architecture. Architecture creates,
defines and structures space. The perception of space and the ability to
think in three dimensions are basic to any spatial design.
To feel confident when dealing with spatial problems many skills are
required: spatial operations such as addition and substraction or
superimposition may be needed as well as sequences, stacking or any
arrangement of spaces.
The designing architect also needs to have control over the psychological
impact different spaces can have upon us: how do narrow or vast, open or
enclosed spaces affect us? How can the space-defining surfaces be
configurated purposefully?
Geometry
The generic term geometry summarizes all technical and grafical means that
enable the description and development of space. It encloses descriptive
geometry and computer-aided design as well as rules of proportion and the
correct use of scale.
This group of competencies desribes all tools that can help to describe
space or develop and control threedimensional space.
Material
architecture is materialised space.
Before the actual construction of a building the knowledge of the properties
of building materials is essential in the design process. On one hand the
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Context
Architecture never is autonomous.
Any Building is connected to its environment in muliple ways. It can blend
into its surrounding or stand in contrast to it, it may be connected to its
environment in a formal or ideal manner but never can it be understood
without context. Therefor Architecture should not be designed without
consciously respecting the context. The term context summarizes the
external forces informing a piece of architecture such as landscape, urban
surrounding, genius loci or cultural references.
Programm
Because architecture is an applied art it needs to bridge the contrast
between practical and esthetical value, between function and art.
One of the essential competencies of an architect is the ability to organize
complex and multiple needs and to transform them into a spatial order. A
broad knowledge of the principals of spatial organisation is necessary to
achieve this task.
Conclusion
Of course it is hardly possible to differentiate these five groups of
instrumental competencies in detail. In this context we can only briefly
outline them. Any architectural problem requires skills and knowledge from
several, if not all of these. But our aim is to create an instrument supporting
us in the task to establish a new structure for the design curriculum. As we
will illustrate later this subdivision enables us to define the educational focus
of each semester course. We will show that over the six semesters the
educational focus shifts from one to another, each containing competencies
that provide the basis necessary to fully comprehend the next.
Naturally, the described skills and knowledge alone are not sufficient to
become a good architect. Two thousand years ago, Markus Vitruvius Pollo
was concerned with the question what the competencies of an architect
should be. In the first of the ten books on architecture dealing with the
fundamental terms of architecture and the education of architects he
wrote:
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Intellectual stimulus
We cannot expect to go on extracting ideas and schemes from the student
without first continuously feeding his mind and imagination
(Comments in Hoeslis Diaries, 1953-1957, in the Hoesli Archives, ETH,
Zrich.)
More drastically one could say: a pig fattens by feed, not by weighing.
We would like to describe two major forms of intellectual stimulus. The first is
the feed of the students mind and imagination that can occur in fields outside
of architecture. Therefor one major task of design education must be to
broaden the students horizon and open their minds to the inspiring fields
beyond architecture.
The second subject we want to describe deals with the design process itself.
How does design emerge? Is the creative process controllable? What could
design strategies be and how can they help? We need to supply the student
with a sufficient knowledge of design strategies to sustain his abitlity to act.
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So the field of intellectual stimulus will contain two categories: expanding the
horizon and strategies of action
Strategies of action
Design is more than trial and error.
Designing means making decisions. Unlike in simple mathematics most
design problems are impossible to solve clearly without ambiguity. The
designer is either confronted with too little information or an overwhelming
amount of information, demands and wishes. To sustain his ability to act the
architect needs strategic competence.
Instead of hoping for the brilliant masterstroke solving all problems instantly
students should be introduced to different strategic approaches of design
problems. They need to learn to develope criteria that enable them to
evaluate their sketches and designs and need to acquire a variety of
decision-making strategies.
Once armed with a sufficient tool-kit of skills and knowledge and with the
necessary intellectual background the designing architect stills lacks the
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ability to share his competencies with others. This third field of indispensible
skills is the communicative competence.
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Communicative Competence
Architecture is communication!
Architecture is an integrative disciplin because it is necessary to
communicate ones ideas and concepts and understand and evaluate the
wishes and knowledge of all parties involved in the design process and
come to an integrated sollution.
Within architectural studies the this integrative task must be faced to a
special degree by the design courses. Therefor it is no surprise that we try to
encourage the developement of the communicative competence.
To communicate however an architect needs to know what he is doing. And
this actually is a crucial point of any didactics: a conscious reflection of ones
action often just begins when asked to explain it. So the reflection of ones
action is the precondition for communication.
Both the willingness to reflect on ones designs and the actual
communicative skills are trained in design education. All designs are
presented to a larger group in the studio, which fosters the visual and
grafical as well as the rhethorical skills. Working in a studio with fellow
students facilitates the development of a debate culture and the ability to
accept and convert criticism.
And yet we believe that more can be done. On one hand we must assert,
that the classical means of communication of an architect draft and model
have been complemented by a large number of new media whos targeted
employment should be learned. On the other hand we think a even stronger
reflection of ones work can produce knowledge that leads beyond the
narrow confines of the current projects.
We will therefor subdivide the communicative compentence in these two
topics: communication and reflection.
Communication
As we mentioned the number of communicative media an architect should
be able to use is large and growing: speech, discussion, writing, draft,
model, photography, diagram, layout, powerpoint, webdesign, flashanimation, rendering et cetera. Their number has escalated due to the digital
revolution taking place and many of these make design issues much more
acccessible to a broader public.
Within a three year bacholor program it is impossible to expect students to
gain mastery in all media but we think it is necessary to convey at least basic
knowledge of those beyond the classical drafting techniques to enable a
multimedia-based communication. Another aspect seems to be of
importance as well: while normally presentations show the results of the
design process some of the other media are more adapted to concentrate on
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the creative process itself. This leads us to the second integral component of
communicative competence:
Reflection
Looking into the mirror we can catch our reflection. Even more: we
can see what lies behind us and at second sight we can see our
surrounding and the position we are taking within it.
This is exactly what a designer should learn: to take a good look at himself
and the path that lies behind him. The retrospective view enables him to
asess his current situation as well as the context and the decisive moments
that have lead to the resulting design.
The awareness of the process that lead to the resulting design and often
this awareness will not appear until in retrospect can help knowledge to
emerge that is transferable to new assignments.
Essentialy reflecting upon ones designs can uncover two important aspects:
the evolving character of design and how any design is influenced by the
designers personality. At best careful reflection can lead to more awareness
of ones working methods and self-confidence as a designer.
Summary
Our aim was to describe the educational goals of the design courses in the
bachelor programm of architecture. To do so we defined three fields of
competence, each of them subdivided into distinguishable groups:
The first field skills and knowledge contains all practical skills needed
when handling architectural design problems. Its elements are space,
geometry, material, context and programm.
The second field intellectual stimulus attempts to broaden the students
horizon and gives him strategic competence to sustain his ability to act.
Finally the third field communicative competence aims at the
development of a well-reflected attitude towards architectural design and the
process of designing, and at acquiring the competence to communicate in
multiple ways.
Once again: we do not claim to completely define the competencies
architectural design calls for. Instead we hope to establish an instrument
helping us to restructure the design curriculum. In the next chapter we will
explain the strategies we applied to convey these competencies in the threeyear bachelor curriculum of architectural design.
Curriculum
Having separated our aims in design education into three fields of
competence it is now necessary to think about ways to convey those
competencies to the students.
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Method
The teachers in architectural design at university are generally architects
and most likely novices in the field of didactics. They have aquired their
competence in architectural design in their profession. When teaching they
are forced to develop a method of transfering their experiences to the
students.
A well accepted strategy believes in learning by doing as an autodidactic
process. If that was true, the form of design tasks and their sequence would
not matter in architectural education. At the same time this implies that one
has to rely on the students to draw the right conclusions from their actions.
They would have to reinvent principles and design strategies on their own
without being led to the right conclusions.
This is bound to fail for the majority of students.
Another possible strategy in teaching is remembering your own education
and (it did not harm me) provide the same education to the younger
generation of architectural students. This is no doubt the most common
strategy and many valuable approaches were handed over from one
generation to the next.
With the substantial changes in european education connected to the
reduced three year undergraduate course, this approach can only partially
work in future.
To master this challenge we follow a separate strategy:
The structure of the curriculum should be developed from the content itself
and hence harmoniously integrate into the new educational framework.
Having developed a clear vision elements of the passed down educational
models can then again be integrated at the right place in the curriculum.
This is the reason why we have not tried to simply find the right didactic
model among the existing ones but have firstly focused on the structures
and potentials embeded in the subject itself.
Everyone who has once tried to convey a subject of substantial complexity
to somebody else knows that this process as well leads to an own fresh and
clearer sight on the matter. This phenomenom is the nucleus of a didactic
method arising from the content to be taught itself. In order to develop a
methodical teaching model it is vital to intensively analyse the subject.
John Dewey wrote in his key work Democracy and education:
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44
The first field of competencies Skills and Knowledge covers the classic
tools of architectural design, that is space, geometry, material, context and
program. Looking at those one realises that the order in which they are put
here already contains a chronological aspect that can be used to structure
the curriculum.
As space is the primary medium of architecture it is just logic to concentrate
on the appearance and perception of space at the beginning of the course.
Simultaneously the geometric operations and tools to illustrate and develop
spatial arrangements need to be trained. Once these abstract basics are
established one can address the factors that determine the spaces tangible
characteristics.
Material determines the spaces appearance due to its inherent engineering
attributes and its outer surface.
It is vital to understand spaces basic principles of formal idea, construction
and joining methods before considering external factors. Factors like context
from which architecture evolves and the consideration of complex program
finally crown the development from an abstract space to a specific and
unique architecture.
This sketched sequence of creating architectural space is very much
simplified because the mentioned steps are never taken one at a time but
overlap and take place simultaneously. But still it does help us to define focal
points within the curriculum which change gradually over the course of six
semesters. [see Figure 1]
This timely structure is furthermore supported by the permanent increase in
complexity of the objects to be designed. Whilst the basic phenomena of
space can best be studied using laboratory like conditions and abstract
spaces, the design tasks grow in complexity in line with the introduction of
urban context or the necessity to fulfill a complex brief.
Experiences made in a smaller scale are built upon in the following
semesters therefore the content taught in one semester has a preparative
function for the next. The abstract spatial studies and their results of the first
semester for example will be referenced when designing a more complex
building in the third semester and this is an important guideline for handling
th
complex spatial structures in the final design project in 6 semester.
We do regard it as a fortunate coincidence that we have the opportunity to
develop a curriculum in architectural design for the whole undergraduate
course rather than focussing on one specific year only. This allows us to
define a structure where the content of the terms is very much interwoven
and built one upon the other and students can always revert to experiences
made before. That way we can develop a much more effective curriculum
than could be done in schools with independent courses per year.
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the student to realise his personal development over the course of his
studies and encourages a dispute about the content taught. Apart from this
didactic effect the curriculum is structured into design sequences and regular
fermatas.
It is quite obvious that the reflection of the students work provides the ideal
occasion to practice different forms of comunication. The media changes
from semester to semester starting from simple leporellos over exhibition
design, portfolios, animated clips, web presentations to more voluminous
works as yearbooks. There does not need to be an exact definition of the
form of presentation but the obvious choice is to increase complexity over
the duration of the course. Basic layout skills trained in first semester lay the
foundation for the portfolio in third semester. That way a consecutive
structure of the curriculum and its content is created.
It has become obvious, in those examples mentioned above that there are a
number of clues for the structure of the architectural design curriculum
hidden in the subject matter itself.
Still, by extracting those clues no complete curriculum can be created. They
can only help creating the backbone of it.
The individual teacher has to put flesh to this backbone to make it work as a
didactic model. Therefore the curriculum needs to be flexible as staff at
university changes over time. The liberty for a personal definition of the
curriculum by the teacher provides the opportunity to transport personality
and beliefs into the process. This is a key factor for a successful curriculum
as the teachers personality and charisma are important factors in the
successful mediation of content.
We want to close with another John Dewey quote:
The educator's part in the enterprise of education is to furnish the
environment which stimulates responses and directs the learner's course. In
last analysis, all that the educator can do is modify stimuli so that response
will as surely as is possible result in the formation of desirable intellectual
46
and emotional dispositions.
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Figurative
Space
Morphogenesi
s
Design
grammar
Constructing
architecture
Method and
typology
Bachelor
design
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ili stanbul, TURKEY
E-Mail: dilayguney@beykent.edu.tr
E-Mail: dilay65@gmail.com
Fitnat Cimit, Phd
T.C. Beykent University
Tel: 90-212-2896486
Fax: 90-212-2896490
E-mail: fitnatc@yahoo.com
Assit. Prof. Dr. Dilay Gney, was graduated from Mimar Sinan Univerity in
1988. She started Phd. study at Istanbul Technical University in 1998. Her
Phd. Thesis (Architectural Realities and Conception of Time) was completed
2003 in Architectural Design Department. Obtained the title of Assit. Prof. Dr.
in March 2005. Resarches interests include, architectural theory,
contemporary architecture, design problematics. Has been teaching at
Beykent University Engineering Architecture Faculty, Departmen of
Architecture since 2003.
Dr. Fitnat Cimit, was born in 1975 in Samsun. She studied architecture at
Karadeniz Technical University, and completed her degree in 1997. She
finished her Architectural Design Master thesis about Ecological Adaptation
Strategies and Rural Settlement Houses in Frtna Valley, Rize in 2001 in
stanbul Technical University. She finished her Architectural Design PHD
thesis in Istanbul Technical University about The Relatonshp Between
Concept Of Terrtoral Space And Housng Pattern In Ctadel Settlements;
The Case Of Uchsar . Resarches interests include, space syntax,
architectural design education, environment and behaviour and housing
morphology, She has been working as a lecturer in architectural design in
Beykent university.
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own thinking way. Intuitive way of thinking gives opportunity to control the
choices. Intuitive way of thinking needs experimentation, forming, re-forming,
re-thinking relating such a spoiling, and re-making process. In the way of
thinking, it could be understood as instead of diachronic way of thinking, it is
a kind of synchronic understanding between topics. Intuitive thinking
differentiate from rational thinking on that it does not depend on reaching to
false and true solutions at the end of the creative process, it depends on
gained experience. Experimentation is gained with the shared experiences
between participants of the first year design laboratories who are educators,
students. That means in the design laboratories, there are no masters, and
learners in a conventional way that linear communication between teachers
and students, there are less experienced and more experienced designers
even though educator may have more awareness because of his/her gained
experience.
Finally, we believe that architectural education could not be structured
separated independent semester modules. The whole education process
should be thought as a continuous process, but it is not within a linear
evolutionary progress. Every step of design laboratories must be designed
on more gained experience and each design module become a new
experience spaces. The importance of the first year let student to learn how
the way of thinking might be for the creative design process. The next step
does not depend on more and more complex problem solving, moreover it
depends more experimentations. As a conclusion, we agree with Socrates
idea that; teaching and learning is a sort of remembering
EXPERIMENTATION VERSUS READY-KNOWLEDGE
Nowadays all arguments, discussions, theories, paradigms, in the area of
education, science, media, increasingly are dealing with the terms of
knowledge, self-knowledge, new knowledge, know-how in the
information society where we are living in. Information society can be
characterized by bombarding proliferation of information. All the information
flow on our desk via screen of computers and makes us a wanderers and
nomadic when we are sitting in the front of desks on our immobile chairs.
World becomes a turning sphere around us and carries all the information to
us. The new condition makes us bounded with new images and information
around and transforms us a placeless and context-less modern nomad who
is looking at placeless and context-less information during his/her journey
feeding from global information systems. The principal danger of
information technology is its seductive tendency to stand in for embodied
experience (McCaan;2005) How the phenomenon should comprehend
clearly? Either the phenomenon acknowledge is totally affecting negatively
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by the split of space-time, the split of mind-body and displace us from our
place or these phenomenon acknowledge totally affecting positively by
bringing new enlightenment on essence of knowledge of it. Answer of such a
complex question is amidst positive and negative approaches. This kind of
information might be positive if we are aware of it is ready-knowledge and is
needed filtering and is transformed to the new knowledge of ones, which is
the inevitable core problem of architectural education.
The world of architectural images and the information can be collected easily
via Google, and it makes make architectural schools as modern nomadic
classrooms, and let student to be a wanderer of ready-knowledge within.
Even students can reach easily to ready-knowledge out of architectural
classes and world become a big classroom for the students (Leach;2007).
Information is taken from the internet as form of linguistic relationship and
images without any experience. As it is mentioned above, the subtle danger
of ready-knowledge is being non-filtered. If it is not filtered, students may
lose themselves in such bombarding information. Additionally another
cardinal problem about ready-knowledge via global information network is
that it is not involved experience of the self. It seems that recently
architectural schools are facing this situation and role of the architectural
school becomes more important than before, in order to transform
information or ready knowledge to new knowledge, which involves selfexperience. In the article, it will be argued that architectural schools should
focus on new-knowledge or self-knowledge is, and how student can gain it
as they are living in the information society.
The basic purpose of education can be defined generally that getting
knowledge, evaluation of self-knowledge and acquisition of know-how in a
proper teaching methods. Besides basic aim of all disciplines of education,
architectural education, especially design education focus on creativity
throughout creative teaching-learning ways that makes unique. There is
reciprocal interaction between teaching-learning process on creativity and
matter of teaching is what design is. Teaching and learning process of
creativity is not a kind of transmitting of knowledge from educator to student,
it involves creating, experimenting, searching process as same as design
process of itself (Yrekli;2007). Benefit of such a process is to gain selfknowledge based on experimentation different from ready-knowledge. The
main aim of experimentation is to develop students self-knowledge which
covers intuitive knowledge via self-experience beside basic rational
knowledge. What is the intuitive knowledge and what is the importance on
architectural design education? Locke argued, intuition is the most clear and
comprehendible knowledge that is not need any other concept or idea for
explanation (Locke;1996). Kant related to a priori knowledge as beforehand
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of the studio, especially within space-time context, let the student to explore
his or her ways of thinking by discussing, searching, making, feeling;
observing, touching, and perception. This process might be called non-linear
process versus linear one. While searching a design issues into the design
laboratories, students mind can walk within a sort of intricate path similar to
web which there are so many sub-paths. These sort of paths let them to lose
into it and there is more than expected decision point along the design
journey. Whenever student meets with a decision point into a web, they
need the intuitive knowledge. For such a design process, it is not aimed to
reach a profound result. Learning can be obtained during and within the
processes of itself as an exploration. As Wittgenstein argued that
experimental learning method let us to think that what kind of tools we have
for solving to annoying problem (Wittgenstein,1998).
All explanation shows us the role of intuitive knowledge is the core of the
creative learning beside rational knowledge, which can be gained with
experimentation. In design laboratories, exploration is the target of the
individual creativity. There is a subtle point that the success of the each
student exploration or getting their own self-knowledge depends on proper
design methods designed by educators.
The first year design laboratory is the most important year in the education in
virtue of being as a snapshot point for student with the architecture. Students
encounter with language of architecture in the world of architecture and start
to look from the frame of the architecture. At the first year design,
laboratories as it are locus of experimentation, student start to obtain the
heuristic ways of thinking, evaluating, judging. As being a design
laboratories educator, we are trying to apply what we explain in the above as
a design laboratories method. In the rest of the article, our first year design
experience will be explained.
The first year design laboratory is designed the on answers of these three
questions:
1-Which kind of topics may be discussed in first year design education? (On
Content)
2-How shall we design first year design studio as an educator? (On Methods)
3-What are the expectations from first year design education? (On Target)
On Content
Generally, most of the architectural schools start with Basic Design Course,
which is an inheritance of Bauhaus School. The content of the basic design
course is rooted from Bauhaus based on language of architecture translated
to abstract Euclidian shapes and forms during we percept them. The course
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Figure 1. Examples of unity and variety, rhythm and emphasis, harmony and contrast
experiments
Figure 2. Examples of exploration of the body
Next step is experience of surfaces, material, and light. The topics depend
on exploration on material search and explanation of texture and pattern and
combination of material (Figure 3). Same texture and pattern effects are
studied with different basic material like wooden, metal, and transparent
materials and under the daylight and artificial light. Final step of the topic is
making a montage from previous images and transform them in to get a new
image (Figure 4).
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Figure 4. Examples of montage
On Method
As it is mentioned above, we believe that the aim of the experimental design
learning process is needed to design method and tool of the design studio.
As well as known learning depends on wonder, to be oriented, aware of,
understanding and cognition phase. Schedule of the first semester is
planned weekly and that provide to provoke students wonder and flexible
way of thinking. Weekly schedule provides to keep students interest fresh.
We believe that wondering is the first step of learning. Each individuals
wonder makes him or her to explore concepts and language of architecture
deeply. All term and basic terminology of the weekly topic is discussed in the
laboratories and produce many question about the design topics supported
by literature and drama. The aim of the assignment related to the week of
the topic is to give students an opportunity, sort of explorations and to obtain
experience. Implementation abstract concepts to their assignment become
designing embodied self-knowledge and understanding. We never expect
them to reach perfect level of complementation of his or her assignment.
Student can face so many difficulties during the design process. Surprisingly
when they face the difficulties they have obtain individual self-knowledge
unconsciously.
My concern about the information society and new
knowledge is that it leaves less room for the discernment of the emotional
world. The world is not black and white. Difficulty is the beginning of color,
richness, depth, and resonance. And difficulty is the birthplace of the modern
soul. Importance of the difficulty open the door of creativity (Lewitt;2005).
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1.
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ABSTRACT
Thinking and creativity are mental processes which have close connections
and are similar to each other. Discovering and developing the creative idea
in the design education is important for the students to reach activeparticipating design in this process. Basic design education is one of the
proficiency of the significant instruments student associating the realities of
the external world with his realities in his own image.
In this study, an essay is presented which reveals the mental backgrounds
of the individuals who received design education and which aims to reflect
their individual differences by their free expressions in their designs.
Keywords: Architectural design,
subjectiv-objective, local-cultural.
basic
design,
mental
background,
INTRODUCTION
In the history of humankind, transformation and development are inevitable
realities. With its recent definitions such as approach, course, and
spreading to earth, globalization also takes place among these realities.
The mutual interaction between the global and local processes presents a
complex relationship. This relationship is the combination of both concepts
and the addition of different-multiform structure of localities in a global
system.
Being the environments in which the values related to humans are
expressed in terms of universality, the cultures of the societies are also main
components in the globalization concept, and they are equivalent to humans.
Distinctive objective and intellectual product of the societies are the
arguments which guide the design of the living spaces. This image, in which
the local cultural values are concretized, defines the architectural
environment. In this scope, the actual problem which must be evaluated in
the stage that have been reached today in lifestyles and architectural objects
as their reflection is the identification of the image in the future (Ozek, and
other, 2007).
The prevention of the problems caused by the globalization is dependent on
the efficient use of technological facilities and enabling the establishment of
a multicolored cultural mosaic instead of a uniform cultural environment
(Ozek, and others, 2006).
252
MEETING ENVIRONMENT
The most important components of this stage in which the architect
candidate becomes aware of his own designer character, and a professional
work area are as follows;
design education,
architect candidate,
practitioners of the education model.
In relation with the design education;
Architecture education is defined as the system of effects that is carried out
in order to form the behavioral changes that are required by the formation of
the architects profession in the individual via his/her own life.
The relationship between the architecture which is one of the communication
instruments of the humankind and the abstract concepts such as
aesthetics and creativity, and architectures dealing with a concrete fact
like being realizable show the wideness and hardness of the area of
interest. This pluralistic perspective is quite influential in the design process
which has begun especially with the determination of the design problem in
the architectural environment. Along with the fact that architectural object,
which is reached as a result of the design process, reflects the solution to
the problem, it is expected to form the right communication in terms of
environment-human relationship.
On one hand, being scientific and analytic and on the other hand, ensuring
the development of imagination and creativity abilities become the problem
of architecture and architecture education. The fact that this contradictory
condition is the source of new inventions forms the thrust energy of the
development of this profession by itself. To form the information generating
environments depends on reaching the available information, enabling these
information to be reproducible and adapting these information into new
conditions. Therefore, there arises a necessity of efficient evaluating of the
interaction which also reflects all characteristics of our own society (Lkce,
1994).
253
254
255
CONCRETE
....Design
CONCEPTIUALIZING
.
. Distant Physical
Environment
VISUAL
INTERPRETATION
VERBAL
INTERPRETATION
Individual
- Environment
Nature
MENTAL
SUBSTRUCTURE
IndividualEnvironment
Society
THE
COMPLEMENT
OF CONSCIOUSNESS
CONCEPT
CONCLUSION
.Individual
ABSTRAC
T
SAMPLING
Introverting, identifying oneself, avoiding all factors that limit the thought are
the processes which are performed by the student in his/her subconscious
world as subjective data. The student correlates the image-diagram which
he/she forms in his/her mind as a subjective data and the information which
he/she receives in education as objective data are the starting points for the
concept fictions in his/her expressions. The stages in the expression studies
based on concept fictions which are performed in the basic design education
are as follows:
1. determining the problem area: title,
2. the mental process in which the student forms concept sets related to
his/her own world under the determined title,
3. discussing the concept sets,
4. forming the expression.
In the first stage, a title is ordered from the student in order to focus the
mental process. The second stage is the subjective study stage in which the
student is set free in his/her own world. In the third stage, subjective data is
discussed, shared with other students and concept sets are determined,
which are related to the title. In the last stage, the student is set free again to
form his/her own expression. The main objective of this process is to set the
subconscious as free as possible while transforming students distinctive
image-diagram into a design product in the formation of the expression.
In the concept conclusion stage, students have been awaited to express the
given concepts by using their creativity after the determination of the
problem area has been formed by the instructors.
256
In this scope, two samples are presented in the study under the encounter
and meeting as main titles. Sample studies have been carried out in studio
environment in 4-hour sessions. Flowchart of the studies is given in (Figure
2).
PROBLEM AREA
ENCOUNTER
MEETING
VERBAL
INTERPRETION
TENSION
COMPOZITION
VSUAL
INTERPRETION
ARCHITECTUR
E EDUCATION
COMPOZITION
Abstract
Topic: TENSION
The incidents that create Verbal interpretation
tension in the person
continually disturb him/her.
The person experiences the
gap of not being able to find
a solution to these incidents
in him/her. Nobody hears
his/her scream even if
he/she revolts against this
condition.
Visual
interpretation
Concrete
257
Table 2. Encounter
Student: ESRA AKIR*
Abstract
Topic: TENSION
Human organism creates stress Verbal interpretation
when it comes across a different
condition other than an ordinary
condition.
This
stress
is
somehow a reaction against the
new condition. When the stress
forming condition disappears, the
organism returns to its normal
state.
Visual
interpretation
Concrete
Table 3. Encounter
Student
ZDEMR*
:ONUR
DENZ
Verbal interpretation
Abstract
Topic: TENSION
Tension is a defense mechanism
in human, material, society, etc.
which sharpens and hardens
itself to adapt to the conditions.
For instance, it will be able to
create a transformation in itself to
ease and eliminate the hard
environment conditions which
prevent the human; thus, it will
open the road which it needs.
Visual
interpretation
Concrete
258
Table 4. Meeting
Student:CANAN KRAZ*
Abstract
Concrete
Topic:
ARCHITECTURE
Verbal interpretation
EDUCATION
The curves created lineally using
various
colors
are
the
expressions of the complex
thoughts existent within the brain
of the person. Colorlessness of
the ground aims to strengthen
the idea that clarity expression is
weak. However, the ground
forces the brain to a tendency
being unaware. As a result of
these weak
tendencies,
a
thought starts a tendency by
making a decision in view of Visual
colorful,
linear
but
solid interpretation
formations that are encountered.
The formed large mass contains
uneven formations. Its purpose is
the expression of uneasiness
and immediate successes. The
fact that the large formation has
solid borders means that an
improvement has been achieved
in this issue.
259
Table 5. Meeting
Student :TUE ELF SUBA I*
Abstract
Topic:
ARCHITECTURE Verbal interpretation
EDUCATION
While the incidents-things seen
could
not
be
interpreted
differently before the architecture
education, becomes possible to
be able to think differently by the
architecture education.
Visual
interpretation
Concrete
CONCLUSIONS
The events experienced by the individual who prepares for life in his/her
environment are discussed in the study titled encounter. It defines a
process in which individuals reaction opposed to these events and his/her
solution quests are integrated. In this study group, the student has been
asked to produce any sub-concepts. For instance, among the concepts such
as tension, illness, death and love, the tension concept has been
sampled in this study.
The study titled meeting discusses a process peculiar to architecture
education beyond any encounters in the life of the student. It is an
intersection process in which the individual at the point of beginning
architecture education goes beyond the previous patterns in the view and
forming opinion style for his/her environment; in other words, in which he/she
learns to experience looking, seeing, searching actions together.
In the model discussed in the study, an environment is fictionalized in which
the mental and cultural backgrounds of the architect candidate individual in
the general life flows are redefined in the distinguishing characteristic of the
profession.
260
Table 6. Meeting
Student :NAZRE BLGL*
Abstract
Concrete
Topic:
ARCHITECTURE
Verbal interpretation
EDUCATION
The expectations of a person
from the architecture means that
he/she
sometimes
finds
disturbance when thinking that
they are positive, and sometimes
finds happiness when expecting
the bad conditions.
The offerings and expectations of
the architecture are as follows,
-the roads in which a precise
answer can be given never, and
chaos resulted from the moment Visual
interpretation
of first meeting.
-dreams which drive the person
to pessimism or optimism and
which rise in time.
-persons feeling himself/herself
as to be great, strong, or
unimportant.
REFERENCES
Lkce, S., (1994), Mimarlk Eitiminde Temel Eitim Programlamas
ve Mimari Tasarm Programyla Btnleebilecek Bir Model nerisi, Doktora
Tezi, G..
Ozek, V., Dalgc, G., Atac, B., (2006), Kresel Kltr Olgusunda
Gemi ve Gelecek ile iletiim-Mimarlk Nesneleri, 8.Ulusal Sanat
Sempozyumu, s: 637-645.
Ozek, V., Dalgc, G., (2007), An Evaluation of Conceptual Editing
in Basic Design Education, Livenarc III. International Congress, s:883-894.
*T.U. Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Department of
Architecture, Basic Design Course students.
261
262
ABSTRACT
City planning can be defined basically as a decision making process with the
aim of describing the inhabitable criteria between human and nature in a
wide range from generating international policies-strategy to design
surroundings of dwellings. From one perspective planning phenomenon can
be defined as a guide in socio-economic development progress, or it can be
defined as an art of organizing space. Consequently, every stage of planning
process includes different scales and qualities of design.
From this basic approach, at Educational Program of City and Regional
Planning Department at Yldz Technical University, design phenomenon is
discussed in all systems from micro (basic design) to macro (from urban
design to generate strategies). At the first year of education schedule there
are two basic modules. At the first academic term, the students who have
knowledge of high school degree are taught basic design and graphical
techniques and also taught how to examine visual perception, how to
embody abstract thoughts; at the second term, the students who have
already learned basic design acquirements are taught how to analyze urban
textures at different socio-cultural and spatial geographies and how to
practice a neighborhood unit design process. Both of the modules are
supported with a design studio and a theoretical class that supports it.
The aim of this paper is; to discuss the educational methods of analyzing the
urban patterns, design elements and design process of neighborhood unit
relating to the first year of the education program.
In this context, the subject will be discussed within two main topics: first topic
is to analyze the urban patterns and design elements. Within the aspect of
this study the aim is; to make the student find the elements which determine
the spatial design criteria in socio-cultural and spatial geographies and to
analyze the criteria to be focused on while designing urban spaces in
different geographies within the traditional accommodation principles. In
other words, since there is not a single right approach, the aim is to create
the clues for the designer to approach the subject matter with various
components in mind. Second basic topic is the study of teaching stages for
design process of neighborhood units (analysis, synthesis, zoning,
orientation, site plan, etc.) and presentation techniques. In this study, the
subject is discussed in variable scales both in macro scale conceptual
approaches and in details.
The method of study is continued by the lectures, assessments and
arguments with the whole class and detailed arguments at group sessions.
263
The desired result is to provide coordination in the studies run within the
whole class, an opportunity of detailed discussion of each students study in
group studies. At discussions and critics of sketches it is wanted from tutors
and students to criticize about various materials (photographs, sketches,
videos, Google earth visuals, etc.) to improve reading design, and opinion
about rights and faults and ability of technical drawing. The aim of this
method is to exclude the student from the passive role and to include
learning with interactive trial and error method process.
Consequently, students who had taught basic design, within the context of
design studio and the lesson that supports it, the discussion method, with
the process of an interactive participation, about how to discuss the varying
cultural and geographical elements at the process of designing a unit
neighborhood area is tried to explain.
Keywords: urban pattern components, neighborhood, design principles of
urban spaces, perception, interactive participation
264
47
The university students in Turkey obtain the right to have university education as a
result of a central system examination with the contents of fundamental science areas.
They select the department to be studied according to the score obtained in this
examination. In addition to this the skill examinations are taken in some departments
of the universities. However, the students that take part in the YTU city and region
planning educational program have the right to take education as a result of the
central system examination, without experiencing such an exam system.
265
sketching and abstracting techniques concerning the urban space are taken
up (Figure 1).
Figure 1: YT, Urban and Regional Planning Depart., Coordination Process of
Design Education in First Year
266
Making comparisons between the traditional life habits in abovedefined geographies and the todays habits; and seeking
connections between the original ones and related requirements,
267
2.
PLANNING 2 STUDIO SCOPE DEFINITION
A system is followed from the micro (neighboring unit) to the macro (quarter);
from the macro (quarter) to the micro (detail) in the studio content. In this
direction the subject is taken up in 2 main headings.
2.1.
Different Geographies and Spatial Structure Components:
First of all, it is tried to make the concept concrete by means of the questions
what is the pattern and what are elements forming the pattern? After
sampling one by one and discussing the pattern components, the analysis
on the sample patterns and the scenario studies concerning these patters
are realized (Figure 2a, 2b).
268
Figure
2c:
Urban
On the images concerning the two and three dimensioned and different
geographies; it is tried to read the elements which form the urban pattern
and to form the tips concerning the design. In other words, the story which
takes part behind the space is tried to be read. These scenario studies are
realized on the traditional urban patterns (Figure 3).
269
The study concerns the pattern analysis and design on the selected regions
from the different geographies every semester. The process which is
described in the coverage of the paper is carried out on the studies on the
patterns which take part in the Southeast Anatolia and Black Sea regions of
Turkey. It is tried to form the design samples in the Southeast Anatolia
(figure 2b) in which the flora is about non-existent and the daily life is mostly
experienced in the courtyard in the hot and arid climate zone and in Black
Sea region (figure 2c) in which a rainy flora and separated structure typology
270
are dominant in a rainy climate zone (figures 4a, 4b). In the studies, it is
dwelled upon the concept of space, street, square definitions, building,
parcel relationships, principles of belonging in the design and definition
formation.
2.2.
Quarter Unit Planning and Design Process
Planning is the study of seeking answers for 3 fundamental questions with
the most general meaning; Who?, In which geography?, Under which
conditions they will live, work ... etc. Starting from these fundamental
approaches, the stages of analysis, synthesis, zoning, orientation and mass
study stages are followed with the feedbacks (Figure 5).
After realizing the synthesis study (figure 7) in which the problems and
potentials are defined according to analysis, it is passed to the design stage.
The zoning study, in which particularly the quarter concept, function areas,
locationing, density and transportation staging are defined, is performed at
the design stage (figure 8).
271
Figure 7: Synthesis
Figure 8: Zonning
Figure 9: Orientation
3.
PLANNING 2 STUDIO METHOD DEFINITION
Basically it is taken up in two headings as the studies which are continuing in
the class whole and the studies based on the group work in terms of the
operational method of the studio. The collect and distribute method is
applied for various times in the day during this process. At the collect/get
together stage; the conference, discussion, preliminary sketch production
processes that are realized in the entire class are followed and it is tried to
ensure coordination and to ensure a rich discussion environment with the
participation of all of the teachers and students. At the distribute stage; the
studies are continued at the group basis. In these studies; it is enabled to
apply the correction concerning the details in directing the group teachers
and the individual study of the student on the preliminary sketch and model
(figure 11).
272
One of the important headings in the studies which are followed in the entire
class is the seminars / conferences. In the conferences which are composed
of the presentation of each lecturer taking part in the studio works; in
addition to conceptual and theoretical expressions, a method is followed in
which the discussions take part on various visual and the student is included
in the process (figure 12). The joint discussions on the preliminary studies
are realized in two stages.
After exhibiting all of the student studies, the students are expected to select
one partner and to criticize the studies of each others. After that the
discussion is opened to the entire class with the participation of the teachers
and students. As purpose in addition to ensuring the coordination in the
entire class, it is targeted to develop the skills of seeing, perception, selfconfidence and self-expression of the students (figure 13).
In addition, the preliminary study examinations which are carried out
throughout the class will be repeated every week, and it is targeted for the
students to acquire production technique and production in the
predetermined period of time. In these examinations, it is required firstly to
draw a square with 25x25 cm dimensions as imaginary and with 1/1000
scale. This represents a virtual area. After that, the students are required to
determine a topography (hill, valley, water coast, inclined, flat etc) and to
273
carry out a design study relating to the subjects which are determined with
the weekly course schedule. The study subject is changed every week
because of the weekly agenda, in other words, a problem is put forward
(particularly a problem that is determined by every student) and they are
expected to produce solutions.
In the studies which are carried out at the basis of group, the individual study
(on preliminary sketch and model) is continued with correction and
discussions by means of interactive participation as well (figure 14a, 14b,
14c, 14d).
The assignment studies are based on transferring the research, reading,
source accumulation and build-up out of the studio of the student onto the
preliminary sketch study.
4.
274
a.
Concerning the urban exterior space design principles
research and conceptual knowledge build-up process,
Another subject title which is considered to put positive results is the shortterm preliminary sketch examinations which are repeated with different
scenarios every week and realized as an virtual space. It is determined that
these examinations not only increased the thoughts and skills of the
275
students on the subject of design but also increased the hand skills (in
comparison with the previous years).
Finally; at every stage of the studio studies it is observed that the students
developed the self-expression skills which are considerably important for
planning profession with the participation of the students as not only group
but also as class in the discussions.
On the other hand, the most important matter on which the method shows
weakness in this workshop study is that the students remained insufficient
on the subject of 3 dimensional expression / exposition (model, section,
perspective). The computer technologies (3 dimensional modeling
techniques) are not used in accordance with the principle of developing the
freehand technique which is one of the fundamental targets of the studio.
Consequently, the students are expected to work on the model and to draw
sections for perceiving the space as 3 dimensional. However, this technique
is considered idle by our students and avoided to a considerable extent.
Finally, it is wanted to mention a problem resulting from the flow of our
education program. As it is explained in the introductory part of the paper,
only the subject of design is taken up in the first year of the planning
education. The design subject is overlooked because of the dense of the
subjects which should be transferred and the contents of subsequent
studios. Consequently, it is observed that design skills of our students are
wasted away remarkably at the stage of graduation. However, our
educational programs are continuously reviewed as a whole concerning this
subject.
276
TONGU AKI
34. Sokak 4 / 9
Bahelievler / Ankara
06490
TURKEY
E-mail: tongakis@gmail.com
Tongu Ak is graduated in 1998 from METU Department of Architecture
and finished his master thesis titled Urban Space and Everyday Life:
Walking Through Yksel Pedestrian District in 2001 in the Graduate School
of Natural and Applied Science of the same university. He worked in a
constructional engineering firm as an architect between 1998-2001. Between
2001 and 2006, he worked as an instructor in Erciyes University in Yozgat
and gave several courses related to basic design, architectural design,
computer aided design and elective courses in both architecture and city
planning departments. He spent six months on Bauhaus Universitat in
Weimar and now, he is at his final stage of his doctoral work again in METU
focusing on the scientification venture of architectural discipline between
1956-1982 in Turkey.
*
This paper in the short summary of the dissertation Teaching / Forming / Framing a
Scientifically Oriented Architecture in Turkey between 1956 1982 in METU in
Turkey.
277
ABSTRACT
The theoretical framework of first year studio in Turkey has its roots during
the establishment period of METU in 1956. International figures like Fritz
Janeba and Marvin Sevely constituted the first year studio in Turkey and
developed the application of the concepts borrowed from Vorkurs of
Bauhaus together with the practical production of buildings in summer
practices. Moreover, in the late 1970s and early 1980s is the period of
teaching, forming and framing a scientifically oriented architecture in Turkey.
Due to the scientific developments and technological innovations on
international scale, architectural scholars shifted the focus and limits of
architecture to systems theory, design thinking, behavioural experiments,
building technology, and social and cultural analysis of the settlements. This
period can be considered as the merging of design with science. During this
collaboration of two disciplines, basic design education is exposed with a
conception of Scientific Design.
Bilgi Denel has become a significant scholar in this period paving his own
way of defining systematic design inside the studio. Criticising the Bauhaus
Experience, Denel has produced a paradigm shift in basic design education
with systematic thinking and visual awareness in Turkey and developed an
analytical and rational perspective within the architectural scholarship.
General Systems Theory and Gestalt Principles have turned out to be the
major sources for this novel practice of this type of basic design in Turkey.
Denels texts on basic design education has defined a new pedagogy, a new
form of teaching design, in the departments of architecture and an original
model to teach basic design based on a scientific view of design. One of the
methods introduced for that mental system is exposed in the book A Method
48
for Basic Design. Additionally, in the book of Temel Tasarm ve Yaratclk
49
(Basic Design and Creativity) , this particular method for basic design is
taken as an attempt for searching the creativity and its limits of basic design
in the architectural education.
Since basic design education is the platform for introducing, defining and
discussing the primary concepts of design and its elements together with the
scholars and the students, these investigations allow tracing the arguments
on design process in terms of making architecture scientific, especially in
terms of the conceptualisation of space in local level. For this paper, the
limits of basic design are discussed to understand and position the role of
science in design education reviewing the pedagogical tools of Denel on
48
See Denel, B., A Method of Basic Design, METU Faculty of Architecture Offset
Printing Studio, 1979, Ankara.
49
See Denel, B., Temel Tasarm ve Yaratclk, METU Faculty of Architecture Offset
Printing Studio, 1981, Ankara.
278
50
Introduction
In the international journey of basic design, starting from the early works of
Denman Waldo Ross and Arthur Wesley Dow in USA to Bauhaus in Weimar,
Dessau, and Berlin, Vkutemas in USSR to Hochschule fr Gestaltung in
Ulm, New Bauhaus to Inchoate in Switzerland, the relationship of science
and design is becomes a major issue parallel with the argument of reason.
Design Methods by its venture in opening black box to achieve a complete
glass box use scientific methodology to examine design activity. Protocol
analysis to reflection-in-action methods enriches this marriage of design and
science. Philosophical contributions and experience based implementations
pave the way of the methodology in design activity especially for basic
design.
In this paper, we would like to dwell on the venture of scientification of
architecture and examine the contribution of Bilgi Denel as a creative figure
in basic design education in Turkey. His texts become the source for us to
underline the dance of design and science in local level with its international
connection.
Between the late 1950s and early 1980s architectural studies in Turkey of
the period concentrate by the help of scientific methods on various
architectural issues and research topics such as intuition of designer,
behaviour patterns, and energy efficiency of buildings. Scholarly studies
concerned with the assessment of architectural projects and the evaluation
of buildings evolve into the methodological consideration of architecture by
using systems of inquiry provided by the sciences of psychology,
anthropology and sociology and are thus enhanced with novel
51
interpretations of the scientific terminology. This trend is named as the
scientification movement in the paper and defines a novel type of
*
This paper in the short summary of the dissertation Teaching / Forming / Framing a
Scientifically Oriented Architecture in Turkey between 1956 1982 in METU in
Turkey.
51
The term systems of inquiry is used to name the different perspectives on
architectural research and to reflect the epistemological and methodological
approaches in architectural research methods. See Groat, L. and Wang, D.,
Architectural Research Methods, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2002, p. 6-7 and also
chapter 2 Systems of Inquiry and Standards of Research Quality, p. 21-43.
280
52
For the proposal of the Department of Architectural Sciences, see mamolu, V., (et
al.), Mimarlk Bilimleri Blm nerisi, METU Faculty of Architecture Offset Printing
Studio, 1976, Ankara.
53
See Boratav, K., Trkiye ktisat Tarihi: 1923 2002, mge Yaynlar, 2005, p. 107
116.
54
Tekeli, , Tasarm Srecini Bilimselle tirme abalar, Mimarlk, 148, 1976/3, Ankara,
p. 59-62.
281
55
See Boratav, K., Trkiye ktisat Tarihi: 1923 2002, mge Yaynlar, 2005,
p. 107 170.
56
METU Catalogue, 19571958, METU Faculty of Architecture Offset
Printing Studio, Ankara, p.24.
57
See the collection of the summer practices held by METU between the
years of 1958 and 1974. zkan, S. (ed.), Mimarlk Fakltesi Yaz
Uygulamalar, Arp Yaynevi, 1975, Ankara.
58
Uysal, Y., The Formation of the System of Education at METU Faculty of
Architecture 1956-1980, Unpublished Master Paper, METU, 2003.
59
For example, see Pultar, M, (ed.), evre, Yap ve Tasarm, EMBL Publications,
1979, Ankara. (as the proceedings of the First Conference of Architectural Sciences in
26-28 September 1979) and Occasional Papers of EMBL as the publications of
Architectural Science Workshop in METU Faculty of Architecture published by METU
Faculty of Architecture Offset Printing Studio).
282
The scholars in universities such as ITU, KTU and METU elaborate architectural
studies in numerous fields. They participate in significant number of conferences
and publish architectural works in the favour of forming a scientific architecture.
However, METU Department of Architecture stands for being one of the
generator institution through the venture within other departments in ITU, DMMA,
ADMMA, Ege University and KTU.
Third motivation of forming more scientific architecture relied on the political
concerns of Turkey. Socialisation in architecture generates the atmosphere of
the scholarship in its uniting attempt of architecture and social demands in
Turkey. It is the motivation of strengthening the relationship between architect,
scholar and society through the social organisations and actions.
The Chamber of Architects of Turkey established in 1954 turned into a platform
for realising these political demands of architects as educated technicians. By the
means of reports and campaigns, educated technicians produce solutions to the
60
problems of the country as social engineers. As an example, in 1971, Ankara
Branch of Chamber of Architects declared a report for the problem of technical
61
education. The report ended with a declaration of Devrim in Teknik Eitim
(Technical Education for Revolution). The problem of social housing and the
questions of building production and urban solutions in the field were the key
discussions on social demands influenced the atmosphere in the architectural
scholarship of Turkey.
These three motivations in Turkey define a paradigm shift in the field of
architectural scholarship having one particular perspective in common. All of
them are based on the totalising world view which resonates together with
the system approaches. The influence of system theories and its variations
inside the architecture has its traces in design activities and architectural
research. The notion of design activity, once being understood as black box,
turns into translucent glass box by the help of holistic scientific approaches.
This glass box has its components, input, output, and environment as a total
system having parts-whole relationship.
60
In her chronological text, Gle refers to these socialistic ideals developed in the late
1960s. Regarding the positivist ideas and rationalist perspectives of the social actors
in Turkey, she searches the relation between the leftist politics and social engineering.
Gle, N., Mhendisler ve deoloji: nc Devrimcilerden Yeniliki Sekinlere, Metis
Yaynlar, (1986) 1998., p.20.
61
Ankara ubesi Komisyon almalar, Trkiyede Teknik retim Sorunu, Mimarlk,
January 1971, p. 11 13. Commission members were Yavuz nen, Turan Tamer,
Osman K. Akol, Erhan Erdomu. Consultants of the commision were
efik Uysal,
Prof. Nusret Fiek, Do. Dr. Bozkurt Gven, Prof. Mmtaz Soysal, Mehmet zgne,
Do. Nejat Erder, Haluk Pamir.
283
62
69
Denel, B., A Method of Basic Design, METU Faculty of Architecture Offset Printing
Studio, 1979, Ankara, p. 164-165.
70
Tekeli, ., Tasarm Srecini Bilimselletirme abalar, in the proceeding of the
conference Mimarlk Eitimi in Trabzon, TMMOB Publication, Ankara, 1976.
285
Denel, B., A Method of Basic Design, METU Faculty of Architecture Offset Printing
Studio, Ankara, 1979, p. 18-19.
72
See the footnotes 6 and 7 in Ibid, p. 18-19.
73
See Denel, B., Temel Tasarm ve Yaratclk, METU Faculty of Architecture Offset Printing
Studio, 1981, Ankara.
74
Denel writes a chapter on Synectics in Denel, B., Temel Tasarm ve Yaratclk, METU
Faculty of Architecture Offset Printing Studio, 1981, p. 34-46.
75
Denel, B., A Method of Basic Design, METU Press1979, Ankara, p. 171.
76
See Denel, B., Denel, B., Temel Tasarm ve Yaratclk, METU Faculty of Architecture
Offset Printing Studio, 1981, p. 7
286
Denel introduces the term Synectics inside the studio for developing
77
architectural design studies. It is penetrated inside the studio with the
sketch problems. During these studies, students are asked to perform and
present solutions on the unthinkable, undefined and unexpected problems.
The exercises of Synectics help students to see problems in different ways.
Unlike brainstorming, it is a better defined and structured method including
sequential steps to develop alternative perspectives of perception for the
students.
Regarding these perspectives of perception and totalising attitude in design
process, Denel examines the artistic dimension of architecture in basic
design education. Denel argues the importance of the rules and frameworks
situated for understanding of the rational and aesthetic sides of architecture
for visual perception. He limits the basic design studies by differentiating the
concepts of economy, aesthetic and social consequences intentionally for
78
abstracting the basic design education as intangible notions in design.
Denel argues also the role of criticism in basic design in terms of idealism.
Metaphysical arguments in basic design refer to the notion
of being against logical positivism. Not only are
metaphysical questions unanswerable but unaskable. Such
notions may very well fit to the ideal that the teacher is
know-all-God not to be questioned. Of course, such an
argument, for all its seemingly worthiness in metaphysical
philosophy, can not be acceptable in our logical approach in
79
design.
Conclusion and Further Remarks
The implication and institutionalisation of Basic Design in Turkey in from
1970s to late 1980s influenced the architectural education, especially in
rational terminology. Synectics as a scientific tool and rejection to idealist
77
Denel hold a graduate course on Synectics as the part of the Department Architectural
Sciences in late 1970s together with the participation of basic design studio as instructor in
METU. See also Denel, B., Temel Tasarm ve Yaratclk, METU Faculty of Architecture
Offset Printing Studio, 1981, p. 34-46.
78
Denels differentiates the more tangible notions and intangible notions in basic
design. The more tangibles are visual structuring, physical structuring, light and scale;
on the other hand intangibles are social, psychology, the subject of economics,
movement, and aesthetics. Denel, B., A Method of Basic Design, METU Faculty of
Architecture Offset Printing Studio, Ankara, 1979, p. 73-105.
79
Denel, B., A Method of Basic Design, METU Faculty of Architecture Offset Printing
Studio, Ankara, 1979, p. 168.
287
288
289
ABSTRACT
290
Introduction
Basic design education is a fundamental component in most of the design
education programs around the world. Boucharenc (2006) conducted a
survey in 198 design and architecture schools located in 22 countries,
including France, Japan, Great Britain, United States, Germany, and
Belgium, to determine the status of basic design education in the world.
Teachers of basic design and project design (teaching the design courses in
the academic years following the basic design studio), participated in the
study. In general, results showed that design instructors, whether teaching
basic design or project design, perceive basic design exercises as an
essential component of four or five year design education.
Boucharencs (2006) survey collected information on the actual and desired
duration of basic design courses in the world. Results showed that in most of
the surveyed schools teaching of basic design takes at least one year (about
79 %) or integrated over the whole academic program (about 15 %). Only in
about six percent of the surveyed schools, teaching of basic design takes a
period of less than one year. When teachers were asked about ideal
duration of time allocated to the teaching of basic design, most of the basic
design and project design teachers were in the view that basic design should
be taught for at least one year (about 50 % of the participants) or should be
integrated over the full length of academic program (about 45 %). Only about
five percent of the teachers surveyed thought that it should take less than
one year. This finding on actual and ideal duration of basic design education
may indicate the importance of basic design education in various design
education programs.
Although design programs in Turkey were not represented in Bouchers
study, it is plausible to assume that his findings are partially applicable to
Turkish planning schools. In most of the Turkish planning schools, basic
design takes about one year. Informal conversations with basic design and
project design teachers showed a desire to discuss basic design concepts in
the academic years following the basic design studio. Acknowledging the
fact that basic design is a fundamental component of design education, this
study focuses on the essential themes of exercises in basic design.
Boucharenc (2006) investigated the essential themes needed to be
discussed during a basic design course. He gave an extended list of themes
including point, line, plane, plan, space, volume, perspective, structure,
proportion, deformation, ergonomics, light, color, materials, rhythm and
others. When the proportion of the themes to be discussed was investigated,
291
the author found two dimensional geometry (point, line, plane, and plan) and
three dimensional volumes (space, volume, perspective) constitutes about
%50 (about %25 each) of the curriculum. In other words, students ability to
comprehend and shape the third dimension constitutes an important part of
basic design education. The importance of three-dimensional visualization
ability in Turkish planning schools is no exception. In fact, Gunay (2007),
who is teaching basic design in city and regional planning department at a
Turkish design school for many years, argued that:
First year basic design studio interrogates the concepts of balance,
solid-void, frame of reference, scale, proportion, order (structure, network,
model), in terms of one dimensional lines, two dimensional areas and three
dimensional volumes.
Given the fact that three dimensional visualization ability is a fundamental
theme in basic design education, this study focuses on teaching of
visualization techniques. In general, basic design teachers attempt to
develop students three dimensional visualization ability by teaching
visualization techniques such as axonometric, isometric, sketches, models,
and three dimensional software. Boucharenc (2006) found that basic design
teachers tend to use four traditional approaches (axonometric, isometric,
sketches, and models). They rarely use three dimensional software. On the
other hand, project teachers put more emphasis to sketches and models and
put about equal importance onto axonometric, isometric, and three
dimensional software. We argue that, although basic design and project
design teachers disagree on which technique is more beneficial for the
development of three dimensional visualization skills, it is generally accepted
that a student who is better equipped with these skills would be more
successful throughout the basic design course and produce more creative
designs for tasks that require three dimensional visualization ability. Yet,
there is no empirical study that tests the relation between three dimensional
visualization ability and success in basic design. Thus, this study attempted
to investigate the relation between these factors.
Method
For the 2007-2008 academic year 61 students, five of whom dropped the
course in the first two weeks, enrolled to the required basic design course in
city and regional planning at Dokuz Eylul University. Each students success
in basic design was measured by their average grades on 62 first semester
basic design studio tasks. Each task was rated by at least two basic design
studio instructors who are teaching at the Department of City and Regional
292
293
For the second task, drawing different views, participants were asked to
draw top, left, and right views for four shapes (Figure 2). The sum of the
correct response for each task determines participants success in this task.
The scores vary between 2 to 12. Students who achieved a score between 2
and 6 were assigned to low, and students who achieved a score between 7
and 12 were assigned to high success in drawing different views task.
For the third task, drawing isometric perspectives, participants were given
two nine pixel compositions (3 rows X 3 columns), where the height of each
pixel was indicated with numbers. Participants were then asked to draw an
isometric perspective for each composition (Figure 3). The sum of the
correct response for each task determined the participants success in this
task. The scores vary between 1 and 18. However, more than half of the
students completed this task without error, and received a score of 18.
Students completed the task without error was assigned to high, and others
were assigned to low success in drawing isometric perspectives task.
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Statistical Results
Overall, results showed that three dimensional visualization ability affects
success in basic design. Table 1 shows the tabulated data with respect to
success in basic design and level of three dimensional visualization ability.
Results showed that, students who received higher scores for basic design
success were equally distributed within high and low three dimensional
visualization abilities. However, students who received lower scores for basic
design success tended to achieve lower scores for three dimensional
visualization abilities. This difference achieved statistical significance (2 =
3.99, df = 1, p < 0,05).
Table 1: Distribution of number of participants by success in basic design and level
of three dimensional visualization ability.
Success in Basic Design
High
Low
Three
Dimensional
Visualization
Ability
TOTAL
TOTAL
High
10
11
Low
10
20
8
9
18
29
When the separate tests measuring three dimensional ability was analyzed,
results showed a significant interaction between
drawing isometric
perspective and success in basic design (2 = 7.13, df = 1, p < 0,01).
Students who received higher scores for basic design success tended to
achieve higher scores and students who received lower scores for basic
design success tended to achieve lower scores in drawing isometric
perspective (Table 2).
Table 2: Distribution of number of participants by success in basic design and
success in drawing isometric perspective task .
TOTAL
High
15
17
Low
5
20
7
9
12
29
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between basic design success and removing cubes and the one between
basic design success and drawing different views of a shape did not achieve
statistical significance, the relation between these factors was in the
expected direction. Students who received higher scores for basic design
success tend to achieve higher scores and students who received lower
scores for basic design success tend to achieve lower scores for removing
cubes test (Table 3) and drawing different views test (Table 4).
Table 3: Distribution of number of participants by success in basic design and
success in removing cubes task.
Success in Basic Design
High
Low
Removing
Cubes
TOTAL
High
11
15
Low
9
20
5
9
14
29
TOTAL
TOTAL
High
11
14
Low
9
20
6
9
15
29
Conclusion
This study examined the relation between basic design education and three
dimensional visualization ability. Success in basic design was measured by
students average grades on various basic design studio tasks. Students
three dimensional visualization abilities were measured by three tasks, all of
which required isometric drawing skills. As expected, results showed that
students who were successful in basic design received better scores in three
dimensional visualization ability tests. Similarly, students who received lower
scores for success in basic design showed lower three dimensional
visualization abilities.
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It should be noted that three dimensional visualization ability is not the only
factor that may affect success in basic design education. As Denel (1981)
argued creativity is one of the most important skills that a design student
should possess. However, understanding the relation between three
dimensional visualization ability and creativity was beyond the scope of this
study. Yet, we tested if students who had higher three dimensional
visualization abilities produced better and more creative designs for
compositions that require an understanding of third dimension with a followup test. The students who participated in this study were later asked to
develop a design for an entrance of a hypothetical monument during the
second semester of the basic design course. The area to be designed had a
high slope. The students were allowed to work in groups of two people. The
project was to be completed in ten days and the instructors helped students
by giving critiques for design. Since this task was given as a part of course
curriculum, rather than a part of this research, it is not possible to statistically
compare the creativity of students designs between students who received
higher scores and lower scores in three dimensional visual ability tests.
Despite methodological concerns, we found that the probability that a
student may produce a successful or a poor design in terms of creativity was
about equal for students who received high scores in three dimensional
visual ability. However, students who received low scores in three
dimensional visual ability were unlikely to produce a successful design in
terms of creativity. Figure 4 shows an example of a design alternative
produced by two students who received high scores in three dimensional
visualization ability tasks, and figure 5 shows an example of a design
alternative produced by two students who received low scores in three
dimensional visualization ability tasks. Note however, this figure could not
provide concrete empirical evidence. Thus, whether better three dimensional
visualization ability leads a student to produce better and more creative
design alternatives for a design
problem deserves to be further
investigated.
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Figure 5: An example
of
a
design
alternative produced
by two students who
received low scores
in three dimensional
visualization
ability
tasks
Recall, this study measured three dimensional visualization ability with three
tasks, all of which required isometric drawing skills. Future studies may also
consider using other tests, such as mental cutting and perspective drawing,
to measure three dimensional visualization ability. These tests were given in
a basic design course at the end of the first semester for one group of
students majoring in city and regional planning. Whether the results of the
present study will apply to other design based programs such as
architecture, graphic design, interior architecture remains to be seen. More
work needs to be done to test the generalization of the results to various
groups of students. Moreover a useful extension of this study may test
whether design education can improve a students three dimensional
visualization ability and focus on which technique (axonometric, isometric,
sketches, models or three dimensional software) is more beneficial in
teaching and enhancing students three dimensional visualization abilities.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank to students for participating in the study, to
Asst. Prof. Dr. Hayat Unverdi, Asst. Prof. Dr. Sibel Ecemis Kilic, Asst. Prof.
Dr. Ahu Dalgakiran, Res. Asst. Evren Erdil, Res. Asst. Mercan Efe, and Res.
Asst. Ibrahim Akgul for their help in formulating, carrying out and scoring the
exercises given in the first semester of the design studio in 2007-2008
academic year.
298
References
Boucharenc C.G. (2006), Research on Basic Design Education: An Internal
Survey, International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 16:1-30
Denel, B. (1981), Temel Tasarm ve Yaratclk , ODT Mimarlk Fakltesi
Basm lii, Ankara
Gunay, B. (2007), Gestalt Theory and City Planning Education, Middle East
Technical University Journal of Faculty of Architecture, METU JFA, 24:1, 93113
299