Thematic Subnetworks
ENHSA-EAAE Architectural Design Teachers' Network
Teaching and Experi me nting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in Pedagogy
Lisbon 3-5 May 2007
Host: School of Architecture University Lusiada
Methods of contemporary architectural education are varied and open to experimentation. Experimentation itself is crucially directed by objectives that legitimise innovation: in science by verifiable truth, in the arts by cultural relevance. What is the objective that directs your experimentation in architectural education and how do you instil this in your students?
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Teachers of Architectural Design are invited to a Workshop entitled “Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in Pedagogy” to debate upon possible answers to the above question. The workshop focuses on the impact of new forms of experimentation and the subsequent new conceptions of architectural form have on the teaching of architectural design. Eminent architectural design teachers who experiment with their courses have been invited to present their cases. Teachers of architectural design are invited to contribute to the debates by preparing a paper and poster with their views, ideas, and pedagogical approaches to architectural design. Debates will enhance the two types of contribution and will argue the issues arising.
An abstract of 600-700 words must be submitted by March 23, 2007 . You will be asked to submit your final paper by the end of June 2007 for the publication of the proceedings which will be distributed to all EAAE/ENHSA school members. You may organize your abstract by answering the following questions and addressing any of the thematic issues detailed below:
- In what way have the recent technological advances in information technology influenced the teaching of architectural design in European Schools of Architecture?
- Which are the new values and new priorities directing this teaching in our days?
- Which are the new methods, processes and strategies implemented for the teaching of architectural design?
- What is new, what is different, what is innovative which are the difficulties this new pedagogy has to deal with?
Teaching architectural design
Architectural education has always been dominated by the teaching of architectural design. It has always been guided by the views on architecture this teaching reflects, has always been conducted by the values and principles e me rging through its imple me nted pedagogy, has always been implicitly ruled or explicitly regulated or even controlled by its educational objectives, teaching strategies, me thods and priorities.
The organization and the development of an architectural design course is, for its leader, a real project. It has its own process (the teaching method), its own tools (the selected design themes, assignments, and all other educational means), its own concept (the educational aims and strategy), its own objectives (the expected learning outcomes), its own connotative meaning (the driving value system), its own conception about architecture and about the architect. It is structured upon its own internal architecture (the implemented pedagogy), which represents, reflects and sometimes declares or even glorifies its attachment to a specific framework of thinking, understanding and doing architecture, in other words to a specific architectural paradigm.
As atelier or as laboratory, as lab or as studio, ‘integrated' or ‘vertical' the course of architectural design is always the decisive melting pot of architectural education, the efficient catalyst of architectural knowledge, the powerful multiplier of architectural creativity, the effective developer of a framework of thinking, understanding and doing architecture. It is the dynamic ‘heterotopia' where the articulation and integration of architectural ideas take place, through experimentation, critique, confrontation, exchange, argumentation, debate or even imposition. It always appears as a promising invitation to a serious commitment, determined engagement, deliberated dreaming and passionate search for the new, the other, the innovative, the experimental.
Experimenting with architectural design
Teaching architectural design is always strongly related to experimentation. Not only experimentation with forms to be created, with tools to be exploited, with means to be implemented, with materials to be used, with ideas to be formulated, with values to be expressed, or with principles to be forwarded. It is also related, to a great extent, to experimentation with forms of teaching, with the educational tools and means to be exploited, with the teaching strategies to be implemented, with the learning outcomes to be achieved, with the values to be appropriated by the students.
Sometimes this form of experimentation is aiming at the further development of an already implemented pedagogy in the framework of a particular approach to architecture and architectural design. In this case the experimentation is aiming at better teaching results that is to say at a further development of the way the contents and forms of expression of this approach are converted into teaching practices.
The character of experimentation is not the same when we, as architects and teachers, are experiencing new understandings of architecture and we are considering other than the already established values, principles and priorities in creating architectural forms. In cases of shifting paradigms, experimenting with architectural design in a school of architecture has a double dimension since it develops on two parallel levels: the one of creating innovative architectural forms and the other of implementing innovative forms of teaching students on how to create such forms.
Advances in Technology
The mental and operational landscape of our life is already dominated by the extended applications of digital technology. All the activities, in our every day experience, are profoundly influenced by this new condition which rapidly transforms our vision of things and of the world. Nowadays, the applications of digital technology are not only powerful devices constituting the main tool for designing, modeling and manufacturing architectural forms. As tools are also a powerful, efficient and meaningful medium for thinking about the field domain of their application, about the objects resulting from their use, about the subjects who choose to employ and who legitimize them as expressive signs manifesting a certain way of (re)conceiving, (re) thinking thinking, contemplating and experimenting with contemplating architecture.
In this revolutionary environment of information society architecture, as a cultural statement and manifestation of our life in space, seeks its redefinition and its reinvention as a new framework of values and principles, of knowledge, skills and competences, of tools and means, of priorities and preferences, as a new paradigm. New terms, notions and concepts emerge in the architectural vocabulary: liquid, hybrid, hyper, virtual, trans, morphogenetic, animation, seamless, skin, interactivity, parametric, nodes, machinic, morphing, self generating, build-ability, and so on. The consequence is that new values, new aesthetic principles and new orientations forms of experimentation are quickly rapidly grounded in the consciousness of the architects and have strong a impact on architectural education and on the teaching process.
Changes in Pedagogy
The impact of this new condition on architectural education and more specifically on architectural design education is tremendous. The traditional architectural design studio is progressively transformed into a n experimentation lab in most of the cases dominated by the computer lab or even dispersed into distant and virtual work places from the students' homes. The tutorials are mainly developed on the basis of PP presentations and not any more on the drawing board. The knowledge of a significant number of software is in our days a necessary condition, which has already marginalized the traditional courses on drawing and representation techniques. CDs with multimedia paperless presentations tend to replace the drawn deliverables of architectural design modules.
The forms of collaboration in the design studio between students as well as between teachers and students have radically changed. The team work becomes increasingly difficult due to the dispersed location of persons, due to the continuous individualization of the subjects and due to the continuous personalization of computers as main design tools or instruments . The I i nternet is very often used as a direct communication substitute extending while destabilizing the contact hours at the school. The digital representation techniques, to a large extent, replaced the traditional models introducing highly sophisticated modeling software closely related to the manufacturing of the designed forms by the industry. New materials and new information made the experimentation in the design studio a completely new adventure for teachers and students.
As the speed of changes grows dramatically, the coexistence of many different views and aspects on architecture and more specifically about architectural design education becomes one of the main characteristics of our educational environment. Schools of architecture, in most of the cases, appear rather resistant to this ( unknown, unknown and fearful) avant-garde digital and / or experiment ing dynamism. Usually only a small number of teachers manage to reform their architectural design modules and to encourage their students to become familiar with and to appropriate this new paradigm. As the school environment does not always offer a fertile ground for the debate on teaching architectural design in our digital era the exchange, the networking and the debate with other teachers from other schools becomes a real wish, expectation and academic necessity.
Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in Pedagogy
Animated by this necessity, the workshop has the following main objectives:
- To bring together teachers who have incorporated in their architectural and urban design teaching
practices the support of digital design techniques and the new conceptions about form those techniques
entail.
- To establish a dialogue and exchange of ideas and experiences among them.
- To map the architectural design modules which are conceived, structured and developed by employing
innovative digital design techniques of generating and manufacturing architectural forms.
- To outline the educational objectives of those modules, the teaching strategies they follow and the
learning outcomes they expect to achieve.
- To record the teaching methods they use in order to arrive at their expected objectives.
- To present the design themes selected for the teaching process, the different assignments introduced
by the teachers, the necessary technical infrastructure used by the students.
- To investigate the criteria for the evaluation of the students' performance and the competences achieved
by the educational process.
The event is organised by the Socrates Thematic Network ENHSA (European Network of Heads of Schools of Architecture), the thematic network of the EAAE (European Association for Architectural Education).
For any further queries please do not hesitate to contact us on enhsa-net@arch.auth.gr .
