Showing papers on "Design studio published in 2012"

Pattern in(formation)

Abstract: Mesne Design Studio is an architectural and urban design practice linking diverse disciplines, researchers, institutions and places. Our studio navigates the nexus of architecture, performing arts, engineering and craft-based as well as computer-aided fabrication technologies, in order to create novel design solutions that address contemporary social and cultural agendas. Our work often challenges the aesthetics, both formal and conceptual, of what is regarded to be a standard in architectural design and practice.

Designing for the Situated and Public Visualization of Urban Data

Abstract: This paper investigates the concept of urban visualization, the visual representation of an urban environment through its intrinsic or related data, where its display is also situated within that physical environment. It describes how the principles behind public and urban displays can be combined with those of social visualization and persuasive computing in order to create discursive as well as pictorial representations that provide a better and potentially actionable understanding of urban issues to its inhabitants. We introduce the role of several related research fields, and analyze a set of representative case studies, taken from current best practice, academic research studies, and an experimental design studio course to highlight the typical issues involved in conceptualizing and implementing an urban visualization. Lastly, the paper proposes a set of design constraints that typically characterize an urban visualization, in order to guide the future design and evaluation of useful applications wit...

The "Right Kind of Telling": Knowledge Building in the Academic Design Studio

Abstract: Studio-based instruction, as traditionally enacted in design disciplines such as architecture, product design, graphic design, and the like, consists of dedicated desk space for each student, extended time blocks allocated to studio classes, and classroom interactions characterized by independent and group work on design problems supplemented by frequent public and individual critiques. Although the surface features and pedagogy of the studio have been well-documented, relatively little attention has been paid to student and teacher participation structures through which design knowledge is co-produced among instructors and students within the studio. The purpose of this study was to investigate the nature of faculty–student interactions through which students learn to think and act as designers. To that end, we have collected and analyzed ethnographic data from five studio classrooms across three design disciplines (architecture, industrial design, and human–computer interaction). Our findings provide insight as to the ways that dialogue—the “right kind of telling”—and particular social practices in the studio support students as they learn to solve ill-structured design problems while being simultaneously inducted into practices that reflect the professional world of their discipline. In each of the studio classrooms, the instructors were able to create an environment where students and faculty practiced reflection-in-action and listening-in as a form of intentional participation, design knowledge was conveyed through modeling and meta-discussions, and focused assignments and in-progress critiques enhanced opportunities for the individual and group processes through which design knowledge was co-constructed in these studio classrooms.

Lost in translation: Reconsidering reflective practice and design studio pedagogy

Abstract: Drawing on empirical research done in the early 1980s, Donald Schon developed the theory of ‘reflective practice’, putting forward the idea that the design studio teacher is a ‘coach’ who helps stu...

Fostering creativity in the design studio: a framework towards effective pedagogical practices

Abstract: Design is a discipline of innovation: its essence is the creation of something new and unique. An assumption has been that the inclination and ability of a person to respond in novel and useful ways is largely inherited. Present research refutes this view, and it is now believed by many that, however creativity is defined, it is a form of behaviour that can be taught. Acknowledging this point leads to the questioning of how creativity is situated in the design curriculum. If, as present research suggests, most creativity training programmes are successful in that they encourage the development of metacognitive abilities, then the study of creativity as a self-regulatory metacognitive process is timely and important to design education.

Feedback practices and signature pedagogies: what can the liberal arts learn from the design critique?

Abstract: To examine the differences between feedback practices in liberal arts courses and in design courses, we surveyed 373 students with experiences of both. Our study found that students perceived the feedback they received in design courses as more effective in advancing their learning, and that the emotional effects of feedback presented verbally and in public did not significantly interfere with their learning experience. This article aligns our findings with existing literature on feedback in order to explore how elements of the ‘signature pedagogy’ of the design studio critique might be transformed to apply to feedback practices in the liberal arts.

Rethinking HCI Education for Design: Problem-Based Learning and Virtual Worlds at an HCI Design Studio

Abstract: The practice of teaching and learning human–computer interaction (HCI) design has to develop its own approaches that balance method and technology use with reflective and situated practice. This article presents our HCI design studio course that makes a combined use of constructivist pedagogies and virtual worlds aiming to aid students critically review and reflect on the use of related methods and technologies in design and to cultivate more general skills like self-directed learning, intrinsic motivation, and critical thinking. Our HCI design studio course can be thought of as an iterative and incremental teaching and learning process that blends HCI methods, design practice, and technology between a real and a virtual design studio. The course introduces problem-based learning to the pedagogies of project-based learning and studio-based learning currently employed in most HCI design studios. The positive student responses and our reflection and experiences focusing on a number of challenges for further...

The Design Critique as a Model for Distributed Learning

Abstract: Critique is the most common aspect of studio design education. This structure and practice is how design skills are developed around the world within a design studio. This chapter examines the design critique, compares its structure and results to established educational theory, and maps the process for use in a distributed or distance environment. It begins with an examination of design and the design studio, and then focuses on the central aspect of design professions: the critique. While there are a wide range of terms used in connection with critique, various forms will be examined here to provide a diversified examination of this pedagogical methodology. Concluding with an examination of the use of critique in distance and online education, some alternatives for technology and strategy are presented. This may provide a model for distributed cognition and learning, both in formal class settings and elsewhere.

Perceptions of physical versus virtual design studio education

Abstract: While the studio environment has been promoted as an ideal educational setting for project-based disciplines associated with the art and design, few qualitative studies have been undertaken in a comprehensive way, with even fewer giving emphasis to the teachers and students and how they feel about changing their environment. This situation is problematic given the changes and challenges facing higher education, including those associated with new technologies such as online learning. In response, this paper describes a comparative study employing grounded theory to identify and describe teachers’ and students’ perceptions of the physical design studio (PDS) as well as the virtual design studio (VDS) of architectural students in an Australian university. The findings give significance to aspects of design education activities and their role in the development of integrated hybrid learning environments.

Experiential Learning and the Co-creation of Design Artifacts A Hybrid Urban Design Studio for Planners

Abstract: This article examines the experience of a hybrid design studio tailored for beginning students in urban planning. The course combined elements of architectural design studio and planning workshop to advance design literacy, spatial awareness, procedural knowledge, and phenomenological experience. Teams of students undertook staggered weekly sequences of reading, critique, and design assignments focused on physical models of study neighborhoods. Through content analysis of student work, documentary film footage, and postgraduation surveys, I examine the merits of the hybrid studio. The co-creation of a model, which was an iterative and dialogically tested design artifact, heightened experiential learning of urban design.

Website builder systems and methods with device detection to adapt rendering behavior based on device type

Abstract: Mobile website building tools which may be used to build a mobile-ready website from a mobile device includes a design studio application downloaded for executing on the mobile device. The design studio application detects a device type and enables dynamic preview rendering if the device type is a traditional computing device, and for device types that are mobile devices, batches user modifications to a website under construction until a preview or save request is made by the user.

The Impact of Social Interaction and Communications on Innovation in the Architectural Design Studio

Abstract: Design is a social phenomenon and researchers suggest that social interaction, negotiations and communication between designers are essential to initiate creativity. Within the design studio environment, a number of factors affect the healthy social interaction and design negotiations, such as the teaching style of tutors and the culture that governs a design studio’s environment. This may in turn affect the utilization of the outcome of negotiations in the design project. Design studio students from the third to fifth years at the College of Architecture, University of Dammam (UD), the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), were surveyed to find out how far the design studio’s culture and communication would impact the production of innovative design projects. The results show that frequent communication and the establishment’s shared grounds are essential to develop knowledge and positively influence the design outcome. On the other hand, the research found that negative qualities on a personal level and on that of a design studio environment would hinder a student’s creativity. However, to develop students’ design/innovative abilities, the researcher recommends that certain measures should be considered. These would include transforming the design studio into an interactive and friendly learning environment, adjusting the teaching methodology, and developing interactive communication abilities of students and tutors.

Informal Engineering Education After School: Employing the Studio Model for Motivation and Identification in STEM Domains

Abstract: Studio STEM adopts a design studio model to provide middle school youth with the opportunity to work with peers and college student facilitators after school in a relaxed, non-threatening, collaborative environment. Two informal learning educators guided overall instruction and pacing, but youth directed their own step-by-step activities by appropriating available resources based on their understanding of presented science and engineering concepts and design problems. We investigated how Studio STEM impacted youth’s motivation, beliefs, and identification with engineering, science, and computer science. We documented that the Studio STEM environment supported students’ empowerment, highlighted the usefulness of the content, allowed students to feel successful, interested students, and provided the caring needed by students to increase their identification with engineering, science, and computer science. The increases in these beliefs also led to the high effort that youth dedicated to Studio STEM, and the claims that youth would choose to take a course in these subject areas even if they were not required to do so.

Colour as Idea: The Conceptual Basis for Using Colour in Architecture and Urban Design

Abstract: In schools of architecture and urban design, particularly in the United States, colour is rarely a subject of serious inquiry in the design studio. Colour often appears in the final phase of the design process, and the reasoning for colour choices is almost never questioned. Colour is considered secondary to building form and structure, reflecting attitudes held by many design professionals since the Renaissance. Critics in architectural reviews often refer to colour decisions as ‘difficult’ to discuss rationally, representing personal views that are inconsequential. The methodology presented here is an attempt to make colour consequential as an integral part of the three phases of a design process: the conceptual phase, the schematic/form-making phase and the design development phase. When this is achieved, colour decisions become part of the generative conceptual ideas of a project, and these can influence all phases of the design process. Colour can clarify and define space, form and structure. In the design development phase, the final colour decisions are focused and specific. The role of colour in design can serve as a complement to the traditional visual elements of line, structure, form and detail. This design methodology specifies how colour is used in the three phases: colour dynamics in the conceptual phase, colour tectonics in the schematic/form-making phase and colour imagery in the design development phase. Using colour as a means for recording the experience of a pedestrian view of the city is an additional emphasis in urban design. This is accomplished with experience maps, and using colour to represent the life of the street through street activity diagrams.

Agent Provocateur - BIM In The Academic Design Studio

Abstract: Building Information Modeling challenges academia to question the fundamental roles of abstraction and simulation in design education. Architectural education and practice assume a traditional set of visual conventions at varied scales and levels of detail, that when taken in concert signifies a whole, complete idea of a building, a correspondence between design intent and interpretation, between the representation of ideas and the design of buildings. BIM viewed as provocateur to these assumptions provides potential critical analysis of how architectural design is taught. Academia must seek out new design methodologies for exploring architecture that reflect the representational shift of BIM by developing teaching methods that reprioritize ways of seeing, thinking and making. This paper describes a studio model that seeks out new active methods for exploring architecture that embrace this shift by developing processes that provoke novel ways to reconcile the traditions of abstraction and the opportunitie...

Perceptions of physical versus virtual design studio education

Abstract: While the studio environment has been promoted as an ideal educational setting for project-based disciplines associated with the art and design, few qualitative studies have been undertaken in a comprehensive way, with even fewer giving emphasis to the teachers and students and how they feel about changing their environment. This situation is problematic given the changes and challenges facing higher education, including those associated with new technologies such as online learning. In response, this paper describes a comparative study employing grounded theory to identify and describe teachers’ and students’ perceptions of the physical design studio (PDS) as well as the virtual design studio (VDS) of architectural students in an Australian university. The findings give significance to aspects of design education activities and their role in the development of integrated hybrid learning environments.

Perception, Interpretation, Impact: - An examination of the learning value of formative feedback to students through the design studio critique

Abstract: The studio critique (crit) is a firmly established and fiercely defended part of undergraduate art and design education, both here in the UK and in many other parts of the western world. It is an established and important part of a studiobased culture, where teachers and students can discuss, experiment with and develop ideas and concepts within a 'supportive environment.' This thesis examines the role and nature of the formative feedback received by students and given by teachers and sometimes student peers at the crit, and examines the crit's contribution to design students' current and future learning. The data in this study is collected through a series of individual interviews with design students and teachers, together with interviewed student focus groups and crit observations in three UK Institutions. This data is analysed with reference to current literature on formative assessment and feedback and student learning. The thesis premises that how effectively students learn in the critique and the understanding and benefit gained from the formative feedback they receive is not just reliant on the quality and focus of the formative feedback, but could also be affected by other factors such as the power position (Devas, 2004, Sara and Parnell, 2004), the stress factor (Pope, 2005) and what Kluger and DeNisi (1996) call the self or meta factor, where the quality of feedback interventions together with students' prior learning experience or understanding (Prosser & Trigwell, 1999) can impact on students' persona of themselves. This can affect the cognitive resources applied to the activities of the critique. The thesis identifies four main learning activities in the crit and suggests that cognitive learning is often impacted on by four main categories of perception of self. This, the thesis argues, can result in impaired or surface student learning.

Virtual design studio within a social network

Abstract: SUMMARY: Online interactions, multimedia, mobile computing and face-to-face learning create blended learning environments to which some Virtual Design Studios (VDS) have reacted. Social Networks (SN), as instruments for communication, have provided a potentially fruitful operative base for VDS. These technologies transfer communication, leadership, democratic interaction, teamwork, social engagement and responsibility away from the design tutors to the participants. The implementation of a Social Network VDS (SNVDS) moved the VDS beyond its conventional realm and enabled students to develop architectural design that is embedded into a community of learners and their expertise both online and offline. Problem-based learning (PBL) becomes an iterative and reflexive process facilitating deep learning. The paper discusses details of the SNVDS, its pedagogical implications to PBL, and presents how the SNVDS is successful in empowering architectural students to collaborate and communicate design proposals that integrate a variety of skills, deep learning, knowledge and construction with a rich learning experience.

Formalizing and Promoting Collaboration in 3D Virtual Environments – A Blueprint for the Creation of Group Interaction Patterns

Abstract: Despite the fact that virtual worlds and other types of multi-user 3D collaboration spaces have long been subjects of research and of application experiences, it still remains unclear how to best benefit from meeting with colleagues and peers in a virtual environment with the aim of working together. Making use of the potential of virtual embodiment, i.e. being immersed in a space as a personal avatar, allows for innovative new forms of collaboration. In this paper, we present a framework that serves as a systematic formalization of collaboration elements in virtual environments. The framework is based on the semiotic distinctions among pragmatic, semantic and syntactic perspectives. It serves as a blueprint to guide users in designing, implementing, and executing virtual collaboration patterns tailored to their needs. We present two team and two community collaboration pattern examples as a result of the application of the framework: Virtual Meeting, Virtual Design Studio, Spatial Group Configuration, and Virtual Knowledge Fair. In conclusion, we also point out future research directions for this emerging domain.

An empirical assessment of metaphor use in the design studio: analysis, reflection and restructuring of architectural design

Abstract: This investigation was concerned with the use of metaphors in architectural design education. Reasoning by means of metaphors helps to understand a design situation in terms of a remote concept normally not associated with it. By juxtaposing the known with the unknown in an unusual way, metaphors can enhance design problem solving. The goal of this study was to research empirically the use of metaphors in the design studio as perceived by students. By analyzing relations between metaphorical reasoning and design, we explored metaphor factors that have a major contribution to the design process. Results showed that ‘Restructuring design problems’ and ‘Delving into design solutions’ are the main factors of design problem solving. Furthermore, ‘Innovative design based on personal beliefs’ and ‘Analysis and reflection on design problems’ are the two factors associated with metaphor use. The latter was found to be a significant predictor with a contribution to ‘Restructuring of design problems’. Findings have implications for design education, particularly for intervention programs that seek to improve reasoning and reflection skills in the architectural design studio.

A multi‐phase systematic framework for performance appraisal of architectural design studio facilities

Abstract: Purpose – The objectives of this paper are to present the development of an indicative multi‐phase systematic framework for performance appraisal of architectural design studio facilities, and to present the findings of the post‐occupancy conditions of an architectural design studio facility as a case study to demonstrate the applicability of the developed framework.Design/methodology/approach – The authors carried out a number of activities. These include reviewing the published literature to address the significance of the architectural design studio as a resource for students majoring in architectural design, and ascertaining the significance of post‐occupancy evaluation as a performance appraisal methodology in educational facilities. On the development of the proposed framework, the authors carried out a case study in one of the studios of the Architecture Department at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The authors utilized a series of data collection methods, inc...

The role of the design studio in shaping an architectural education for sustainable development: the case of beirut arab university

Abstract: The level of interest in integrating understanding of sustainability into higher education is steadily growing. This paper investigates the principles of embedding this understanding in architectural pedagogy. It focuses on the role of the design studio as the heart of the architectural education process. It develops an approach that integrates both macro and microscale analysis to investigate the transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary aspects in architectural education. A questionnaire survey was carried out within the Faculty of Architectural Engineering at Beirut Arab University to assess the performance of five related elements: the education location, the curriculum, the external and internal characteristics of the design studio, and, finally, the evaluation process. The findings show lacking of synchronization between different interlocking disciplines and majors at university level. In addition, a clear individualism and a traditional studio culture are witnessed as main obstacles towards achieving cumulative experiences needed for sustainability understandings. Finally, the paper uses these findings to assure the need for a more comprehensive approach that draw the relation between macro- and micro-scale interventions to guarantee a better performance of the transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary aspects in architectural education.

Quality Learning Environments: Design-Studio Classroom

Abstract: Design education requires a specific setting that facilitates teaching/learning activities including lecturing, demonstrating, and practicing. The design-studio is the place of design teaching/learning activities and where students/students and students/instructor interaction occur. Proper interior design improves not only the function of such learning environment but also the confidence of its users involved in the teaching/learning process. This study finds impetus in the lack of research data relative to the design of the design-studio classroom, most crucial space in design and architectural education. The purpose of the study is to examine the design-studio classroom environment and to determine, by the perception of its users, to which level this specific environment assures users’ needs and objectives. A survey was developed and distributed to a purposive sample of design and architecture educators. Ninety four responds were collected. The results of the study support the stability of earlier findings that the physical environment has a direct impact on the satisfaction of the space users. The findings suggest that lighting, noise, glare, air quality, temperature, seats comfort and possibilities of arrangement are all essential environmental features in the achievement of an appropriate pedagogic environment. Likewise, it was found that designated workstations are important part of the teaching/learning process of design. It also emerges from this study that lighting is the most important feature.

Design studio 2.0: augmenting reflective architectural design learning

Abstract: Web 2.0 is beyond a jargon describing technological transformation: it refers to new strategies, tools and techniques that encourage and augment informed, creative and social inter(actions). When considered in an educational context, Web 2.0 provides various opportunities for enhanced integration and for improving the learning processes in information-rich collaborative disciplines such as urban planning and architectural design. The dialogue between the design students and studio teachers can be mediated in various ways by creating novel learning spaces using Web 2.0-based social software and information aggregation services; and brought to a level where the Web 2.0 environment supports, augments and enriches the reflective learning processes. We propose to call this new setting “Design Studio 2.0”. We suggest that Design Studio 2.0 can provide numerous opportunities which are not fully or easily available in a conventional design studio setting. In this context, we will introduce a web-based geographic virtual environment model (GEO-VEM) and discuss how we reconfigured and rescaled this model with the objective of supporting an international urban design studio by encouraging students to make a collaborative and location-based analysis of a project site (the Brussels-Charleroi Canal). Pursuing the discussion further, we will present our experiences and observations of this design studio including web use statistics, and the results of student attitude surveys. In conclusion, we will reflect the difficulties and challenges of using the GEO-VEM in the Design Studio in a blended learning context and develop future prospects. As a result, we will introduce a set of key criteria for the development and implementation of an effective e-learning environment as a sustainable platform for supporting the Design Studio 2.0.