Bridging the gap between research and schematic design phases in teaching architectural graduation projects

Abstract

The architectural design studio course is generally considered the backbone of any architectural curriculum and follows a particular method of problem solving, which makes it a distinctive course. Graduation projects in most of the architectural programs are divided into two main phases, namely, research and project phases. Students generate many findings from the research phase that are considered challenges. The research problem emerges when students finish writing the research thesis, and most face difficulty in translating the collected data into actions to engage the initial idea of the project. Therefore, this study aims to highlight the transitional stage between the research and schematic design phases, which is described in this study as the “predesign bridging phase.” The goal is to propose a practical strategy for bridging the gap between the research and schematic design phases to facilitate derivation of the design concept from different output variables to enable the creation of a suitable architectural morphological language. The study adopts two research methods. One is proposing a new pedagogical framework and applying it to the architectural graduation design studio at Prince Sultan University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The other is conducting a survey among students to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed framework in helping them bridge the gap between the research and schematic design phases. Descriptive and inferential statistics analysis methods are used to analyze the research data and study the correlation between the reflection of the new applied framework in the predesign bridging phase and the students' satisfaction toward the final projects’ product and performance in the final critique. This study ends with a conclusion on how the applied teaching strategies facilitate the project starting point and raises the importance of proposing and testing new assessment strategies that are suitable for each phase in the graduation design studio.