Teaching/Learning Strategies Through Art: Art and Basic Design Education

Abstract

“The ultimate aim of any creative activity is building… architects, sculptors, painters, we all must become craftsmen again… no essential difference exists between the artist and the craftsman, the artist is a craftsman of heightened awareness… but the basis of craftsmanship is indispensable to all artists. It is the prime source of all creative work”, Walter Gropius, from Bauhaus Manifesto of Foundation/Basic Course, 1919.“Basic Design”, also known as “Foundation Courses” or “Enseignement Préliminaire”, formed the basis of the pedagogy of the classical schools of design and architecture. That is, the “Vhutemas”, the “Bauhaus”, the “Chicago Bauhaus”, and the “Ulm School” (Hochschule Fur Gestaltung). This teaching approach, which has undergone multiple changes since the 1920s, lost much of its importance from the 1960s onwards, and at times even disappeared from educational programs in Germany. However, the past 20 years or so have witnessed a rebirth of “Basic Design Education” through many debates and pedagogical propositions (Boucharenc, 2006). In the light of this truth, it can be said that, the basic design has the same importance at all disciplines, although it differentiates on applications in the educations, and this importance is being increased day by day. In the context of this research, especially it will be focused on the basic design education in art and architecture and this concept will be related with these disciplines. The aim of this research is to put forward the right definitions for basic design concept and to evaluate it with relating its own elements and principles, if the design steps are built with a concept, it will be able to see the differences in its properties and right thought, in producing an idea and the effect of composing a concept on defining design power.