Architectural Studio Research Articles

A design workflow for integrating performance into architectural education

Sustainable design for carbon-neutral buildings requires a thorough understanding of environmental building performance. The urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions radically creates additional demands for architectural education and practice. These demands challenge conventional educational building design and architecture programs. A new pedagogical approach to the architectural studio is presented that specifically responds to this challenge. A highly structured 10-stage workflow for architectural design equips students with knowledge, tools, and processes to integrate and predict dynamic performances of light, sun, heat, and air movement in their design decisions. This pedagogical approach has been used in ARCH 601, a required sustainable design studio in the second year of the professional Master of Architecture program at Iowa State University, US. A specific emphasis is placed on the iterative feedback between daylighting, natural ventilation, and the building’s enclosure. In an effort to understand the impact of this pedagogical approach on the career of former students, a survey was sent to the graduates of the past five years. A majority reported the positive learning outcomes and importance to their current career. Practice relevance The architectural profession is moving toward the creation of carbon-neutral buildings. A new approach to architectural education is shown to equip architecture students to meet this challenge. An architectural studio approach allows students to integrate and predict the dynamic performances of light, sun, heat, and air movement, based on using an innovative, highly structured workflow method. An alumni survey provides insights into the relevance and impact of this approach on their career. Learning these skills made architectural students better equipped to address sustainable design in their career. The workflow can be easily adopted by other architectural courses and practices. This can help to accelerate the education of architectural students towards carbon neutrality.

A studio experience for new building design in Sivas Höllüklük Street

The aim of the study is to develop new design insights with regard to a new building in the historical environment of Sivas in Central Turkey. For this purpose, traditional houses located on a main road known as Hollukluk Street in Sivas have been chosen as the study area and a method focusing on the concept of reference is applied within a studio setting. Consequently, design insights have been developed by analysing the study area on mass organisation, spatial organisation, frontal texture, tectonic fiction and compactness relations in terms of street texture. In this practice, it has been observed that the students tend to refer to the entrance axis as a design guide, use the horizontal and vertical lines of the mass and refer to the new design with reference to the tectonic components. The outputs of the studio are formed in terms of four design insights which are shared in the findings section. As a result, design information produced from context-defined practice was used as the constituent elements of the formal structure in the new building, and these also contributed to the improvement of the street silhouette within the existing built environment. Keywords: Architectural studio, design, historical environment of Sivas, new building.

An Ethnographic Case Study of Affordances in an Architecture Design Studio

Background/Context Studio-based courses—the primary approach in design education— have been viewed as effective environments for learning. This study uses an ecological approach to explore how the studio environment creates opportunities for social interaction through immersive studies of studio learning. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study We engaged in an ethnographic case study of a beginning architecture design course aimed at exploring the ways the learning environment of the studio affords social interaction, and how these interactions shape students’ understandings and behaviors as they learn. Particular attention was paid to the physical, structural, and instructional affordances that contribute to learning in the studio environment. Setting Over the course of one semester, we observed nine students and their instructor in Architecture Design 1 (AD 1), a first-year architecture studio at a large, public research institution. Population/Participants/Subjects The student participants ranged in age from 18 to 25, four of the participants identified as students of color, two identified as international students, three identified as female, and six, male. The instructor, who identifies as female, had taught AD 1 at the university for eight years prior to the study and holds a master's degree in architecture. Research Design We engaged in an ethnographic case study using an ecological approach, focused on the relationship between humans and their environment. We view learning and knowledge as individually constructed by the learner in a socially situated, public context; as such, a case study design using ethnographic methods of data collection was employed. Data Collection and Analysis Our data sources included observations of daily studio activities, participant interviews, researcher reflections on studio visits, and course artifacts such as the course syllabus and assignment handouts. We analyzed data using a two-cycle method of coding and analysis focusing on identifying patterns or themes in the data. Findings/Results We found several physical, structural, and instructional affordances that contribute to learning. The physical affordances of the studio environment of AD 1 included the open layout, public/private workspaces, and co-working in proximity to others. The structural affordances were long blocks of unscheduled work time, the project brief, and the sequencing of the projects, tasks, and deadlines. The instructional affordances included formal and informal critique, “mini-lectures,” and demonstrations. Conclusions/Recommendations Although focused within a design discipline, our findings have broader applicability to collegiate academic environments that support student learning. Recommendations include creating fluidity in the classroom space, centralizing feedback, demonstrating emerging understandings visually, and constraining constructivist learning environments.

Exploring the Role of Negative Relationships in Social Networks on Individuals’ Innovative Behavior

Much of the work in social network perspective of individuals’ innovative behavior has been conducted by examining the role of positive interpersonal relationships such as work-related communication, friendship, advice giving or knowledge sharing. However, as the concept of asymmetry suggests, negative relationships at work may impose social liabilities that often exceed the benefits that accrue to individuals from their engagement in positive relationships. In this study, we apply both quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the role of direct and indirect negative relationships on individuals’ innovative behavior. The results of our empirical study on 62 employees (response rate was 100%) in an Italian architectural studio demonstrate that both direct and indirect negative relationships affect individuals’ innovative behavior at workplace. Our study furnishes important insights for the social network perspective and specifically, we make specific contributions to the structural holes theory and structural balance theory.

From Sketch to Architectural Production/Design Process: A Studio Experience

The purpose of this text is to determine how the architectural sketches produced by the educator-architect can be transformed by architecture students into an architectural composition and how coherent relationships are established in achieving a holistic outcome product. The method, which is a part of the architectural studio education, starts with the sketches made by the educator-architect instantly for each student separately. The expectation in the design process is a holistic outcome product development that defines a coherent network of relationships from the initial idea sketch. As a result, two groups of orientations were identified as “the ones interpreting the sketch with contextual-formal elements” and “those who created separate situations from the linear character of the sketch” but despite similar orientations, it was found that similar analogy tools were used in the meaning-perception-comprehension phase of the idea sketch. Through this study, the group of students who previously used the sketch process in their design studios with their own practices or experimented with the transition to the third dimension with models by using the sketch process, handled the linear-contextual-formal pattern of the sketch produced by the educator-architect and discovered different orientations of architectural production at this point.

The Territory of the Grand Tetouan as Linear City: Between Description and Project

This article, based upon pedagogical experimentation in development in a master-level architecture studio at the ULB School of Architecture (Brussels), focuses on the concept of a linear city in a metropolitan context. This concept is proposed by the Grand Tetouan (North Morocco) spatial development scheme as a framework to think about the future of this territory. The interest of the concept lies in its being both a descriptive and project-oriented tool, which allows working with students on the intricate relationship between these two moments of urban design. The coastal region has been the subject of a proposal for a “linear garden city” by a follower of Soria y Mata, Hilarión González del Castillo (1929), a project that left traces on the “palimpsest” (Corboz, 1983/2001) of the actual territory. The idea of the linear city, which has been, throughout the 20th century, a recurrent thematic in urban planning theory and practice dealing with the issue of industrial development of the modern city can be, in the specific case of the Grand Tetouan region, re-examined through the lens of tourism as an industry. The exploration is based on an analytical approach by the use of the notion of urban material (Boeri, Lanzani, & Marini, 1993; Viganò, 1999), an approach that creates the conditions of understanding (describing/designing) the existing territory through the mapping of its physical elements, a description that can then be used to develop an analysis of the forms of production of these elements and the complexity of their uses: how the city is, formally and socially, built (Secchi, 1989).

What Works in the Architecture Studio? Five Strategies for Optimising Student Learning

AbstractGood teaching requires pedagogical dynamism: a willingness to vary one’s teaching approach relative to the context (and cohort) at hand, and to any new challenges that may arise from that context. This requires that teachers obtain a broad knowledge of teaching strategies and tactics. Given the demands of contemporary higher education, finding the time to obtain this knowledge can pose a challenge to full‐time academics. This is exacerbated in the case of part‐time and practitioner‐teachers who often work in varying degrees of isolation from the communities of learning to which they contribute. An analysis of the teaching practices of eight high‐performing practitioner‐teachers, alongside data obtained from 74 students, within a master’s‐level architectural course at a large Australian university, has been used to delineate five strategies for optimising student learning within the architecture studio. These include: setting up a challenge that clearly articulates the role of the student within it; early and frequent assessment tasks to assist students in rapid skill development and reflective practice; communicating clear expectations around performance; facilitating a strong peer culture; and enhancing motivation via high expectations. This article details the tactics by which these strategies can be achieved. This article delivers directly applicable advice for architectural educators, but it also provides practical insight into the specifics of architectural teaching that may assist educators working in other disciplines.

Designing an archaeology centre for students

This paper is about the interdisciplinary approach to the interior architecture studio education. The second year Interior Architecture and Environmental Design at the Faculty of Fine Arts and Design at the Izmir University of Economics, Izmir, Turkey, was given the task of designing a modular living unit for archaeology students. The brief expected the design of a living unit for students out of two- and three-dimensional modules. There were three aims of the project: first, the advantages of the process being interdisciplinary and collaborative working closely with the archaeology centre; second, the role of modularity introduced at the interior scale; and third, the structure of the semester enabling an understanding of the interior architecture process, delivered at the second year level. In the paper, the means by which the aims are fulfilled will be discussed with examples from students’ projects, and furthermore, directions for research are discussed with an emphasis on design thinking.
 Keywords: Interior architecture education, design education, design process, design thinking, archaeology.

Interior Design Features of Architectural Studios in Private Universities in Ogun State, Nigeria: Implication for Students Academic Performance

Interior design is on the one hand a multi-faceted profession in which creative and technical solutions are applied within a structure to achieve a built environment or improve a learning space. An architectural design studio on the other hand is a classroom space in the undergraduate or graduate professional class where students receive hands-on instructions on architectural design. However, the interior design features of architectural design studios and the implication of these for students’ academic performance has not been clearly articulated in the research literature. Therefore, the aim of this research was to investigate the interior design elements of architectural design studios and its implication for students’ academic performance. This is with a view to suggesting how the interior spaces of architectural design studios can be man manipulated to enhance students’ academic performance. To achieve this goal, three private Universities in South West Nigeria were studied using the data collected from 200 undergraduate and post graduate students. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and the results revealed that most of the students were satisfied with the interior design of their architectural studio spaces. It was further observed that students were not aware of the conduciveness and wellness of their studios, hence more work needs to be done on the general interior design to ascertain the wellness of the studios. The design studio being a sole environment where both theoretical and practical learning and work is carried out should be made comfortable for the users of the space. There is a fact that people work better in places that they feel comfortable in. Personal space has a direct impact on learning, and designers must take this into consideration when designing Architectural design studios.

Environmental Psychology Perspectives in Design of Architectural Design Studio at Ahmednagar District Region

An Architectural design studio is the most utilised space in architectural education, which functions learning as well as hands-on experience of architectural education subjects. It not only has the enormous potential of creating a playful and lively learning environment but also to energise the students. Its architectural design can be explored from the environmental psychology perspective. This research paper is an attempt to analyse and study the environmental psychology perspectives in architectural design of architectural design studio in the Ahmednagar district region. The effects of environmental stressors like temperature, humidity, ventilation, light, colour and noise on students studying in an architectural design studio are analysed. The methodology used in this paper is the quantitative survey research method. A case study through the structured questionnaire surveys of an architectural design studio in the Ahmednagar district region conducted to study the differences between desired and actual interior environmental conditions of the design studio. Data based on environmental psychology perspectives are analysed, and the outcome of this study is expected to be used as recommendations for new architectural studio design proposals in the Ahmednagar district region.

Surmounting of Visual Chaos in Urban Space

The importance of this article content is called forth by the fast public space changes that have been taking place in cities of Russia during last decades. To a certain extent, these changes are associated with new information media and means. Nowadays, the visual aids that dominate the public space are advertisements. The aim of advertising is to promote products and services informing the target audience. Forms and ways of achieving it are defined by the customer and the advertising agency. An avalanche of advertising information is trying to occupy a larger space and is doing it more and more actively and sophisticatedly. The visual chaos that resulted from aggressive advertising forms, creates a large number of problems for the residents; sometimes the situation does not seem safe enough. The objective of the given article is to analyze a complex of problems related to existing forms, effectiveness, and art quality of advertisements in the context of the urban environment. The article deals with historical experience of advertising techniques, forms and methods for public space advertising and visual object humanization offered by the world designer community. Most interesting methods successfully integrated in the contemporary urban environment for solving the above mentioned problems are given as well. As a result, new projects can be drawn up by young designers, student architecture studios, and decorative artist alliances. Paradoxical ideas, new forms of designing, an art of large-scale element arrangement, and an ability to find basic factors of interaction of space and form will help to surmount visual chaos, to reduce the urban context tension, and to form an aesthetically attractive visual informative imagery of the environment of Russia’s cities. This article is meant to be a basis of the content that allows to get quickly acquainted with actual concepts and methods for solving problems of advertisement integration in the visual structure of contemporary cities by means of actual forms of visualization, gaming technologies, and new forms of actual art.

Actual Art. Ideas and Technologies in an Urban Context

Russia’s public interest is focused on modernization problems. To make Russia’s towns and cities look up-to-date must be the main task of this process. Actual art can become an effective way to aestheticism the urban area. The objective of the given article is to define and specify mechanisms of new cultural actions aimed at a creation of a new experimental phenomenon – an urban area as an integral exhibit space. At present, there are a great many methods for changing the situation in the cultural context of modern towns and cities. Nowadays, actual forms of art can become a most efficient tool of social co-operation. Informational, didactic, aesthetic, and ideological functions of art implemented in large-scale town art projects and art objects can significantly influence town residents’ way of thinking, help to unite the local community, form new kinds of leisure activities, and encourage creative activities of people of all ages. Involving young designer teams, student architectural studios, and decorative artist alliances can be regarded as a method for solving the above mentioned problems. In this case, the major idea is to make joint team efforts in order to create innovation residential areas. The results can be expressed in design concepts directed towards integrating contemporary art into the context of the urban environment. This article is meant to be a basis of the content that will allow to get quickly acquainted with actual concepts and methods for solving problems of forming cultural “landscape” and contemporary urban area ambience. Provided, active involving creative youth in co-operation process for both, creation of art objects and discussion of them, is to be a necessary condition. Cognitive methods for mastering actual art techniques, new visualization forms, and gaming and carnival scripts of art projects presentations are intended to become an efficient mechanism for creating a basically new appearance of towns and cities.

Action at a Distance: Client Relations as a Conduit for External Institutional Influence

Prior empirical research on institutional change shows that the actions of institutional actors in one locale can impact organizational behavior in another. In this paper, we explore how extrajurisdictional regulative and normative pressures faced by a set of organizations affect the strategic decision making of their suppliers. We utilize a novel dataset that tracks the adoption of a green building practice by a panel of 226 architecture studios in Australia from 2008–2015. In line with our theoretical predictions, firms respond to regulation, social norms and competitive pressures from cities where they do not operate but where their prospective clients do. We find that a focal studio’s position in the market for the new practice shapes its response to extrajurisdictional regulation but not its response to extra-jurisdictional norms. The study advances our understanding of how network mechanisms shape firms’ conceptions of the institutional field that governs exchange. We discuss resultant effects on organizational behavior which may be crucial to market formation.

A framework for interactive human–robot design exploration

This study seeks to identify key aspects for increased integration of interactive robotics within the creative design process. Through its character as foundational research, the study aims to contribute to the advancement of new explorative design methods to support architects in their exploration of fabrication and assembly of an integrated performance-driven architecture. The article describes and investigates a proposed design framework for supporting an interactive human–robot design process. The proposed framework is examined through a 3-week architectural studio, with university master students exploring the design of a brick construction with the support of an interactive robotic platform. Evaluation of the proposed framework was done by triangulation of the authors’ qualitative user observations, quantitative logging of the students’ individual design processes, and through questionnaires completed after finishing the studies. The result suggests that interactive human–robot fabrication is a relevant mode of design with positive effect on the process of creative design exploration.

Portable architecture studio recording video as solution for space limitation

Current development of learning technology requires facilities for video recording. These facilities certainly take space and a great cost. One architecture concept that can be used as a solution to these problems is Portable Architecture. Portable Architecture is expected to be a solution in land use efficiency to support sustainable architecture. Portable Architecture is an architectural object that can move or be moved and can adapt to changes in the environment. Portable Architecture in a video recording studio must be able to anticipate any changes in the space around its environment. Portable video recording studio can be reused in different places. Then Portable video recording studio devices must be able to reduce sound well, easily disassembled, having a good ventilation system, fit one person, and having video recording devices (backdrop, lighting, tripods, cameras, audio).

Investigation of illuminance-based metrics in predicting occupants’ visual comfort (case study: Architecture design studios)

Daylight and glare metrics are useful to quantify visual performance, minimize visual discomfort, and promote energy savings.This study evaluates the performance and robustness of some dynamic and static daylight and glare metrics by field studies in twenty architectural studios, daylit by different strategies (i.e., skylight, clerestory, side-lit windows). Experimental datasets (measurements and questionnaire surveys) were collected from three universities during different months. The daylight and glare metrics were also calculated by simulation and compared to occupants’ responses and onsite measurement. Based on the results, the metrics are rated based on their consistency with occupants’ perception. Moreover, the acceptable thresholds of metrics, recommended by standards and experts, are investigated. Results show that occupants’ perceptions are correlated to Point-in-Time-Illuminance (EP), Spatial Daylight Autonomy (sDA), and Useful Daylight Illuminance (UDI) respectively, while no significant correlation has been observed between grid-based glare metrics and users’ responses. According to the results, among annual metrics, UDI300-3000/50% ≥ 75% and Annual Sunlight Exposure (ASE1000, 250h ≤ 10%) have better performance in predicting daylight availability and visual discomfort. Consequently, two simple indices (EDSDaylight and ESDGlare) are presented to predict daylight satisfaction and visual discomfort based on architectural parameters to be used in the early design stage.

Historic Preservation Design: Using Ethnographic-based Fieldwork to Introduce Theory and History in the Architecture Studio

Historic Preservation Design: Using Ethnographic-based Fieldwork to Introduce Theory and History in the Architecture Studio

Design Pedagogy: The New Architectural Studio and Its Consequences

This article argues that the typical architectural studio is both outmoded and irresponsible. It is outmoded because it typically is organized around a nineteenth-century model of design virtuosity, and it is irresponsible because it ignores pressing and current spatial justice problems. It also takes to task the aura of the academic setting in which the formally motivated studio reigns supreme. In lieu of this model of architectural education, the article argues for an education that empowers graduates to tackle the major problems that society currently faces: housing, climate, income inequality/unemployment and health. To do this, it acknowledges but suggests overthrowing the many institutional hurdles keeping architectural education attached to the status quo.

Pelagic Alphabet: Islands as a Model of the Ocean

AbstractLCLA office's Pelagic Alphabet – an island microcosm of strange forms and imagined geographies – seeks to use the unique status and special place of the ‘island’ in human culture. Described here by the architecture and landscape studio's partners Luis Callejas and Charlotte Hansson, it is a place of blended imagination, topological exaggeration, boundary and territorial dispute.

A THEMATIC REVIEW ON STUDENT-CENTRED LEARNING IN THE STUDIO EDUCATION

Student’s centred learning (SCL) has become a popular approach in today’s higher learning education. It involves a collaborative synergy where teachers see the benefits to students, regarding increased enthusiasm, participation, and better preparation in the class project. Despite its popularity, there is no review paper discussing the type of SCL that has been implemented in the design studio teaching. This review was motivated by the belief that design studio in an immense pedagogy that needs to innovate the way it is taught in the classroom. Therefore, the goal of this systematic review is to synthesize literature from 2010 to 2019 on the SCL approach practices in the design studio using ATLAS.ti 8. A keyword search, followed by a filter using inclusion criteria from SCOPUS, Science Direct and Mendeley databases, identified 42 peer-reviewed journal articles. However, after the inclusion and exclusion process, only 23 articles were used as the final articles to be reviewed. A thematic review of these 23 articles identified 17 initial codes characterizing SCL in the design studio, grouped in 5 clusters: cooperative learning, inquiry-based learning, project-based learning, problem-based learning and technology-based learning. The results benefit the future study on SCL for architectural studio and can be a guideline for design studio educators in the 21st-century studio teaching.