Thirteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

The current millennial students have a detachment problem, social and personal, because of the excessive influence of digital technology. Excessive dependence on instrumentation may also create the loss of intuitive connection between mind and body. The study investigates the personal experientiality as an integral part of teaching strategy on the abstract visual concept of parti in architectural design education. The paper attempts to apply multiple approaches of theoretical perspectives from the current discoveries in neuroscience on the cognitive learning functions of the brain to the recent thoughts in philosophy on the importance of embodiment and empathy. Using the selected relevant neuroscience principle; the research explores the connection between brain mechanisms especially on the visual cognition process to gain a better understanding of the Gestalt visual principles. Architectural parti is a conceptual visual diagram, as derived from the Beaux Arts tradition, and has been used extensively as a fundamental learning methodology in design education. An additional layer of personal experientiality, based on the recent trend in phenomenology and contemporary education philosophy, is part of an attempt to find the underlying integration between the rationality of cognitive mind and intuitiveness of experience. Subsequently, learning visual aspects of the concept of parti in formal visual composition could transcend into a higher realm of embodied parti. In this ideal realm, the students will able eventually able to create a congruence spatial composition as inspired by the visual concept of the parti with the imagined living experientially of the potential users.