Pedagogy and Practice
Tendering a Tactile Tectonic - Discovering and Deploying Architecture’s DNA
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session John Reynolds
In a current academic architectural design culture often characterized by parametricism, cybernetics, and online reality, architectural design’s visceral and haptic dimensions have assumed an inferior position in architectural design ideation and process. The design process pursued in many undergraduate architectural programs has assumed an occularcentric modality. Rather than advance a nostalgic, anti-digitally mediated position, the design practices described here deploy haptic means to tender a design process that advances a tactile tectonic grounded in the DNA or patterns of human experience and nature. Thus, design mediates the rupture between the knowledge of matter and the knowledge of form, to achieve a cooperation of instinct (encounter with matter through making) and intelligence (abstraction separate from making) through the lens of what Alvaro Malo would call Homo faber, “a kind of ontological centaur, half immersed in nature and half transcending it.” The origins of this tactile tectonic approach to design can be found in the work of educational theorists Friedrich Froebel, Johann Pestalozzi, and the Psychologist John Dewey’s writings on aesthetic experience. Captivated in the simultaneity of their individual and collective responses to the transformed Froebel-based design pedagogy, students discover that the patterns or design DNA sourced from human experience and nature can inform their future design speculation, decision making, and project outcomes. Transcending Architecture as Optic, the student as a new form of Homo-faber whose “corporeal imagination” advances a “supernature” interposed between human beings and nature aimed that “naturalizes” humankind and “humanizes” nature while revealing the poetics of its Making.
An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of International Design Field Trips on Students’ Academic Development in Saudi Arabia View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Renad Al Sekait
The study presents an evaluation of the effectiveness of an international design field trip on students’ academic development through the analysis of focus groups, observations, and surveys.This research adopted an action research approach to explore one interior design program in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The purpose of this study was to help the researcher understand the perceived effects of field trips on female students’ academic development in the interior design field. This study addressed the following research questions: How informed are the students about furniture, lighting, and textile design? Which topics in the exhibition are related to courses in the interior design program? How did the field trip experience effect students’ academic development? This action research study was completed in Spring 2018 with ten freshman and sophomore interior design students; and two faculty members that were interviewed. The action taken during the study was offering an international field trip to INDEX exhibition in Dubai, UAE. where students got the chance to meet international designers, and attend different interior design workshops. Results showed a significant increase in student knowledge, academic development, and professionalism. Eighty percent of students who participated in the study mentioned that this was their first academic field trip and they have not heard of the exhibition prior to this trip. In conclusion, field trip programs are effective in meeting learning outcomes through engagement, and student involvement in the field, which is essential for academic development as mentioned by faculty members who participated in this study.
An Avant-garde Pedagogical Approach to Concept Development in Freshman Design Studio: From Exploration to Studio Application View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session May A. Malek Ali
Design conception development plays an important role in the development of successful design projects. However, there is a lack of emphasis on ways for educators to creatively encourage students to develop ideas. As interior design educators we need to expose students to multiple means and methods of design exploration and design thinking. This study explores and tests digital fabrication design as a means of ideation and prototype and provides insights on methods and procedures to conduct in a freshman studio. Examples of shared practices undertaken in this studio class include conceptual processes that exploit at the additive and subtractive manufacturing capabilities using computing-aided design methods and digital fabrication as an iterative tool for the development of innovative, adventurous, and responsive design concepts. The project outcomes provide the qualitative basis for analysis and evaluation of the method grounded by a juried comparison of aesthetic language to those of prior freshman studios whereby outcomes were based solely on an aesthetic experience of sketching and drawing. This paper illustrates the exploration of a new inquiry-based stance for the development of conceptual thinking in a freshman interior design studio. It include examples of concept development exercises with a strong emphasis on interpretation, abstraction, and iteration using methods of the digital avant-garde.
Knotting as a Spatial Practice: The Role of Crafts in the Primacy of Interiors
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tijen Roshko
Digital technologies allow unprecedented levels of complexity in tooling and production and, as a consequence, the creation of nonstandard products and highly crafted surfaces is becoming increasingly routine. The use of digital technologies is becoming more prevalent in the teaching of design and is rapidly replacing active making and traditional crafts and techniques. In order to strike a proper balance between these extremes, a graduate level design-built studio was created to combine the traditional crafts of knotting and weaving with digital technologies in the production of a Birdwatching Hideout along the LaSalle River in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Under the direction of a local artist, traditional knotting and weaving skills were developed and applied in the studio to the architectonics of the Hideout. In parallel, parametric modelling, coupled with traditional crafting skills, was used to determine the form of the structure. The resultant structure, entitled “Murmurate”, extends, facilitates and consolidates bodies in natural, cultural, and manmade environments. Active making and crafts have a prominent place in student learning and, more importantly, they work to bridge design theory and praxis. This paper looks at the effectiveness of the methodology of space making by utilizing a mixture of traditional and digital technologies, discusses the spatiality of the outcome as a hybrid interiority which exists at the threshold condition of interiors and nature and argues that the reciprocity between the active making, materiality, and interiors plays a critical role in the development of the notion of the primacy of interiors in the built environment.
