Abstract

This paper examines the effects of techno-optimism on design studies and students today, as evidenced during the past fifteen years of architectural studio instruction. It is about the continuing and inexorable encroachment of digital design media into the architectural design studio and the effect this has on young minds. The introduction of the current, digital paradigm is covered in the introduction along with the reasons behind this shift. As a result, students have a difficult time connecting their architectural representations to the everyday, embodied inhabitation of spaces. A brief presentation of teaching practices and courses that in the past promoted an embodied understanding of the environment follows. Students understood space, function, and inhabitation a lot less after the abandonment of these courses. In architecture, for instance, students cannot describe in drawing what they encounter in the world, nor can they integrate their own experiences in their design decisions. Today, we cannot insist on returning to previous modes of instruction, but we can make the effort to invent ways within the prevalent media to inspire and to sensitize students to an anthropocentric view of architecture. The paper concludes with a series of examples regarding the re-introduction of critical seeing, thinking and representing with prompts that allow for the use of digital media as tools and as extensions of human cognition and not as goals in and of themselves.

Presenters

Harris Dimitropoulos
Associate Professor, School of Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology, College of Design, School of Architecture, Georgia, United States

Details

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Theme

Past and Present in the Humanistic Education

KEYWORDS

ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION, EMBODIMENT, DIGITAL DESIGN, REPRESENTATION, COGNITION

Digital Media

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