Educational Pathways (Asynchronous Session)
Co-creating a Climate Action Park at Lakehead University
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lindsay Paige Galway
Lakehead University is located in the city of Thunder Bay, on the north shore of Lake Superior, which holds approximately ten percent of the world’s freshwater. With 116 hectares of land and 38 buildings, the campus is responsible for a sizeable volume of stormwater impact on the local watershed. The University also aims to become a climate action leader in the community of Thunder Bay and beyond. Working with community partners, Lakehead University is co-creating a Climate Action Park on campus. Throughout the summer of 2021, workshops were implemented with community partners, students, faculty, staff, and Indigenous Elders to co-create a vision to inform the purpose and design of the Park. Drawing inspiration from these workshops, the Park will be designed to demonstrate, invite, and inspire diverse forms of climate action. Located along the McIntyre River, the Park will include a bioretention site and a riparian zone to reduce the University’s stormwater load while also demonstrating climate adaptation. Interpretive signage and creative experiential learning activities will be integrated into the Park to increase awareness about climate impacts and action. Additionally, the Park will be designed as a dynamic, restorative, and welcoming space that fosters a sense of connectedness to the land and a gathering place to promote reflection on, and discussion about, climate action. This paper shares details about the project, the process used for co-creating a vision and design for the Park, and lessons learned to help inform future Climate Action Park projects.
It's All In Your Head: Comparing the Efficacy of Physical and Virtual Design Exploration Techniques
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Andrew Brody
After more than a year of remote education, virtual meetings, and embarrassing zoom moments, we have all become painfully aware of the benefits and shortcomings of teaching and working online. Communicating ideas to other people, particularly three-dimensional architectural notions, can be so much more difficult without physical boards and models, not to mention body language and direct eye contact. Because the design process can be more focused on internal communication, where ideas are considered, explored, and revised in an iterative process, the shortcomings of computer drafting become more limiting. The 2D nature of the computer interface is still quite abstracted from the paper and cardboard of the old days. It is possible to zoom and orbit an model in infinite ways, but the head and hand barely move; the body remains stationary. Using virtual- and augmented-reality visualization tools, however, could bring back some of that lost external interactivity, leading to a richer design process. To test this idea, undergraduates were given a simple design project: a bus stop on their campus. They went through the ideation process using a number of tools, including traditional hand drawing, 3D modeling, and also exploring their designs in augmented reality and virtual reality. After finalizing their designs, a survey was given to determine what aspects of each form of media students tended to find most useful in developing and realizing their ideas, leading to greater understanding of their own mental processes, and for the instructor, a more refined way of incorporating contemporary technologies.
Omnull Space: Methods and Modes of Post-architectonic, Screen-based Augmented Reality View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Dave Gottwald, Gregory Turner-Rahman
For some time we’ve been living in a world of intertwined digital media, and this world of screens has only been drawn into sharper focus during the recent global coronavirus pandemic. From work meetings to family get-togethers or even doctor visits, everything is a video call away, and these calls have become more sophisticated. Technologies such as Zoom have whetted our appetites for spatio-oriented image displays. People curate their appearance with virtual backgrounds, facial enhancements, and interactive elements which allow for interplay between presenter and environment. Over the past three years, a similar interplay has been enacted at human scale within the built environment in the form of a virtual film set called StageCraft. A partnership between Industrial Light and Magic and Epic Games, StageCraft combines their Unreal Engine with massive LED walls on a soundstage. This game engine—software that provides for simultaneous design iteration and inhabitation—renders photorealistic settings on these walls as background for practical set elements and the actors. As the technology becomes more affordable, StageCraft is likely to spread beyond moviemaking to smaller scale applications. What has become commonplace on Zoom will come to include the surfaces of our offices and homes. We foresee a rise in such hybrid, pseudo-virtual environments. This paper describes a digital reality model we call omnull space—a way of using responsive displays at home and work in the near future. In this we outline a clear trajectory of spatialized experiences that reveal a future of compelling augmented physical spaces.
Reset of Learning Environment Design: The School in the Post-pandemic World View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Natalia Miler Ogorkiewicz
The pandemic has questioned what seemed to be unquestionable. It has changed the ways adults and children live, work, play, and learn. An experience of remote and virtual learning from home challenges the school design in post-pandemic world. The main goal of my studies is to (re-)define material (physical) and non-material space conditions in which children feel good and learn successfully, regarding soft and hard competencies of architecture. Hard competencies of architecture are about the mass of the architecture, physical environment, functional solutions, ergonomics and means of architecture design. On the other hand, soft competencies, I define as void of architecture, symbolic meaning of particular architectural design means, given significance of space, human impact on architecture and architecture on human being. My research combines issues from different disciplines: pedagogy, architecture and sociology. It relies mainly on child-centered qualitative research methods to explore and expand their perspective using participatory techniques, drawings and in-depth interview with children. (Re-)defining material and non-material attributes of learning space extends the theoretical knowledge and design workshop of architects. It also allows teachers and parents to better understand children's perspective and thereby improve school environment with them. Results of this study can lead to a new model of school which meets current and newly arose needs - the school in the post-pandemic world.
The Influence of the Indoor Environment on the Creative Design Process: A Comparison Between Two Design Studios View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Zahrasadat Hosseini, Hebatalla Nazmy, Hayden Mc Afee
Creativity is the process of finding exquisite, innovative, and effective solutions to problems (Amabile & Gryskiewicz, 1989). The physical environmental characteristics of spaces have a significant impact on individuals’ creativity and motivation (Amabile, 1983). Few studies, however, have focused on the contribution of the physical educational environment to supporting young adults’ creativity in a university setting. This study focused on the role of the physical environment in supporting creativity in design studios. This study hypothesized that the interior spatial characteristics of design studios such as lighting, furniture, view of nature, the form of space, and display space have a significant impact on students’ creativity. A total number of 16 participants who were junior students pursuing an interior design degree were randomly recruited into two groups. Group one was assigned to an interior design studio and group two was assigned to an architecture studio. Due to significant differences in the interior features of these two studios, they were suitable candidates for the comparison of two groups of participants according to the variables. Each group performed a creativity task inspired by Guilford's Alternative Uses Task (1967) which assessed participants’ creativity in the two studios. The student's perception of the interior features of the studios such as light, view, furniture, display space, size of space, and the ceiling height was assessed with a questionnaire. Questionnaire results showed that students perceive that these interior features are substantial contributors to the creative design processes.
