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Ordinary Unfamiliarity: Foundation Pedagogy Through The Critique Of The Everyday, Kevin R. Klinger, Marc Swackhamer

Proceedings of the 18th National Conference on the Beginning Design Student

In our new foundation program, we proceed from two principles of instruction: first, we direct the focus of work away from conventional architectural topics and use analogy to awaken native critical insight; second, we postpone traditional "design" activity by strictly emphasizing observation skills and critical analysis. We delay design activity until the first quarter of the second year, in preparation for which we organize firstyear \tudio workshops around short iterative exercises that capitalize on the students' familiarity with the everyday world. We then structure these problems to render the everyday world in unfamiliar terms. This oscillation between the ordinary and …