Architecture Commons^™

Detail Of Two Cities: Utilizing Urban Analysis And Recombination As The First Project In The Fundamental Design Studio, John Maze

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

In the fundamental design studio, I have been using two disparate cities from dramatically distinct topological and topographical situations as the protagonists in an American urban love story. Students dissect the essential structure and quality of each city into discernible layers of data, and speculate about the similarities and differences between the two. Then collaboratively, students "mate" the cities together to form an offspring city that contains the "genetic" layers of data from its parents. The teams of collaborators must critically transform both cities into one, designing the insertions and overlays from one into the other at the regional scale, …

Introduction To Three Dimensional Composition / Dancing On The Digital Divide, Geoffrey Adams, Karen King

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

Students entering the 3.5Y Masters program at UNM, come to embark on a course of study in architectural design. While all student populations are composed of unique individuals from various backgrounds, this particular group is, at least in an academic discipline by definition heterogeneous, possessing skills and knowledge in diverse fields gained through previous studies and/or employment. What they share is a burgeoning interest in architecture and a willingness to explore design in a studio environment, to start down a path toward a new way of perceiving and engaging the world. This peculiar mix of naivety and sophistication coupled with …

An Architectural Exhibition: "Bench With The Film Of Its Own Making", Jonathan A. Hale

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

This paper describes a design-and-build studio project carried out at the University of Nottingham with students in their fourth year - although elements of it could also be considered appropriate for the 'Beginning Design Student'. The programme for the project is based on the premise that there is a fundamental continuity between the human body and the rest of the world. This idea has been around for some time and appears in a variety of forms: The Biblical quotation above which suggests a material connection between body and earth; the early medical theories of Hippocrates which describe the influence of …

The Consuming Process, Gregory Herman

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

The production of architecture has changed dramatically over the course of the last decade or so; this is a fact we, as educators, are all well aware of. Change has occurred in the areas of theory and representation, and certainly in the area of pedagogy, in ways both subtle and dramatic. My own experience as an instructor in design education began at the end of the eighties, and since that time I have witnessed an ever-tightening frequency in the normal courses of change. A common issue that has become more and more crucial since that time is the issue of …

Seeing/Site: A One-Week Project, Peter Hind

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

"Seeing/Site," is the first project given to freshman students in the Analysis Composition rotation of the Visual Literacy program taught at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. The program is interdisciplinary and is in its fifth year with enrollment close to 300 students and 8 faculty members instructing. Visual Literacy encompasses architecture, interior design, fine art, textiles/clothing design, and fashion merchandising. Seven-week units comprise the yearlong course: Drawing I , Drawing 2, Color; and Analysis Composition. Analysis Composition focuses on issues of form, mass, surface, space, and the relationship between two dimensions (2D) and three dimensions (3D).

This paper will illustrate …

Learning From Cultural Space: Connecting Culture And Environment In Beginning Design, Jeffrey Hou

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

The paper begins with an introduction on the background of the course, the students, and the assignment. It then introduces a selected group of projects, including the opportunities they have created for discussing the multiple dimensions of space. By examining the students' projects, the paper looks at how the exercise provides a vehicle to connect the students' life experience to design, and how the complex issues of culture and multiplicity of space can be introduced at the beginning level. The paper concludes with an observation on the multiple instrumentalities of the exercise and its broader implications for beginning design education.

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 …

Ventures In Dichotomy: Rigor And Tolerance In The Beginning Studio, Hector Lasala

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

As a beginning design teacher for over twenty years, I have learned that educating beginning designers entails reaching a delicate and difficult equilibrium between two contradictory positions: while maintaining the rigor of high aspirations that expect all students to exhibit sophistication of concerns and execution in their designs, one must also remain aware that each student's process is unique and fragile. This condition summons one to tolerance (not to be confused with indulgence) and much patience. This pedagogical approach, one that we practice at our school, is provokingly summarized in a phrase by one of my accidental mentors, "We are …

Design As A Liberating Practice: Design-Build With First Years, Eduardo Aquino

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

The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created. The classroom [studio], with all its limitations, remains a location of possibilrt.y. In that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labor for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face realrty even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress.This is education as the practice of freedom.

In The Beginning -- We [Design For] Humans, An Opening Studio Curriculum For An Architectural Professional Program, Alex Maller

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

Two years ago, aft.er long deliberations, the Archrtectural Program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln formally adopted a significant programmatic change: it restructured its curriculum from a 4+2 curriculum to a 2+4 curriculum. In the same time the status of the program was redefined as a 'professional' program similar to other professional programs, such as Law and Medicine. These changes enable the program to adopt a more autonomous position in the University. As part of the restructuring process a number of essential changes were introduced, two with a significant impact on our current discussion: [a] the two first years were incorporated …

The Space Of Mondrian, Lori Brown

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

How does one introduce a beginning design student to spatial concepts and spatial ways of seeing? As John Hejduk states the architect begins from the abstract - a world of ideas, of concepts, of aspirations - and gravitates toward built form. Students must first see and critically assess and question this abstract world before they can make the jump toward the real world. They arrive with so many misconceptions about architecture yet have no conceptions about the abstract world.

The Viewing Machine, Alice Minsoo Chun

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

Technology in architecture. rhetoric of construction. often expresses an erotic search for knowledge. As Marco Frascari explains, "Technology is the fertile factor for the architectural production of elegant meanings, it deals with both the construction- the logos of techne (elegant art)- and the construing- the techne of logos (rhetoric)." ¹ In this case technology translates from figures of thought into figures of site, and figures of making. It may be construed as a condition that attempts to answer the question: How does one begin? The curriculum developed for the Undergraduate Architecture Program at the University of Pennsylvania provides a place …

Building The River: An Introduction To Urban Design In Savannah, Georgia, Christian Dagg

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

This paper discusses one strategy for exposing architecture students to beginning questions in urban design and how this exposure can be structured within the design studio. Focusing on the city of Savannah, Georgia, the study of urban morphology and resultant building typologies are a basis for the studio research and design proposals completed in the spring of 200 I at Auburn University in Alabama. The studio was cotaught with Brian Mackay-Lyons, who has established his own Architecture and Urban Design practice in Nova Scotia. MacKay-Lyons' practice served as a backdrop for the studio through an emphasis on contextual research, through …

Musical Beginnings: Musings On Teaching With Music In The Fundamental Design Studio, John Maze

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

The beginning design student, like any other. is confronted with a world riddled with a multiplicity of physical, sociological, and psychological conditions that can thwart efforts to objectify contextual design determinants. Given the complexity of the twenty-first century environment, students should perhaps be given a non-building t ype of environment to hone their analytic abilities prior to taking on such a proliferation of perceptual stimuli. Physical environments such as urban settings that typically make up the sites for early design problems are simply too complex for students to first learn to perceive their surroundings in an objective manner. Too many …

Gesamtkunstwerk: Architecture/Interior Architecture - Elemental Integration As A Pedagogical Foundation For Design Education, Rebecca O'Neal Dagg

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

The Architecture/ Interior Architecture [ARIA] duel degree program at Auburn University's School of Architecture is a unique design education model that offers a holistic approach to the relationship between interior and exterior space early in the design student's education. This program's mission at a fundamental pedagogical basis incorporates Architecture and Interior Architecture within Auburn's architecture curriculum model, allowing the development of the concept of "total design" into the design mentality of students. Gesamtkunstwerk, the German word most commonly interpreted in reference to Modem Architecture historical discourse to mean "total work of art:' offers inspiration to the ARIA program model via …

Setting A Baby Into The Grass: A Biological Model Of Interactions Between Concrete And Abstract Learning Experiences, Stephen Temple

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

Give a baby its first experience in a grassy lawn and it will roll and frolic in the grass, reveling in its presence against its skin, in its hand. Its fingers will fondle and finesse the blades, press into the mass of roots, break and tear. Learning takes place literally at the fingertips, in the direct experience of the feel of each blade. New connections to the physicality of the world are formed and, in so doing, corresponding new representations of that world are created. Each new contact with the world becomes then an experiment, a test of these representations …

Rhetorical Investigations: A General Theory Of Design And Architectural Education, Simon Tomkinson

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

This paper focuses on the common difficulties in architectural education - its role, and its motives. The construction industry has consistently needed more qualified project managers, more technicians, and better business practices. Yet, a primary tenet of architectural education is that the industry is more qualified to train the student in the intricacies of practice. The education about practice is limited primarily due to the emphasis on design education. What is it that we, as educators, teach in design education?

The Silence Of The Studio Lambs: How To Hear Your Students' Voices In A Postmodern Design Studio, Elijah Mirochnik

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

Ideas that underlie postmodern thoght are rarely used in conversations about archrtectural education the way that philosophers and lrterary crrtics have used it since the early 1970s: as a call to abandon that portion of modern vocabulary that sustains Plato's story that Truth is something that already exists, that our own human capacrties are not enough to get us a glimpse of Truth, and therefore, that some method that is detached from our own inadequate capacrties is needed if we are ever to extract the Real Truth from our mortal inclinations toward deceiving ourselves by believing in mere opinion, felt …

Assemblies: Full Scale Construction In The Freshman Design Sequence, Aron Temkin, Scott Smith

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

The first year design faculty has been running a spring semester shop project for many years: Scott Smith has influenced this work as Shop Director since 1985. The examples documented in this paper are a cross section including two examples from the I980's and several more recent examples from the last ten years. The primary objective of this paper is to document the success and variety of this work and consider the factors impacting its variation, how the particulars of the assignment contribute more or less to the project objectives, and provide some background context for other scholars who may …

Giving Back: Student Architectural Product Research In Service To Practitioners, Jill B. Pable

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

It is the nature of the profession that practicing architects and designers are busy people who are faced with keeping abreast of quickly changing construction technologies. Manufacturers of architectural and interior products provide knowledge, but their information is often biased to serve their business objectives. Therefore, impartial information regarding new products is scarce. Students, particularly those new to the field, have the need to develop research skills, become acquainted with materials sources, and develop the ability to critically consider manufacturers' claims. Further, students benefit from interaction with the professionals they seek to emulate.Therefore, an architectural materials service learning project was …

The Pedagogics Of Play, Jay Mcclure

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

Teachers should emphasize the importance of play to a student's development, noting their individual talents they need to explore, tryout, take apart and investigate which is fundamental to learning. Design fundamental programs should develop pedagogies that guide student's play into progressive learning experiences in the essentials of form, mathematics, geometry, and creativity.

Allusion, Illusion And The Beginning Design Student, Albert C. Smith, Kendra Schank Smith

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

This paper explores aspects of media that concern illusion and allusion. It will present some examples of beginning design student projects to question and elucidate both the inherent differences of these potentially dichotomous terms and how they might lead us in a more concordant direction for teaching beginning design and visual communications in architecture. In recent history, we have seen examples of drawings such as those published by Zaha Hadid and Daniel Libeskind that have had an inclination to place archrtecture into a greater state of allusion. These drawings are exciting and provoke the thoughtful references to the poss ibi …

Why Do You Always Make Us Think? Maintaining A Journal In The Beginning Design Studio, Karl Puljak

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

No abstract provided.

Education Of An Architect: Through African-American Constructions, Scott Ruff

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

No abstract provided.

Spatial Themes In A Three Week Project, Corey Saft

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

In speaking to The Enigma of the First Assignment. the premise of this paper is explained with a studio in which a design project is addressed through sets of rules. Rules fall into three categories: for program, for site, and for assembly. These rules were left open-ended and they provided the first footholds for a student to get to work designing and not ponder the much larger problem of design itself.

The Sandbox: An Introduction To Form & Form Making Through Notions Of Surface, Brian T. Rex

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

Visual Literacy is a two-year-old cross-disciplinary instruction unit that encompasses a "learning community" of Textile and Clothing Design, Architecture, Interior Design, and Fine Art students in their first year of foundation design education. This pedagogy is a three week long unit (with 9 hours of contact time per week) in a two semester long program. Each faculty member teaches one of four thematically charged instructional units through which studio sized groups of students rotate over the course of a semester. The thematic foci of the four units are Drawing, Color; Frame, and Form. This specific unit is the Form unrt:. …

The Parallel Projection, As Flights Of Fancy, Mary Nixon

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

For a student of architecture, developing imaginative points-of-view and drawing acumen, is a must. The parallel projection is one such drawing type that aptly addresses point-of-view. Its three-dimensional properties and simple methodology make it a standard of beginning designers. Its inclination toward aerial adventures is an especially important feature to understanding its use. This paper examines the long history and sometimes-parallel track to architecture the parallel projection has enjoyed.

Explorations Into The Characteristics, The Determinants Of Production, And The Impact Of Land Policies On The Informal Housing Sector In Alexandria, Egypt, Mostafa Morsi El Araby

Dissertations and Theses

This study investigates the housing characteristics and the determinants of housing production of the informal housing sector in Alexandria, Egypt. It also examines the impact of land policies on the development of the informal housing sector. Informal housing, by definition, is constructed and acquired outside the legal procedure of land and building registration and without the necessary permissions and approvals. Therefore, there is a little knowledge about it, and its role in the housing market could be underestimated. The aim of this research is to enhance the factual knowledge about informal housing as a basis for future policy development.

The …

Urban Regimes And Downtown Planning In Portland, Oregon And Seattle, Washington, 1972-1992, Mark Richard Bello

Dissertations and Theses

Portland and Seattle are often considered to be divergent in character, partly because civic leadership in each city has a different vision. The adoption of contrasting downtown core plans, projects, and policies in each city allows us an opportunity to understand the nature of each city's regime. As defined by Elkin, an urban regime is the community's governing coalition, those who exercise public authority in a legal sense and those private actors able to act collectively and bring concerted influence to bear.

The time frame for this study begins with the first modern planning document, the 1972 City of Portland …

Geographic Data In City Planning Departments: The Volume And Use Related To Advancements In Geographic Information Systems (Gis) Technology, Fawzi Saeed Kubbara

Dissertations and Theses

Many local planning departments have acquired and put into use advanced automated geocoding and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to store, process, map and analyze geographic data. GIS technological advancements in hardware, software, and geographic databases - specifically, in geocoding methods to reference street address data to geographic locations - enable data to be integrated, mapped, and analyzed more efficiently and effectively. Also, technological advancements depend on organizational and institutional environments. The relationships between technological advancements and technical (data mapping and analysis), organizational, and institutional environments are not clear. The purpose of this study is to explain these relationships to help …