190 EAAE no 35 Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in Pedagogy
cursive event with cross fertilization of ideas and an efficient delivery of the more fac-
tual information that the students requested. Reviewing, again had to be readdressed,
with a year group of 96, and limited space and staff resources, a tightly timetabled
and well managed series of events took place. Despite the formality of these occasions,
the students were active in their critique of their peers work, as they all ‘grappled’
for clarity in their own work. We were aware that as the students’ knowledge of their
activity grew, and they became the ‘experts’, their confidence also grew, and with this
new found confidence came a more discursive attitude, where the tutor was no longer
the ‘expert’, but they were, resulting in a more democratic review environment.
The second strand, and the fourth and concluding part of the new programme was
the design of a building in which to house their activity. Now, with the benefit of
an individual intellectual framework and a personally developed visual language, the
students were required to generate their own brief around a given generic framework,
and a given site and context. Our expectation and belief was that the architecture
that would emerge would be derived from a more informed and deeply investigated
background. Spatial relationships, movement and mood captured in the previous
programmes would manifest themselves in a proposal, where the activity and the
investigations of it would form the core of the architectural endeavour.
The first stage was to meet the context. This was carefully examined in both the
micro and the macro. It is often disappointing how students make site analysis, and
hold on to it during the development of their idea. Despite a group programme, which
included historical research, computer modelling and dimensional site recording,
the sense of engagement with the site was disappointing. Perhaps this was due to
the emphasis of the activity as the generator for the design – and students literally
designing their buildings from the inside out. This is, to a certain extent what we
had both envisaged and hoped that they would do – to draw on the depth of knowl-
edge, and take reference from the exercises carried out to create and inform their
architecture. The program development will pursue methods which more explicitly
ties the activity to the context.
As the students developed their proposals, there were encouraged to revisit the
work produced in term one, with sections and plans containing their spatial inves-
tigations. Students were also encouraged to explicit their newly developed skill sets
and understandings.
Figures 11-12 illustrate the architecture that was generated following on from the
research and investigations surrounding the activity. It is obviously impossible to say
what might have developed if a more conventional design process had been adopted;
but the language used and the spirit of space appears to have a direct correlation
with the digital study, and hence grounding the building with its intended use.
Another challenge for this group of students is how they translate their investiga-
tions in to a paper format, as currently the A1 folio submission is demanded at the
end of Stage Two, and it remains the format with which the summative assessment
of the years work is made. Each of the three research components presents its own
issues to be resolved by the students. With the Cubist piece, scale and medium for
many of the students required thought in how they can comfortably place this work
in the folio without losing the quality of original work, which in some cases, is sig-
nificantly bigger than A1.