Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design

272 EAAE no 35 Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in Pedagogy

The aimof the present paper is to explore particular issues in architectural design
research and its potential development in education as a process in which aesthetic
communication can be established through conceptual ideas. Framework in this proc-
ess is based on the integration of theoretical and pragmatic research aspects using
contemporary understanding of aesthetic as communication on a cultural and social
level. In contemporary understanding of a creative process, the designer’s intention
to develop a complex interaction with parameters of aesthetic communication is
crucial. It activates a complex system of individual and cultural principles in creative
activity, based on intuition, experience and knowledge. This approach is conditional
for developing the complex character of a creative process. In that context design
research can be thought as a form of processing the artist’s aesthetic intention, guid-
ing in a particular way further development of design activity, and providing variable
forms of its expression. In that way design research operates on the primal stage of
creative activity, starting with the aesthetic intention and ending with the concept
developed on an ideal level.
Investigation of this process is important for several reasons. First, it can provide
insight into the basic stage of creative activity, indicating possible aspects in the proc-
ess of articulating aesthetic intention and conceptual ideas as sensorial expressions;
second, it can establish design research as a complex form where design activity and
aesthetic activity interact in a most sensitive way. In that context design research
can be understood as an active process of transformation and increasing complexity
of various design aspects and possibilities, developed on the primal stage of creative
activity; third, it can develop a research procedure in interdisciplinary design educa-
tion, as experimental framework in which former processes can be observed.
In that context architectural design research process can be thought as a form
of manifestation of the designer’s aesthetic intention providing variable ways of its
expression, regarding theoretical and pragmatic aspects guiding the research. How-
ever, this process can be developed further and interpreted as an artefact by itself.
The meaning of that is that the research process can be evaluated as an outcome,
in which case the aesthetic communication of particular conceptual ideas can work
autonomously from any pragmatic task in developing architectural thinking. In this
context, we can generally differentiate two levels of research processes: one lead-
ing towards an artefact as a product, and the other which by its own conditions of
development becomes and exists as an artefact.
The first level of building such a complexity in architectural design research
reflects particularly on establishing a research procedure in architectural design edu-
cation. This procedure is, however, more related to a particularly established theo-
retical framework, which allows flexibility in individual approaches, using preferably
developed artistic experience and intuition. However the position of different kind
of knowledge, crucial in any educational process, can also be thought as extremely
important. Its character is defined by different ways of managing information, using
different medias, acknowledging different possibilities of expression, and developing
them into architectural concepts.
Knowledge is here more based on possibilities in using intuition and experience,
then materialization of the process outcomes. In that context researching as a proc-
ess of enquiring guided by aesthetic intention logically relates to an activity through