278 EAAE no 35 Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in PedagogyOne of the important new strategies being implemented in the teaching of architec-
tural design are workshops which have been included in the school’s curriculum. The
workshops provide a possibility to create space and atmosphere where students are
encouraged to challenge their intellectual potential in a heuristic working method.
In the education process the students are closer to a real situation and the theory
and creative practice become less distant.
In the current paper we present this idea using the example of workshops about
architectural conception of the New Silesian Museum in Katowice. The five day work-
shop was organised as virtual real life; the students and a group of tutors were from
two schools, namely from the Faculty of Architecture of the Silesian University of
Technology and from the Academy of Fine Arts to Katowice. The workshop had two
main goals:
- experimenting with architectural design – communication between architecture
and its users - teaching architectural design – an exploration of human and space attributes and
the inclusion of new technical and technological solutions in architectural educa-
tion.
Figure 1
The location of New Silesian Museum in Katowice
Communication between Architecture and its Users
- experimenting with architectural design
The students’ task was to define the architectural structure of the future museum
having at their disposal a very general definition of its size and the functional pro-
gram and a very precisely defined spatial situation. The architectural concept of the
new building is different in each of the four presented designs, which was the aim of
the organisers of the workshop – academic teachers of both schools. The workshop
was intended to show the authorities of the city and the future users how the new