Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design

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

Outcome:
Understanding, interpreting and exploring formal relationships facilitated by stu-
dents’ personal and cultural background; as a result we had a number of individual
approaches (emphasis varied from structural properties through vertical point, column
or plane organization of elements to elaboration of horizontal planes) that facilitated
discussion and questioning of important spatial and formal issues (enclosure, transpar-
ency, voids and solids, vertical and horizontal relationships, spatial continuity).

Fig. 1

Case study 1

Case study 2 – subtracting

Task:
Students had to deal with a solid cube that consisted of smaller units of a given size;
they were asked to subtract these units from the cube in order to create voids of
different forms and scale. No architectural scale or program was given to them. The
only constrain given was the underground placement of the cube.

Outcome:
Elimination of exterior form allowed an in depth understanding of space as solids and
voids. Proportionally interesting volumes facilitating discussion on visual and physi-
cal continuation of interior space was the outcome of this exercise; the underground
placement allowed issues of natural lighting influence design decisions.

Case study 3 – research based theory incorporated in the studio – contemporary con-
cepts of living

Task:
Explore, understand, interpret and re-present contemporary concepts of living (based
on research based theories on contemporary inhabitable spaces).