Nadia Charalambous Maria Hadjisoteriou Intercollege, Design Department, Nicosia, Cyprus 291
Conclusions
The experiments presented are neither unique nor new to architectural education;
nonetheless, they yielded gratifying, encouraging and effective results and we strongly
feel that they influenced both the form of our teaching as well as the learning out-
comes achieved. Students and lecturers acknowledged the importance of individual
“preconceptions” and explored spatial and formal relationships in a novel and fresh
way^9. The experiments raised important issues as how to design is actually possible,
the nature of students’ preconceptions about space, form and the built environment,
and how should architectural education deal with and assist the transmission and
transformation of such preconceptions into unique and creative solutions.
References
Hillier B. and Leaman A. (1974) “How is Design Possible” in
Salama Ashraf M. A. ( ) “Towards a Knowledge based Architectural Pedagogy and Practice:The
Design Studio under the Microscope!” in
Schön, Donald, 1985, The Design Studio; an exploration of its traditions and potentials, RIBA
Building Industry Trust, London.
Schön, Donald, 1983, The Reflective Practitioner; how professionals think in action, Temple
Smith, London.
Notes
1 This enables the sharing of expertise from experienced to inexperienced, usually under the
guidance of a ‘unit leader’.
2 Salama, A
3 Op.cit.
4 Op.cit
5 This paper is on line with the work of Bill Hillier and Adrian Leaman in a very interest-
ing article “How is Design Possible?”, the suggestions of which we find appropriate for
contemporary approaches to architectural design education; Hillier and Leaman (1974).
6 According to the authors, to ignore these prestructures in representing design as a design
procedure is like assuming that a speaker re-invents semantic and syntactic structures
which he depends on knowing in advance in order to use and understand the language.
7 As they suggest through extensive research “the problematic of design method studies is
therefore twofold: to characterize the autonomic prestructures by which the designer interprets
his problem and which also act as a “solution field”; and to characterize the operations which
may be performed with and upon such structures in a more or less complex environment to
produce unique and effective solutions”; op.cit. p.5.
8 This was partly attempted through assisting students in exploring the nonrepresentational
aspects of architecture; efforts were made to encourage them to think of architecture in
terms of lines, planes, spaces, and masses, rather than to define it in terms of represen-
tational elements such as doors, windows, columns, roofs etc.
At this point we should also mention the observations of that many view form-making
primarily as creation, and, lamentably, creation is usually and associated with "freedom"