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A Case for Drawing
Get PDFArchitecture faculty continue, at times contentiously, to debate theroles that hand drawing and digital media should have in the practicesand education of architects. Some argue for the computer as the"new pencil,” while others maintain that the pencil is irreplaceable. A survey conducted by the authors suggests that the academy itself mayrest in a dichotomous position of committing more resources to digitalmedia than hand drawing while simultaneously indicating that both typesof media are valued about equally. Rather than reinforce an oppositionalrelationship between the hand and the computer, this paper aims toreveal current trends regarding the roles of hand and digital designmedia in the academy and to provide a review of the primary benefits ofhand drawing within an environment that is, seemingly, preoccupied withdigital media.Hand drawing provides unique contributions to and opportunities within the development of architectural thought and work. Maintainingsketching and precision hand drawing as fundamental activities of thearchitect extends the post-Renaissance tradition of architecture as a distinct design discipline directed to architectural ideas and relationships.Furthermore, hand drawing creates unique opportunities for imaginative transformation, for bodily engagement and accommodation, and for preconditioningthe qualities of a built work and therefore should remain asignificant component of the discipline
Affecting Change in Architectural Education
Get PDFArchitecture concerns not so much an explicit body of transmittable knowledge and protocols as it does a set of implicit understandings, sensitivities and sensibilities. The education of an architect therefore concerns the mission of endowing candidates with those implicit traits. This is not to say that architects do not possess and wield prodigious amounts of explicit cognitive knowledge, because they certainly do. But that explicit component of architectural know-how is actually vested in and deployed by the architect not so much because the knowledge has been invented, discovered, or developed by architects; but rather because they have assimilated it from other disciplines in a special way that gives architects adductive and hermeneutic insight into vast, detailed, and complex design challenges. Engineers make better machines, artists make more meaningful artifacts, and psychologists provide better human environments; but architects are trained to see the underlying opportunity and potential celebration of how those constituent menus might become a feast. In any unresolved complex of space, material and form, architects grasp a unique essence in how they perceive the "happily ever after” of what it might be and how that vision might be made whole and concrete. By the time a student of architecture is fully indoctrinated, this grasp of an underlying ideal essence is so potent that it becomes the student's identity... and the purpose of that insight becomes an irresistible intention
My view on change in architectural education
Get PDFArchitectural education should be a scholarly adventure exploring the artof proportion and order coupled with an administration that supports an enriched ecology of the human spirit.In order to accomplish desired change, there needs to be a continualpursuit by a vibrant, enjoyable learning community rallying to a core belief. This core belief must contain a common value such as that eachof us can make a difference. By teaching values, skills, and practices that underlie such a notion as making a difference, architecture learningenvironments are created that resonate. .
New methods of researching healthcare facility users: the nursing workspace
Get PDFThis study is entitled Embodied Professionalism: The relationship between the physicalnature of nursing work and nursing space. The analysis is based in a critical examination of existing approaches, assumptions, and attitudes in the research literature about who, what, and how to study the person-environment relationship in healthcare facilities. New methods of studying how nurses experience their work, their workplace and the objects in their workspace are needed in order to address important issues of this person-environment relationship. Nursing work is re-conceptualized asembodied professionalism which acknowledges the interconnections between the physical labor ofprofessional nursing work, time, and space. This is a qualitative case study of nursing activities on a surgical unit that are invisible, marginalized, and unaccounted for in the research literature. Instead of studying how nurses' efficiency and productivity could be increased through design interventions, this study examines the physical nature of nursing work and the physical setting from the nurses' perspective. Instead of viewing the healthcare facility as solely a place for healing, this approach views the healthcare facility as a place for working. A nurse's goal can simply be the desire to ‘get the workdone.' A qualitative research methodology and a mixed method approach is used in this study. The methods include structured interviews, location mapping, photo-documentation, architectural inventories, place-centered behavioral mapping, and focused observations. In order to get a better understanding of how nurses experience their workspace, an image-based visual research method, theexperiential collage, was designed. The findings from using these methods reveal the significant rolethat the physical activities of moving, searching, and recovering play in gaining insights into nurses' socio-spatial experience of the nursing workspace
The Forces that will Change Architectural Education
Get PDFRarely do architecture schools use the design skills of our own facultyand students to reshape architectural education itself. While many radical ideas about the world get proposed in design studios, it seems far too radical to suggest that these studios might meet some other time than Monday/Wednesday/Friday afternoon or that there might be a differentcomposition to studio than a dozen or so architecture students taught by one faculty member. The profoundly conservative structure andformat of architectural education stems, in part, from the conservativenature of universities generally, with their societal obligation to preserveknowledge of the past and to counter reckless change.But, we are in the midst of a transformation in our economy that willrequire an equally dramatic transformation of architectural education . .
Leadership in Architectural Research: Between Academia and the Profession
Get PDFRecent decades have witnessed a notable expansion of architectural research activities, with respect to both subject and methodology. This expansion can be mostly credited to an increase in government and private funding of primarily academic research initiatives. More recently, however, a noticeable increase in research activities within the architectural profession makes it possible to argue that it is the profession itself that is now taking leadership in the development of contemporary research agendas. This growing significance of architectural research, in both academia and the profession,is ultimately a response to the diverse challenges facing the profession; most notably, the issue of environmental sustainability, but also including the rapid pace of technological change, the increase ddiversity of users, and the growing complexity of architectural projects. Engaging research is an essential factor in facing these challenges as well as taking full advantage of the opportunities they offer. For this research to be most effective, however, a greater perspective and a clearer definition of its role and the goals it can aspire to, in both academia and the profession, are needed; and most importantly, the question becomes, how do we foster a more integrated research culture between academia and the profession
The role of architectural research centers in addressing climate change
Get PDFABSTRACT: It is clear that an urgent, major transformation needs to happen in the design of the built environment to respond to impending climate change and other environmental degradation. This paper will explain the potential role of architectural research centers in this transformation and provide examples from the Center for Sustainable Building Research (CSBR) at the University of Minnesota. A research center can become a regional hub to coordinate and disseminate critical information. CSBR is leading the establishment of Architecture 2030 standards in Minnesota, assisting local governments in writing green building policy, providing design assistance to local government, developing tools to assist design decision making, providing technical assistance to the affordable housing community inMinnesota, and establishing a regional case study database that includes actual performance information. CSBR is creating a publicly accessible, credible knowledge base on new approaches, technologies and actual performance outcomes. Research centers such as CSBR can be a critical component of the necessary feedback loop often lacking in the building industry. A research center can also fill major gaps in providing in depth professional education as well as be a catalyst for demonstration projects and public education
Mediating spaces acting for the collaboration in the future school
Get PDFIn this paper we report the performance and preliminary results of studies carried outduring the years 2007-2008 in a research project called InnoArch, Places and Spaces for Learning.InnoArch is a part of a large trans-disciplinary InnoSchool consortium (1.1.2007- 28.2.2010) aiming todevelop a set of research-based good practices, processes, models and designs for the Future SchoolConcept. InnoArch research has focused partly on "place and mapping”, which includes a place-based approachto pedagogical processes. On the other hand the research has concentrated on "space andexperience”, which includes architectural or spatial analyses of the building and the neighborhood. The spatial experience on each environmental scale is perceived with all senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell,touch and body awareness. Indoor studies are mainly about "creating and experiencing the space”,something that has great bearing on architectural thinking when designing the future school. The non-physical virtual space is seen as a mediator between the physical environment (neighborhood)and the PjBLL (Project Based Learning Lab at Jakomäki School in Helsinki). Places in the physical environment can be located on the commentary map, which will be constructed in the School Forum byteachers and students.The pupils themselves have an opportunity to personalize the room which is here described as a PjBLL.The room provides possibilities to pursue video observation as well as participative observation and participative design research during architectural workshops. These studies were conducted together with teachers, the pedagogical focus being on TSL processes and the architectural view on physicaland virtual spaces. Sustainability is within the focus of both the environmental studies as well as in lifelongand life-wide learning processes. The pedagogical idea based on inquiry-based learning encourages to strengthen pupils´ epistemic agency in the local community and to empower them to beactive stakeholders in it
The Architects' Small House Service Bureau and the American Institute of Architects
Get PDFA group of Minnesota architects created the ASHSB in 1914 to provide a solution for theshortage of middle class housing in the U.S. By 1919, the bureau had offices throughout the U.S. and received the endorsement of both the American Institute of Architects and the Department of Commerce. During this time, the members of the Bureau produced hundreds of plan sets and monthly bulletins to assist homeowners with their housing choices. The monthly magazine The Small Home, in conjunction with the published plan books--Your Future Home and How to Plan, Finance, and BuildYour Home--dispensed valuable information to potential homebuyers across the nation. To date, one master's thesis (Lisa Schrenk, University of Virginia 1990) and an article (Thomas Harvey, 1991) have been written about the ASHSB. Neither one discussed the relationship of this group with the AIA, a keyendorsement agency.This research involved extensive archival research at the AIA. Records from the early 20th century were analyzed to determine the relationship between the AIA and the ASHSB in the early 20th century. This relationship provides insight into the current lack of architectural involvement in single-family house design today. The single most prevalent building type in the U.S. is the single-family house, yet architects are little involved in the design of most of them. Architects have the ability and training to create sustainable, affordable, and well-design single-family houses and yet they do not. This paper seeks to provide one explanation through the interpretation of the historic relationship of the AIA to the ASHSB
Urban Design as a Catalyst for Advancing Architectural Education
Get PDFNew approaches to improving architectural education have emerged inrecent years, but comprehensive research that investigates the rolesthat urban design can play in promoting positive changes in architectural education and pedagogy is scarce. Despite urban design's close alliance with architecture, many in the architectural discipline seem to lack acoherent understanding of what urban design can offer to architectural pedagogy. Following an in-depth review of relevant literature, this paper briefly outlines the history, goals, methods, characteristics, and benefitsof urban design. This lays the foundation for proposing four approaches toadvancing architectural education and pedagogy: facilitating (promotingconsensus about design), grounding (promoting logical underpinning,inquiry by design, and evidence-based design), convening (promoting social design), and designing therapeutically (promoting environmentalsensibility). Findings and lessons drawn from other fields are also usedto support the four approaches. The paper concludes by discussing theimplications of its findings and suggesting areas for future research