A Comparative Evaluation of Design/Build Studios Providing Learning by Doing Environments in Architectural Education

Mimarlık Eğitiminde Tasarla/Yap Stüdyoları

Abstract

Design studios lied at the heart of architectural education offer significant learning environments to students. The studios, which are included in architectural education programs in many places in the world and referred to as “design/build programs” in the literature, operate as alternative studios that aim to learn by building while actively supporting students’ learning processes in design studios. The study focuses on design/build studios, which are an essential bridge in the relationship between architectural education and praxis and play a supporting role for architectural design studios. Most of the time, these studios allow students to work collectively in a selected region, using the data related to the region and gain experience in producing by directly constructing/making their designs. In the paper, firstly, design/build programs included in the architectural education curricula from the past to the present, and prominent design/build programs from various regions of the world have been revealed. It has been observed that these studios can have different purposes and learning outcomes according to the way they are included in the curricula. Design/build studios are grouped according to duration of studios that last longer than one semester, approximately one semester or less than one semester (as summer schools). Three programs for comparative analysis of each group, CoCoon Studio (TU Berlin), Wood Program (Aalto University) and Riga International Summer School (Riga Technical University) are selected. The selected projects of the studios are (NAXII Jam Factory/CoCoon, Kokoon/Wood Program, Sanatorija/Riga Summer School) determined as samples where the general approaches and the mentioned features of the studios can be recognized. In addition, the studio projects are listed, and the cities where the projects take place are marked on the map. In this mapping, studios operating in the region where they are located and works of studios in different parts of the world internationally are determined. Then, a comprehensive evaluation has been conducted by extracting themes that studios focused in their projects, such as social responsibility, usage of information technology, learning of production methods & materials, collective work, place-oriented approaches and these themes are examined on the table, they are evaluated comparatively by determining the prominent and differentiating aspects of the studios. The different qualities of the examined design/build studios are handled dialectically, and the contributions of each approach to architectural education and the pedagogical basis for architectural education are tried to be understood. As a result, it has been seen that the process brings different learning outcomes according to the way it is included in the curricula, and attention is drawn to the design/build learning method, and it is thought that it contributes to the learning by doing and by experiencing on-site, unlike the representation-based methods at school. In addition, design/build studios have the potential to respond to the debates on the separation between theory and practice in architectural education. As stated by Robert McCarter (2008), programs based on the learning-by-doing method can be considered “as a means of binding together thinking and making, engaged and embodied in the action of building.” In the study, the main motivations that design/build studios focus on are examined in relation to the way the studios are included in the curricula and studio durations. The studios in question contribute to students gaining benefits such as collaborative thinking, generating solutions, working in cooperation with actors from different disciplines, and networking, by considering various parameters such as economic, aesthetic, social, local, technological, etc., in a participatory environment. The dissemination of such experiential learning-based design/build programs with various problems and learning outcomes in the curriculums of architectural schools will make significant contributions to architectural education so that students can go
out of the institution, experience it in the field, and gain different learning outcomes that they cannot achieve with conventional architectural education.