Portrush: Architecture for the North Irish Coast

The North Irish coast resembles one of the unique landscapes that define the scenic character of the place. To understand place you need to engage with stories and histories behind it. The search for Portrush has to start from Ulster. This book offers a journey to explore histories, traditions, festivities and the architecture of the Irish town. Approaching Portrush as a field of experimental architectural studio, the studio at Queen’s University Belfast teamed up to rediscover the Irish coastal condition and have a rethink about the origins and ingredients of Irish architecture and landscape. This book records and discusses this ambitious project and its outcome. Divided into two parts, the book introduces a comprehensive contextual and historical investigation into the heritage, culture and architecture followed by a display of students’ theoretical encounters and designs.

Sensing Spaces:A Body-oriented Architectural Design Education

The contemporary dominance of visuality has turned our understanding of space into a mode of unidirectional experience that externalizes other sensual capacities of the body while perceiving the built environment. This affects not only architectural practice but also architectural education when an introduction to the concept of space is often challenging, especially for the students who have limited spatial and sensual training. Considering that an architectural work is not perceived as a series of retinal pictures but as a repeated multi-sensory experience, the problem definitions in the design studio need to be disengaged from the dominance of a ‘focused vision’ and be re-constructed in a holistic manner. A method to address this approach is to enable the students to refer to their own sensual experiences of the built environment as a part of their design processes. This paper focuses on a particular approach to the second year architectural design teaching which has been followed in the Department of Architecture at Izmir University of Economics for the last three years. The very first architectural project of the studio and the program, entitled ‘Sensing Spaces’, is conducted as a multi-staged design process including ‘sense games, analyses of organs and their interpretations into space’. The objectives of this four-week project are to explore the sense of space through the design of a three-dimensional assembly, to create an awareness of the significance of the senses in the design process and to experiment with re-interpreted forms of bodily parts. Hence, the students are encouraged to explore architectural space through their ‘tactile, olfactory, auditory, gustative and visual stimuli’. In this paper, based on a series of examples, architectural space is examined beyond its boundaries of structure, form and function, and spatial design is considered as an activity of re-constructing the built environment through the awareness of bodily senses.

Building Clouds Drifting Walls:Year One Design Studio: A Critical Appraisal

This is a Booklet about a first year design studio in a school of architecture. It describes and reflects on changes that happened in the course over a three year period starting September 2000. The Studio is made up of students from mainstream architecture, and dual courses with landscape and engineering. The booklet is for those who are thinking of studying architecture. It might also be for those already learning and teaching architecture who want to see how other design studios work.

Design and Practice in Architectural Theory Education

Benefiting from design in theory learning is not common in architecture schools. The general practice is to design in studio and to theorise in lectures. In the undergraduate module History and Theory in Architecture II at Queen’s University Belfast, students attend interactive lectures, participate in reading group discussions, design TextObjects, and write essays. TextObjects contain textual, audio and/or graphic representations that highlight a single concept or a complex set of issues derived from readings. Students experiment with diverse media, such as filmmaking, photography, and graphic design, some of which they experience for the first time. Lectures and readings revolve around theories of architectural representation, media and communication, which are practiced through TextObjects. This is a new way to link theory and practice in architectural education. Through action research, this study analyses this innovative teaching method called TextObject, which brings design and practice into architectural theory education to stimulate students towards critical thinking. The pedagogical research of architectural theoretician Necdet Teymur (1992, 1996, 2002) underlies the study.

Moments of Recognition:The Four Semester Studio in QUB

It is a legitimate assertion that the common ground of work of worth in architecture, whether theoretical or built comes from a firmly held position on the part of the author. In addition to delivery key competencies architectural education should act to support the formation of such a position in the student, or to make students aware of the possibility of holding such a position.

It is with this in mind perhaps that intensive unit-based diploma and masters structures are increasingly becoming the standard structure for for schools of architecture across the UK. The strengths of such a structure are most evident when the school, either by virtue of financial strength or geographic location is able to attract a diverse range of contrasting positions to bear in the formation of these units. In effect the offering to the student is a short, intensive immersion into a clear line of thought based on the position of those running the unit. Research is channeled by those running the unit to the work of the students. A single cohort of students therefore is able to observe and understand a wide range of ways of thinking about the subject whether or not they are participants in a unit or not. It is axiomatic that where this structure is applied in the absence of these resources the result can be less helpful, individual units are differentiated not to reflect the interests of those running the unit but for the sake of difference as its own end.

In structuring the M.Arch programme in Queens University Belfast the reality of our somewhat peripheral location was placed at the forefront of our considerations. A single 4 semester studio is offered. The first three semesters are carefully structured to offer a range of directed and self directed projects to the students. By interrogation of these projects, and work undertaken at undergraduate level the aim is to assist the students to identify a personal position on architecture, which is then developed in the thesis in semester four. Research and design outputs are emergent from the interest of the student body, cultivated by staff who have the time over the four semesters to get to know all aspects of a students interests.

This paper will lay out this structure and some of the projects run within it. Now having delivered two graduating years the successes and challenges of the system will be laid out by reference to several case studies of individual student experiences of the structure.

Transcending Boundaries of Creativity: Active learning in the Design Studio

This essay investigates the changing dynamics of interaction and paradigm of communication in the design studio. It analyses the process of practical implementation of interactive tools in architectural education which placed the
diversity of students’ cultural experiences, contextual awareness and individual interests as crucial resource for design innovation and inquiry. Building on Brian Lawson’s thesis on creativity in design thinking, this research project undertook
comprehensive investigation of students’ satisfaction of their roles in the studio and the room for liberal thought they are given to elaborate on genuine approach to architectural matters. The cyclical development of interactive learning strategy is explored through two different settings: first, it analyses architectural students’ position as passive/active in the studio, considering their relationships with tutors’ ideals; second, it reports on empirical strategy of students-led workshops at British schools of architecture, during which students have taken the lead of their creative design agenda. The practical implementation of interactive learning tools proved influential in helping students to personalize their design direction and to build a sense of confidence and independence.

Studio Craft and Technique: The Architecture Student's Handbook

This is a second edition of the very successful book originally published in 2010. This second edition is published by new publisher Laurence King Publishers which will include an increased international distribution.