Teaching in practice : work integrated design learning and practice readiness for architecture students

This literature review describes the theoretical basis for developing a pedagogical model of higher education/industry engagement for the built environment and related design disciplines, with a focus on architecture. In particular, attention is given to the conceptualisation informing the development of such a model as a form of work integrated learning (WIL). In the discussion, the use and development of WIL in architecture will be placed in the historical context of Cooperative Education as a whole. The objective of the paper is to present ideas about the way in which design education relocated to practice might better prepare students for professional life.

Aiming to capitalize on the work place as a location for authentic learning, the paper will propose a form of WIL that will be termed “Teaching in Practice” (TiP). A prime aim of such a model is to bridge the growing gap between academia and the profession by enabling students to learn design from practitioners within a practice environment. The paper will argue that TiP allows practitioners to have a direct influence on design education, and thus establishes connections between academia and the professions that ensure built environment education remains relevant to industry needs.

Children and university architecture students working together : a pedagogical model of children’s participation in architectural design

Increasing efforts have been made to engage children in the design of the built environment, and several participatory models have been developed. The aim of this paper is to propose a pedagogical model for children's genuine participation in architectural design, developed in an architectural education context. According to this pedagogical model, children (primary school students) and youth (university architecture students) work in teams to develop the architectural design proposals. This model was developed through a joint educational project between Deakin University and Wales Street Primary School (both institutions are based in Victoria, Australia). In the four-week duration of the project, first year architecture students worked with Grade 3 and 4 primary school children to design a school playground. The final product of the project was a 1:20 scale model of a playground, which was installed and presented at the end of the fourth week. The project received positive feedback from all the participants, including children, architecture students, university lecturers, primary school teachers and architects. In addition, it achieved a high level of children's genuine participation. This model can be refined and applied in new situations, and potentially with other primary schools working with Deakin University.

Collaboration Down Under : investigating team learning in Australia in architecture and related design contexts

This position paper reports on an Australian Learning Teaching Council (ALTC) funded project – “Enhancing and Assessing Group and Team Learning in Architecture and Related Design Contexts.” This is a two-year project, commencing in November 2011, which is investigating best practice in Australian higher education for the teaching of teamwork in the design disciplines, with a focus on Architecture. At the time of the conference presentation, data on current practices will be reported on that has been collected and analysed from four universities in Australia. The project aims to: highlight and develop innovative approaches to collaborative studio-based learning; structure team learning within curricula; develop graduate attributes for teamwork; and inform assessment of team design that supports team-working skills and increased learner confidence.

Investigating the development of traditional and modern housing design in Libyan architecture

The design of housing is one of the most difficult tasks in the field of architecture. Housing meets people’s functional, social and spiritual needs. The fundamental task of this study has been to investigate the features of traditional and contemporary housing making it possible to describe them and then use this comparison to understand the differences between them

ANGEL: agent-based scheduling for real-time tasks in virtualized clouds

The success of cloud computing makes an increasing number of real-time applications such as signal processing and weather forecasting run in the cloud. Meanwhile, scheduling for real-time tasks is playing an essential role for a cloud provider to maintain its quality of service and enhance the system's performance. In this paper, we devise a novel agent-based scheduling mechanism in cloud computing environment to allocate real-time tasks and dynamically provision resources. In contrast to traditional contract net protocols, we employ a bidirectional announcement-bidding mechanism and the collaborative process consists of three phases, i.e., basic matching phase, forward announcement-bidding phase and backward announcement-bidding phase. Moreover, the elasticity is sufficiently considered while scheduling by dynamically adding virtual machines to improve schedulability. Furthermore, we design calculation rules of the bidding values in both forward and backward announcement-bidding phases and two heuristics for selecting contractors. On the basis of the bidirectional announcement-bidding mechanism, we propose an agent-based dynamic scheduling algorithm named ANGEL for real-time, independent and aperiodic tasks in clouds. Extensive experiments are conducted on CloudSim platform by injecting random synthetic workloads and the workloads from the last version of the Google cloud tracelogs to evaluate the performance of our ANGEL. The experimental results indicate that ANGEL can efficiently solve the real-time task scheduling problem in virtualized clouds.

Videogame technology re-purposed: towards interdisciplinary design environments for engineering and architecture

The author and associated researchers have in previous projects adapted videogame technology for design in the context of architectural design education. This paper reflects on this body of research: the original motivations and aspirations; what threads may be productively revisited; how contemporary shifts to parametric design and building information modelling may be incorporated; and considers how some aspects of game play, in particular competition, may seed Interdisciplinary Design environments for Engineering and Architecture (IDeEA).

Space-crossing : community-based data forwarding in mobile social networks under the hybrid communication architecture

In this paper, we study two tightly coupled issues, space-crossing community detection and its influence on data forwarding in mobile social networks (MSNs). We propose a communication framework containing the hybrid underlying network with access point (AP) support for data forwarding and the base stations for managing most of control traffic. The concept of physical proximity community can be extended to be one across the geographical space, because APs can facilitate the communication among long-distance nodes. Space-crossing communities are obtained by merging some pairs of physical proximity communities. Based on the space-crossing community, we define two cases of node local activity and use them as the input of inner product similarity measurement. We design a novel data forwarding algorithm Social Attraction and Infrastructure Support (SAIS), which applies similarity attraction to route to neighbor more similar to destination, and infrastructure support phase to route the message to other APs within common connected components. We evaluate our SAIS algorithm on real-life datasets from MIT Reality Mining and University of Illinois Movement (UIM). Results show that space-crossing community plays a positive role in data forwarding in MSNs. Based on this new type of community, SAIS achieves a better performance than existing popular social community-based data forwarding algorithms in practice, including Simbet, Bubble Rap and Nguyen's Routing algorithms.

The design philosophy of Edenic gardens: tracing ‘Paradise Myth’ in landscape architecture

This paper explores the Eden mythology in both western and eastern cultures, and its reflection on people’s perception and use of nature. It aims to examine how cultural ideologies and systems of beliefs in relation to Eden have affected landscape making and how landscape icons influenced other cultures subsequently. This study describes how narratives of Eden evolved and influenced landscape design by explaining the narratives of Paradise and Arcadia in eastern and western cultures as two distinct landscape narratives, with a brief history of their emergence and evolution. It discusses the ways in which landscape architecture reflects the prevailing attitudes towards nature in a society by studying the ancient world’s philosophies and ideologies as a starting-point for this investigation. The paper then focuses on the Persian paradise garden and explains the notion of iconography, as a visual explanation of an idea in landscape design. It projects the transformation of Persian paradise gardens’ icons and patterns in landscape architecture through historical and spatial explorations.

Affect within design practice and process

"Affect" has provided scholars with a variety of ways for conceptualizing the pre-conscious and pre-verbal processes that occur between both human and non-human bodies. This paper explores the practice of architecture through the lens of affect by considering how design practices involve particular contingencies in relation to a building's design process. Specifically, the paper asks: how do the negative affects of restlessness arouse interest and positively impact the evaluative processes of design? This question is explored through an examination of the design, production, and assembly of the cardboard paper tubes that were recently designed by Shigeru Ban Architects for their Christchurch Transitional Cardboard Cathedral. We will argue that the design actions are not independent, but embody different affects, particularly those of restlessness. We will also define how these affects of restlessness transmit and attach to the tubes and intensify their "stickiness," creating further interest and positively impacting the design process. Finally, we recognize the usefulness of sticky affects to highlight problems in the design process.

Re-casting terra nullius design-blindness: better teaching of indigenous knowledge and protocols in Australian architecture education

This paper reviews the current status and focus of Australian Architecture programs with respect to Indigenous Knowledge and the extent to which these tertiary programs currently address reconciliation and respect to Indigenous Australians in relation to their professional institutions and accreditation policies. The paper draws upon the findings of a recently completed investigation of current teaching: Re-Casting terra nullius blindness: Empowering Indigenous Protocols and Knowledge in Australian University Built Environment Education. Three data sets from this investigation are analysed: a desktop survey of Australian Built Environment curricula; workshops with tertiary providers and students, professional practitioners and representatives of three Built Environment professional institutes; and an online survey of Australian Built Environment students (of which their discipline could be isolated) ascertaining what is currently being taught and learned and what changes would be feasible within the constraints of courses from their perspective. Detailed descriptions are also provided of pedagogic improvements informed by the project findings. The findings suggest minimal current exposure of Architecture students to Indigenous Knowledge content beyond voluntary engagement in self-chosen thesis projects and elective (including studio) subjects led by passionate but largely unsupported teachers championing Indigenous issues; a paucity of teaching echoed by practitioners and accreditors who acknowledge lack of expertise in this area across the profession. This paper discusses ways in which Indigenous Knowledge might be better acknowledged, respected and introduced to Australian Architecture students’ education. Also discussed are teaching strategies with global relevance.