Beyond the gap: great liberation through architectural design teaching in the bardo?

Tibetan Buddhists articulate the bardo as the gap that exists between one fundamental stage of existence and another. Its most common usage is to describe the interval between death and reincarnation, but more literally, bar means 'in-between' and do 'island' or 'mark'. The 'bardo experience' is thus any one in which the 'past situation has just occurred and the future situation has not yet manifested itself. Instruction in architectural design attempts to provide guidance in the process of guiding students across the bardo from intention, analysis, and theorisation, to the creation of architectural representations and products. As such the architectural academy operates within a history of methods and codifications which try to quantify and bring a level of certainty to this process.
Recently however, there has been a questioning of traditionally accepted ways of ‘knowing’ the world, which has manifested in challenges to received ‘truths’ and increasing interest in other, previously marginalised histories and knowledges. The critiques that flow from this questioning contend that objective cultural ‘truths’ are simply the discursive result of the dominance of particular ways of perceiving the world. The practice of architecture has not been immune from this. The field has become a subject, for instance, of sociological, feminist and postcolonial critiques. However, their bearing on the pedagogy of composing architecture remains fragmentary and contested. My interest in this subject is derived from a desire to use the opportunities presented by contemporary cultural shifts to develop design-based architectural research that will assist future architects to operate in the uncertainties of an irreducibly plural global community. This paper will explore some ways in which academic research might bear upon the design studio’s negotiation of architectural bardos.

How architects incorporate ESD criteria into the design process

This paper will seek to answer; "How do architects in Victoria incorporate Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD) criteria into the design process?" For the purpose of this paper, "Ecologically Sustainable Development" is defined in line with the judging criteria used by the Royal Australian Institute of Architects for the 'Sustainable Architecture Award'. The RAIA states that (Maddison, 2003 p.7), "the goal of sustainable architecture is to achieve development that improves the total quality of life, in a way that maintains the processes on which life depends. The project assessment covers ecologically sustainable development and energy efficient design:' By researching exemplary building projects that have been awarded a Victorian Sustainable Architecture Award, this paper will enlighten a design methodology for the pursuit of excellence in ecologically sustainable development. Key elements in the design process will be determined by comparing and analysing the processes of different architectural practices. This will be achieved through the study of published literature on the award winning designs, qualitative analysis of interviews with the architects who designed the selected projects and quantitative analysis of questionnaires completed by the architects.

Occupant behaviour simulation for cellular offices in early design stages - Architectural and modelling considerations

Building simulation is most useful and most difficult in early design stages. Most useful since the optimisation potential is large and most difficult because input data are often not available at the level of resolution required for simulation software. The aim of this paper is to addresses this difficulty, by analysing the predominantly qualitative information in early stages of an architectural design process in search for indicators towards quantitative simulation input. The discussion in this paper is focused on cellular offices. Parameters related to occupancy, the use of office equipment, night ventilation, the use of lights and blinds are reviewed based on simulation input requirements, architectural considerations in early design stages and occupant behaviour considerations in operational stages. A worst and ideal case scenario is suggested as a generic approach to model occupant behaviour in early design stages when more detailed information is not available. Without actually predicting specific occupant behaviour, this approach highlights the magnitude of impact that occupants can have on comfort and building energy performance and it matches the level of resolution of available architectural information in early design stages. This can be sufficient for building designers to compare the magnitude of impact of occupants with other parameters in order to inform design decisions. Potential indicators in early design stages towards the ideal or worst case scenario are discussed.

Creative architectural design with children: a collaborative design project informed by Rhodes's theory

Since the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989, there has been global consensus that children need to be involved in the planning and design of their environment. There exist various international initiatives that support collaborative design with children, with co-design projects conducted in different areas of the world. Evolving from the global context of co-design, this project explores creativity in relation to architectural design with children. Between October and December 2011, a team of architecture students from Deakin University worked with children from Roslyn Primary School (both institutions located in Victoria, Australia) to design a playground structure. Informed by Rhodes’s (1961) theory, creativity in this co-design project was addressed through the four dimensions of creative designers, creative context, creative process, and creative design outcomes. The findings of this study corroborate Rhodes’s theory of creativity, and suggest that it is useful to engender creative architectural design with children.

Towards universal accessibility : including users with a disability in the design process

While increased awareness of disability issues has resulted in the development of guidelines for developing accessible software, such guidelines do not guarantee that the end product will be optimal for users with a disability. We present an overview of a user-centred approach to the needs analysis and ultimate design of a disability aware email client (Multimail). We discuss the process we used to work with participants in developing the software and reflect on the benefits and challenges of the process.

Graphical authentication : an architectural design specification

Graphical authentication is proposed as an alternative to password, smartcard, and biometric authentication as it uses the innate ability of humans to recognise visual stimuli. Despite passionate debate surrounding their privacy and invasiveness issues, smartcards and biometrics require an excessive amount of extra hardware for widespread deployment. Conversely graphical authentication extends existing infrastructure as it builds largely on the foundations of passwords with one important difference: it takes humans into account as they are better at recognising visual stimuli than recalling text-based passwords. This paper follows a preceding proof of concept paper and essentially outlines the architectural and technical design for a graphical authentication solution.

On representation and construction in a tectonic design studio

This study investigates the roles of representationand construction in enhancing students' learning in a tectonic design studio.  Students of architecture use 3D CAD, physical models and drawings, either alone or in hybrid combinations in the the design, development and communication of their design process.  Each of these media has intrinsic attributes that limit or enhance students' ability to engage in issues of architecture.  This can have a significant influence on students' learning of conceptual and tectonic design, in particularly in their early years of study.  Tectonic design, as an element of the architectural design process that involves the designerly consideration of issues of construction, is an important skill that is integral to architectural practice.  The unique problem based learning environment of the design studio offers opportunities for the development of deep learning approaches to tectonic design, however these are limited by the way students engage in representational media.  This research is based on an ethnographis case study of a cohort of second year architecture students at Deakin University, Geelong, in 2002.

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.

Perspectives on architectural design research : what matters - who cares - how

Perspectives on Architectural Design Research is a collection of short essays, projects and edited transcripts that offers current perspectives on design research in architecture and aligned disciplines. Contributors include international figures Donald L. Bates, Richard Blythe, Nat Chard, Murray Fraser, Dorita Hannah, Jonathan Hill and Vivian Mitsogianni. What emerges from the multiple perspectives is that contemporary design research – transdisciplinary, multi-scalar and concerning place, people, space and time – provides a collective and subtle mechanism that is propositional and transformative. The shared optimism of the contributors is that this propositional mode of research can be of catalytic value for contemporary culture and society

Introduction to perspectives on architectural design research

If something called ‘design research’ was to begin tomorrow, what might we want it to encompass: how designers design, how they learn to design, what the limits and shapers of design might be? What other aspects of architectural activity should it deal with? Minimally, there is a range of possible social, cultural and environmental matters which could be considered and which certainly impinge on questions of why designing is undertaken and who, or what, it is for. But, such issues were central prior to there being something called ‘design research’. In grumpier moments over two decades it has been tempting to suspect some architects of using the term to fashionably relabel what they do. Enriched accounts, such as the range offered in this book, are required to clarify whether or not it is a useful construct. Since I am a fabricator and make things (up) as a way of designing, let me engage in a little fabricating around design research: tales of its history, present context, and of ideas for its future.

Kerstin Thompson Architects : exploring affect in interior's sticky design process

Physical things influence emotions and feelings and can contribute to our sense that buildings and rooms are appropriately designed for their purposes. The sense of appropriateness extends, and is often noticed, through the pre-emotive effect of a structure’s shapes and dimensions. In interior discourse the relationship between the physical and pre-emotive is indicated with various terms (such as “affect”) and the design process of achieving appropriateness in objects and affect can be termed “stickiness”. In this paper we extend Sara Ahmed’s characterization of affect as a sticky connective element, which allows objects and ideas to generate attachments with us. And we ask, how can we understand interior practices and design processes through the concept of affect – as sticky? We explore this question first by discussing affect’s stickiness, and second, by an empirical study of the design process of Kerstin Thompson’s Monash University Museum of Art. The specific project involves alternating design methods that Thompson uses: an intuitive hunch-driven process, and a more defined literary-driven process. Our interest is to consider how she shifts from one to the other so we can better understand interior practice and its design process through the concept of affect. Finally, we conclude by addressing how the study of affect contributes to our understanding of interior practice and its design process, and more significantly, how, in exchange, might interior practice offer to recent theories of affect. Interior practice as changeable, spatio-temporal and material processes offer potentially fertile ground to explore affect as mediating layer, bridging human and non-human forces.