Introduction: the drawing bazaar

Introduction to the research book explaining the reasons behind the need of this publication in the context of architectural education, highlighting the double value of drawing for architects: instrumental as a fundamental tool that qualifies the design process; and autonomous, contemplating the drawing of the architect as a final product in itself beyond the mere illustration and documentation of the project of architecture.

Architecture and Design, College of. Interior

Drawing class. 1949

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.

From product centricism to systems-wide education design: making corporate technology systems work for the learning organisation

Deakin University has established a major integrated corporate technology infrastructure in the last two years to enhance and bring together its distance education and on-campus education. This environment has been called Deakin Online. With Deakin Online rapidly developing, efforts are beginning to focus more fundamentally on how the potentials of the environment can be realised to create enduring teaching and learning value. This search must be understood in the context of the University’s commitment to the values of relevance, responsiveness and innovation. The question is: how can these values be realised in the digitally-based evolving educational enterprise using the new corporate technologies and new concepts of organisational structure and function? We argue for the transforming role of the academic teacher and new forms of open academic collegiality as being critical to realise strategic and enduring educational value. Moreover, change in role and process needs to be grounded in more systemic organisation and program-wide approaches to designing and working within the new contemporary learning environments. We believe the shift from the dangers of product centricism to system-wide education design modelling situating e-learning within broader curricular and pedagogical concerns represents the best strategy to create enduring educational benefits for all stakeholder groups (notably academic teachers and their learners) while preserving teachers’ sense of agency in the changing learning environments of higher education.

School of Architecture and Design

Emil Lorch & Associates, architect. Built in 1928. Architecture Building; later called Architecture & Design; renamed Lorch Hall ca. 1980. The Doric columns were once part of the oldest stone building in Detroit, the Bank of Michigan, built 1836. The Corinthian column was from the Home Office Bldg. of the Mutural Benefit Life Insurance Co. of Newark, N.J.

Architecture and Design

Emil Lorch & Associates, architect. Built in 1928. Architecture Building; later called Architecture & Design; renamed Lorch Hall ca. 1980

SAFARI optical system architecture and design concept

SpicA FAR infrared Instrument, SAFARI, is one of the instruments planned for the SPICA mission. The SPICA mission is the next great leap forward in space-based far-infrared astronomy and will study the evolution of galaxies, stars and planetary systems. SPICA will utilize a deeply cooled 2.5m-class telescope, provided by European industry, to realize zodiacal background limited performance, and high spatial resolution. The instrument SAFARI is a cryogenic grating-based point source spectrometer working in the wavelength domain 34 to 230 μm, providing spectral resolving power from 300 to at least 2000. The instrument shall provide low and high resolution spectroscopy in four spectral bands. Low Resolution mode is the native instrument mode, while the high Resolution mode is achieved by means of a Martin-Pupplet interferometer. The optical system is all-reflective and consists of three main modules; an input optics module, followed by the Band and Mode Distributing Optics and the grating Modules. The instrument utilizes Nyquist sampled filled linear arrays of very sensitive TES detectors. The work presented in this paper describes the optical design architecture and design concept compatible with the current instrument performance and volume design drivers.

The design studio: fabricating a sense of architecture in drawing

The purpose of this paper is to provide a platform for investigating the relationship between the student and the tutor via the design drawing and in particular the idea that what gives grounds for architecture to embody something is what is imagined is expressed in the design drawing. It is suggested that in architectural education the sense of architecture's fabricated properties find their apparent expression from the convergence of the tutor and student toward these drawings. In an act of perceptual contortion, there is an endeavour to reconcile what they see with what they think the drawing might suggest. Part of this mental reconstruction is based on the expectation that something is in the drawing to see. The drawing is produced based on the supposition that it will be read, generating a particular conditioning of the student's attitude toward the relevance of the drawing. It is engaged as the receptacle of ideas about what architecture is. The result is that sometimes the emphasis on the drawing as something to be consumed implies a permeation of the supposed sensory qualities of architecture imagined by the student designer, the portrayal of which is indubitably a product of the medium. While this might be commonly experienced in studios, it is proposed that this may be perpetuated in architectural education not merely by the act of drawing itself and what the drawing is, but how the student/tutor exchange contributes to the consciousness of what is portrayed.

An urban informatics approach to smart city learning in architecture and urban design education

This study aims to redefine spaces of learning to places of learning through the direct engagement of local communities as a way to examine and learn from real world issues in the city. This paper exemplifies Smart City Learning, where the key goal is to promote the generation and exchange of urban design ideas for the future development of South Bank, in Brisbane, Australia, informing the creation of new design policies responding to the needs of local citizens. Specific to this project was the implementation of urban informatics techniques and approaches to promote innovative engagement strategies. Architecture and Urban Design students were encouraged to review and appropriate real-time, ubiquitous technology, social media, and mobile devices that were used by urban residents to augment and mediate the physical and digital layers of urban infrastructures. Our study’s experience found that urban informatics provide an innovative opportunity to enrich students’ place of learning within the city.