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Approaching technical issues in architectural education
Alberto PUGNALE1 and Dario PARIGI2
1 Assistant Prof., Dep. of Civil Engineering, Aalborg University, Aalborg, DK, apu@civil.aau.dk
2 Assistant Prof., Dep. of Civil Engineering, Aalborg University, Aalborg, DK, dp@civil.aau.dk
Summary
This paper discusses teaching of technical subjects in architecture, presenting two experimental
activities, recently organized at Aalborg University - a two week long workshop and a one day long
lecture. From the pedagogical point of view, the activities are strategically placed between
conventional disciplinary courses and architectural design studios. On the one hand, this allows a
better mix of theoretical lectures, exercises and design practice; on the other hand, narrow topic
related to structural design may be deepened on the basis of a research-based approach to design.
Keywords: pedagogy in architectural education; teaching/learning activities; construction
workshop; teaching and research; structural reciprocity, conceptual design.
1. Introduction
In our philosophy, teaching is an activity intended to guide, support and stimulate students in the
development of an effective learning approach able to lead them towards a conceptual change in the
way they see the world. Teaching is not simply a matter of acquisition and accumulation of
information. It should be considered as a student-centred practice, strictly related to learning, aimed
to lead students toward the development of: (a) acceptance of studying, (b) curiosity, (c) awareness,
(d) deep content knowledge, (e) professionalism and precision, (f) method, (g) autonomy and
independence, and (h) ethic thinking.
Focusing the attention on educational programmes in architecture, teaching/learning mainly takes
place by means of disciplinary courses and more practical design studios. However, regarding
teaching of technical subjects there is an intrinsic difficulty in applying theoretical concepts just by
giving conventional lectures, as well as in highlighting the subjects’ design potential from the
architectural point of view. At the same time, it is also difficult to take advantage of such technical
issues during wide-ranging design activities, and the final level of technical experimentation and
innovation is generally lower than expected.
In this paper, we present two experimental teaching/learning activities, strategically placed between
the two opposites of the disciplinary course and the design studio. They are: (a) the two week long
workshop and (b) the one day long lecture, which may also be integrated in the workshop activity.
Pedagogical issues as well as case studies and results are discussed in the paper.
2. A teaching framework
2.1 Kinds of knowledge and respective levels of understanding
Before designing our teaching activity, it is important to introduce and define which kind of
knowledge and levels of understanding we want our students to achieve. However, ‘knowledge’ and
‘understanding’ are terms with a broad meaning and we need to structure them more first in order to
have a valid support of our designing task.
According to Biggs and Collis [1], who defined the Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome
(SOLO) taxonomy as a systematic way of describing how a student’s performance grows in relation
to the difficulty of different academic tasks, there are four plus one kinds of knowledge with
respective levels of understanding. The first kind is prestructural, involving no knowledge,
incompetence or the simple use of tautology to cover a lack of understanding. The following two
are related to the category of declarative, or propositional, knowledge, which is quantitative:
- unistructural, in which the student’s response only focuses on one relevant aspect. This level of
understanding is expressed by verbs such as memorize, identify, recognize, find, label, recall,
recite, etc;
- multistructural, in which the student’s response focuses on more than one relevant aspects but
they are still mainly treated independently. This level of understanding is expressed by verbs
such as classify, list, discuss, illustrate, select, describe, outline, etc;
The last two kinds are related to functioning knowledge, which is qualitative. They are:
- relational, in which the learned aspects are integrated in a coherent whole and directly applied to
real world situations. This level of understanding is expressed by verbs such as apply, use,
analyse, organize, solve, explain, debate, construct, compare, etc;
- extended abstract, in which the integrated whole is finally conceptualized at a higher level of
abstraction. This level of understanding is expressed by verbs such as reflect, compose, invent,
theorize, hypothesize, generalize, create, etc.
The development of declarative knowledge comes earlier than functioning, and it is not required
that all teaching/learning activities aim to reach the highest levels of understanding.
Another common taxonomy has been defined by Bloom and colleagues in 1956 [2] and
successively revised by Anderson and Krathwohl in 2001 [3]. It differs from the SOLO taxonomy
because it has not been derived from direct research on student learning, and its lack of hierarchy in
the classification of levels of abstractions and cognitive domain. However, it may be used as
reference to a longer list of verbs helpful for the definition of teaching activities.
2.2 Designing effective teaching
From the pedagogical point of view, teaching can be approached in several different ways. In this
paper, the presented case studies have been developed within a Constructive Alignment (CA)
framework, which is considered an effective outcome-based approach in Problem-Based Learning
(PBL).
In this framework, teaching requires first the definition of a set of (a) Intended Learning Outcomes
(ILOs), which are then used to construct and align (b) teaching/learning activities (TLAs) and (c)
assessment tasks (ATs). ILOs, TLAs and ATs are the three elements forming the core of this
teaching approach. The ILOs are defined using specific ‘learning verbs’ instead of the more generic
term ‘understanding’, which express more precise levels of understanding that we want to achieve.
Thus, TLAs and ATs are directly defined on the basis of the used ‘learning verbs’, and intrinsically
reflect an ‘alignment’ with the ILOs. This follows Shuell’s statement that “what the student does is
actually more important in determining what is learned than what the teacher does” [4].
2.3 Teaching case studies based on the Constructive Alignment (CA) approach
Technical aspects such as structural, construction and material issues are an integral part of the
development of an architectural project. In order to involve the students in considering and taking
advantage of them in early conceptual design phases, it is important that they already master
declarative knowledge on those subjects before designing. This may be generally acquired during a
traditional disciplinary course, while its application is mainly stressed just in a design studio activity.
These two teaching/learning activities may be conceptually seen as two opposites, in which the first
emphasises the increase of declarative (quantitative) knowledge, and the second focuses on
deepening the understanding by means of acquisition of functioning (qualitative) knowledge.
According to this and the pedagogical reflections illustrated in the previous Section, our aim is to
develop and experiment with teaching which is strategically placed between courses and design
studios. In architecture, the strict relation between the four kinds of declarative and functioning
knowledge, and the respective levels of understanding, requires that such teaching/learning
activities address them all as a whole as much as possible. At present, two main activities have been
developed and experimented with in relation to teaching technical subjects in architecture. They are:
- a two week long workshop, which is conceived to run for seven working days distributed over
two separated weeks (a case study is presented in Section 5);
- a one day long lecture, which alternates short lectures and design activities in a single working
day, and can be also integrated in the two week long workshop (discussed in Section 4).
Both focus on a specific narrow structural or technical aspect of the architectural project, which is
investigated with a research-based approach, starting from its background and state-of-the-art to the
highlight of specific design issues, research directions and the development of design proposals and
scale models and prototypes. Such activities are the result of previous experiments conducted by
our teaching/research group in the field of shape-resistant structures and of studying the relationship
between form and structure in architecture. Three workshops have been already run, the first in
2007 within the Master education at Politecnico di Torino concerning geodesic grid-shells [5], a
second in 2008 at “Les grands ateliers” in Lyon regarding reciprocal structures, and the third in
2010 on timber spatial structures at Aalborg University. The results and some pedagogical
reflections have been already presented at the First International Congress of ReteVitruvio in 2011,
in Bari [6].
3. A construction workshop on the principle of structural reciprocity
The first two week long workshop was organized at Aalborg University during the fall semester
2011 of the Master of Science in “Architectural Design”. It was conceived as an integral part of a 5
ECTS course module entitled “Engineering Architecture”, aimed to present the students technical
problems of interest for architectural design, focusing the attention on the creative potential of
engineering topics of which they could take advantage during their design activities.
The long workshop is a research-based activity, focused on a specific narrow topic related to shape-
resistant structures. In this case, we dealt with the principle of structural reciprocity, which we
define as the use of load bearing elements to compose spatial configurations wherein the elements
are mutually supported by one another [7]. The aim was to show the students how to approach these
kinds of typologies in architectural design, in order to find new innovative spatial structures. In
detail, we guided the students in:
- identifying a research and design topic (in this case, structural reciprocity);
- studying its background, relevance and current development in structural and architectural
design (state-of-the-art in relation to basic reciprocal configurations, realized projects, design
tools and strategies with both experimental and numerical approaches);
- highlighting its present limitations and design issues, in order to define potential developments
for the generation of innovative concepts of structures and prototypes.
In this framework, we found the focus on the research/design activity of particular interest in the
issue of three-dimensionality in structural reciprocity in order to force the design research of the
students in a specific direction. In spite of reciprocal structures are intrinsically 3D, most of the
existing configurations do not take advantage of this peculiarity. For this reason, we conceptually
refer to:
- 1D reciprocal structures as configurations which are mainly developed in a linear way. The
Leonardo’s bridge may be classified as 1D structure since the use of fans composed by four
elements is conceived to have a linear development from A to B;
- 2D reciprocal structures as configurations which are readable as surface-like geometries and
allow a development along two main axes. Domes, polyhedra and several roof reciprocal
structures may be included in this category;
- 3D reciprocal structures as configurations which are not belonging to the two previous
categories. In this case, the conceptual reduction to reference surfaces or linear developments is
not possible.
It should be underlined that this distinction is purely conceptual and aimed at forcing the design
research of students in order to obtain specific configurations. Apart from this, we are not stating
that reciprocal structures are not 3D in the physical space. Figure 1 shows examples of 1D, 2D and
3D reciprocal structures. Further details are provided in another paper by the authors related to the
morphology of reciprocal structures [8].
Figure 1: Left, 1D reciprocal bridge inspired by the Leonardo’s bridge; Middle, 2D reciprocal roof with
fans composed by four elements; Right: 3D conceptual reciprocal structure by Popovic Larsen.
3.1 Defining the Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)
After the definition of the workshop topic and of which overall research/design issue to investigate,
we defined the Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs) according to the SOLO taxonomy. We expected
that on successful completion of this workshop, the students would be able to:
- at a basic level, identify, classify and reconstruct simple and combined spatial configurations
based on the principle of structural reciprocity (with the aid of physical models as design tool);
- furthermore, apply the principle of structural reciprocity to explore, study and design their own
original configurations, according to the highlighted design issue (three-dimensionality);
- highlight and deal with a set of construction problems related to the construction of simple
timber spatial structures, such as the seach for structural equilibrium, development of effective
joints and assemblage of components, by realizing full scale prototypes;
- organize and coordinate their work in a team-based environment in order to efficiently build a
full scale prototype in a short time;
- on a higher level, design architectural spaces according to the defined concepts of 3D reciprocal
structures, taking advantage of and showing their peculiar structural and construction potential.
This list is organized in a hierarchical format, in which all the four kinds of knowledge and
respective levels of understanding are involved. This allows us to naturally align the
teaching/learning activities of the workshop, as well as the assessment criteria, to the expected
outcomes. At the same time, the ILOs are a powerful tool for the students in order to self-assess
themselves throughout the whole learning process.
3.2 Aligning TLAs and ATs with the ILOs
In order to reach the Intended Learning Outcomes, the students were called to:
- attend a one day long lecture with an exercise session on the principle of structural reciprocity,
in order to identify, classify and reconstruct simple and combined reciprocal configurations;
- especially in the afternoon, focus on the issue of intrinsic three-dimensionality of reciprocal
structures in order to explore, study and design their own new configurations (see Section 4);
- organize and coordinate their work in both individual and group sessions, in order to efficiently
use the limited amount of time for the development of scale models and full prototypes (for
further details see Section 5);
- highlight and deal with a set of construction problems related to timber spatial structures in
order to develop their scale models and design/build full scale working reciprocal prototypes;
- reflect on the stressed design issue (three-dimensionality) by writing a paper in order to evaluate
the workshop results, both internally and in relation with the state-of-the-art on the subject.
The final assessment has been also intrinsically aligned to the ILOs and the defined TLAs. A direct
evaluation of the workshop results has been combined with a review of the final papers required of
the students, in order to check their preparation in all the four levels of understanding.
4. Approaching the topic with a one day long lecture
4.1 Structure, organization and results
A one day long lecture was defined as the kick-starting activity of the workshop. The day was
divided into four modules of two hours each, alternating two modules of frontal lecturing with two
hands-on modules dedicated to individual tasks. In the morning session, the principle of structural
reciprocity was introduced with a set of visual examples of different spatial configurations, as well
as basic rules on how to construct them by means of scale models. Several reciprocal structures
were presented with models, drawings and reference projects, focusing the attention in the
morphological difference of assemblages as well as on the issues related to their conception and
construction. At the same time, previous workshops and a historical recall about reciprocal
structures were shown with the purpose of proposing a first design task, to be completed in the
following two hours.
The students were called to identify differences in reciprocal structures and reconstruct some basic
ones during the first hour. Thus, they should dedicate the second hour to compose them in more
sophisticated configurations, still referring to existent projects if needed. Figure 2 illustrates some
moments of this first practical sessions.
This task has been conceived with a dual objective. On the one hand, students become familiar with
existing basic and more complex reciprocal configurations. On the other hand, they deal directly
with problems related to the assemblage of elements accordingly to the principle of reciprocity,
experimenting form-finding issues as well as a conceptual change due to the use of physical models
as main design tool.
Figure 2: Development of basic reciprocal configurations during the first exercise session.
In the afternoon session, the frontal lecture started with highlighting the design issues emerged in
the first assigned task. Representation problems as well as design tools and form-finding of
reciprocal structures were discussed in a detailed way, also considering that we expected a higher
level of awareness of the importance of such issues from the students already after the morning
sessions.
Finally, the second design task was focused on a specific issue of the workshop, i.e. the search for
full 3D reciprocal configurations which could not be conceptually developed in a linear way (1D) or
simplified and read as surfaces (2D). The students were called to define a set of two-dimensional
patterns, in order to ‘break’ them in three-dimensional configurations, as already made by Rinus
Roelofs in some of his own artistic experiments [9]. Figure 3 shows the design task as presented to
the students, while Figure 4 reports some of the 3D configurations developed during the two hour
exercise.
Figure 3: 2D patterns and respective 3D configurations by Roelofs.
Figure 4: 2D patterns and respective 3D configurations by the students.
4.2 Pedagogical issues
The one day long lecture may be a very efficient way of teaching technical subjects in architecture.
However, there are some pedagogical issues to take in account:
- this activity may be used to introduce shape-resistant structural typologies, as well as to present
basic structural questions such as equilibrium to students at the bachelor level. The intuitive
explanation of concepts, directly focused on their architectural design potential, may be an
effective way to kick-start any kind of technical course or design studio. However, this activity
cannot be considered as extensive enough to fully cover the necessary declarative knowledge
the students have to develop on engineering issues. Depending on the educational level, an
additional one day long lecture or more conventional lectures may be necessary to fulfil the
course requirements and expectations;
- in this activity, time is a key issue. The amount of information to discuss, as well as the type and
difficulty of the assigned exercises has to be carefully calibrated in advance, especially
according to the level of students and their previous experiences. It could be a risk to
experiment with this activity with a new class of students, without knowing about their
background in advance;
- this activity requires a high degree of flexibility from the teacher. The afternoon session can
recall some of the experiments made by the students during the morning session, and the teacher
should guide them properly so as to get some minimum expected results. A good balance of
preparation and adaptation from the teacher is necessary in order to succeed;
- co-teaching may be effectively applied within a one day long lecture, especially with large
classes. Supervision of the exercise sessions is easier and the flexibility required from the
teachers by this kind of activity may stimulate interesting discussions held by two different
points of view. Furthermore, morning and afternoon lectures can be held by the two teachers,
alternating their role as lecturer and opponent/critic.
5. Deepening with design and construction
5.1 Structure and organization
Following the initial one day long lecture, the workshop was run during seven working days
distributed in two separated weeks – the first related to the design of three-dimensional reciprocal
configurations with physical models, the second for some design refinements and the final
construction in full scale of few prototypes.
The overall workshop has been based on the idea that the class is a large research group dealing
with a specific design issue, i.e. the search for new fully three-dimensional spatial configurations of
reciprocal structures (see Section 3 for further details). The students started to work individually or
in small groups without any specific restrictions by the teachers. However, during supervision we
encouraged the dialogue and discussion among other students dealing with similar design
explorations.
At the end of the first working day, we asked the students to select one picture and a brief
documentation of their temporary results, and to submit this to the teachers by e-mail. Thus, the
following working day started with a brief collective discussion of the overall results, evaluating
them according to the assigned task. This collection of material at the end of a working day, and the
following common discussion as kick-start activity of the following workshop day, was repeated
during the first week. This allowed both students and teachers to have a periodic check of workshop
developments. Furthermore, it has been a fundamental aspect to guide the design research towards
specific directions in order to finally converge on just seven qualified concepts to be refined and
built in 1:1 scale.
The second week was mainly related to the construction, and three working days were estimated as
proper time to also deal with possible unexpected difficulties related to the building site, materials
and tools. This part of the workshop was mainly organized by the students, who had to deal with the
coordination of large groups (10-13 students each) in order to build just seven representative
prototypes of the workshop. Figure 5 shows the final prototypes realized by the students.
Figure 5: Five final 3D configurations realized by the students of the workshop.
5.2 Pedagogical issues
Several reasons show how this activity is worth to be further investigated and experimented with:
- the topics involved are narrow enough to allow both teachers and students to deepen the
investigation of the subject from a theoretical and practical point of view. Generally, in
architectural educations, the design activity is based on the development of complete projects,
i.e. a sort of realistic simulation that the students will be called on to develop after the school, as
architects. This could be problematic at an educational level due to the complexity of real
projects and as such due to the difficulty to focus on specific design issues and related learning
goals. On the contrary, the workshop deals with clear topics taken from research, and brings
them inside architectural design by means of assigning 'design issues'. The acquired knowledge
may be easily preserved, further developed and applied later in following design experiences;
- teaching and research can be effectively integrated in this activity. The workshop could be
inspired from recent research issues of the teachers, and at the same time their future
development may benefit from the conceptual and practical work of the workshop;
- the duration of the workshop is a key aspect. It should be long enough to guarantee a proper
development of the design proposals, but at the same time it has to be dense and calibrated in
order to fit between other conventional teaching activities of the semester;
- individual and group activities are completely merged in this kind of workshop, giving the
students more responsibility on how and when to decide to work as a single designer or in a
larger team. This is an important point especially in Problem-Based Learning educations as at
Aalborg University;
- this activity is very time-consuming for the teachers, since daily activities have to be checked
and evaluated at the end of the day in order to organize and effectively guide the students with
the introduction of the following day activity. High flexibility in recalibrating exercises and
expectations day by day is also needed to succeed;
- finally, some practical questions, such as funds, working spaces, weather conditions and tools
may highly affect the success of the workshop.
6. Conclusions
Teaching technical subjects in architectural education means to focus on learning how to approach
structural, material and construction issues so as to highlight their creative design potential, of
which an architect may take advantage of for the development of new and innovative projects.
According to the SOLO taxonomy, conventional disciplinary courses and design studios are not
flexible enough to deal with all the four kinds of knowledge and thereby achieve the four respective
levels of understanding. Pure declarative knowledge should just be seen as a starting point for
designing, especially in architecture. In this framework, two experimental teaching/learning
activities have been presented as new ways to address all kinds of knowledge as a whole.
A two week long workshop on structural reciprocity and a related one day long lecture have been
organized and run showing their potential as effective ways of teaching technical subjects in
architectural education. Within these experiences (a) narrow topics may be dealt with a research-
based approach, with a special focus on the design potential of structural, material and construction
aspects for architectural design, (b) teaching and research may be highly integrated, (c) individual
and group working methods are used and alternated, (d) co-teaching may be easily integrated to
emphasize different points of views, stimulating critical thinking, and (e) relatively short activities
may cover demanding topics with a continuous check of the achieved results.
7. Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the Department of Architecture, Design & Media Technology,
Aalborg University, for providing us with working spaces and funds, the students of the 1st semester
of the Master of Science in “Architectural Design” for their intense participation to the workshop,
Prof. Poul Henning Kirkegaard for encouraging us in organizing this activity and Nathalie Balfroid
and Marie Frier for their active collaboration during the whole process.
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