Teaching

Some Thoughts on Architectural Teaching

University students are not apprentices. Architectural education is not simply about passing experience from tutors to students. A tutor’s practical experience obtained more than ten years ago is certainly out of date when his student applies it, if he has a chance, in his practice ten years after he graduation. The objectives and content of architectural education at university level stands outside practice and practical experience. I call it Academia.

Architectural practice and architectural education are two different things. This dichotomy has existed for more than 200 years. A belief behind all my work is that the former – professional practice and it accepted norms and expectations – belong to the past, and the latter – architectural education, in its deepest (and misunderstood) aspects – belongs to the future. At the same time, it is also true to say that many schools are merely lazy: they are content to stand still, recycle their thoughts and repeat the same actions that have produced professionals in the past. This situation should be changed. Academia provides a situation that potentially allows the discipline of architecture to be pursued with a thoroughness that is impossible to achieve in conventional professional practice. The schools bear the heaviest responsibility to advance pure architectural thought.

Problem-based Learning in Design Studio

  1. Conventional studio teaching use to be based on building types—dwellings, commercial buildings, hospital, historical district conservation, etc—and usually in program form. In comparison, this studio focused on design problems which potentially involved any building ‘type’, including those previously unknown. It explored how to improve students’ acquisition of skills—in design, team-working and communication, as a way to develop a self-directed learning process.
  2. Teacher-student communication, in conventional studios, aims at finding out what the student don’t know, followed by the teacher telling him the ‘right’ answer or precedent works made in practice. Learning became imitation. On the contrary, students in problems based learning studio learn questioning the existing answers before adopting through a skills of transformation.
  3. Conventional studio focuses on final products. This was another cause of imitation or even plagiarism in architectural studio. On the contrary, the emphasis in PBL studio is about process. It is on having students understand the cause of the problem, carefully define the problems, and concentrate on how to resolve the problem (if not actually carry out the resolution).
  4.  Traditional studio is normally an independent course separated from other courses such as history, construction and technology. Today architectural design is an integration procedure in which the designer tries to make best use of various design professions. On this condition PBL studio focus on integrated disciplines, through which it encourage awareness of Architectural comprehensiveness.
  5. Traditional design studio tends to develop teaching process applying to all students, assuming the design process is same for everyone.  While problem based learning studio try to accommodate and lead students with different learning styles, assuming a process of working can be very different within students, but all with a potential to produce high quality design.

A.  Design Studio

Student Competition, M Arch I (1998, Course Coordinator: Jia Beisi)
News
Page 40, Page 44, Page 47 in Journal “World Architecture Review, special issue of 2000”, Shenzhen, China

Joint Studio: Hong Kong, Beijing, and Berlin, M Arch I (2000-2001)
Program Letter
Projects    1    2    3

Central-Wanchai Reclamation and Waterfront, M Arch I (1999)
Program
Projects    1    2    3

Roof top structure, BA (Arch.) Year 2 (2001)
Program
Projects    1    2    3

Infill system for a living and working space. BA (Arch.) Year 2 (2001, Course Coordinator: Jia Beisi)
Program
Projects    1    2    3    4

BA (Arch.) Year 1 (2003 Course Coordinator: Jia Beisi)
Course Outline
Projects    1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9    10    11    12    13    14

B.  Housing in Urban Development (for Master of Architecture and research students)

C.  Chinese Architectural History (for Bachelor of Arts (Architectural Study)

Top