A Proposal For The First Year Design Education in Interior Design

Our contemporary social environment is made up of the sum of isolated, individual lives. In such an environment, survival as individuals is difficult and the concept of communication assumes a new importance. A number of problems related to communication arise during the first year of interior design education, mostly stemming from the unfamiliarity of the realm with which the student is newly confronted. Technical jargon, the complexity of the profession and the unknown procedure of the design process are the basic components of this unfamiliar realm. In this case-study, carried out by the staff of the design studio of the first-year bachelor program of TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Department of Interior Design, we use practical as well as theoretical tools to address this multifaceted issue. Theory and practice are two important spheres, and whilst it is critical that each sphere communicate with the other we know that in practice this does not always happen. In the present study, we attempt to compensate for this lack by using and applying theoretical as well as practical methodologies in the form of simulation game rules. The aim of this paper is to discuss the importance of beginning by converging theory and practice in the form of a simulation game, and to support interior design competence through the application of theoretical courses, the result of which is played out in the studio setting