Individual Impact and Initiative in a Group Architectural Design Project

The purpose of this paper is to explore how designers think, and the process they use to create a design solution. To research this, the following study looks at the thought processes of an architecture student group facing a four-week long project. The project acted as an urban design/urban planning project for a first semester, senior level architectural design studio, and focused on reinvigorating Beecher Terrace within the Russel neighborhood of Louisville, KY. This study is then compared to those discussed by Nigel Cross in Design Thinking, which helps augment the findings of this paper’s main study. The discourse of this paper is to shed light on how exactly individuals impact the solution of a design problem. Each member has a view to share and an experience to communicate, and aims to become a demonstration for design students, faculty, and professionals on how important their individual contributions to the field shape the products and spaces that are created every day