A Multidisciplinary Design Exercise: Myndos Excavation Site

AbstractThis paper describes a multidisciplinary educational design workshop carried out at the 4000-year old Myndos archeological site in Bodrum, Muğla, Turkey. The workshop, which was a collaboration between Architecture and Archeology Departments at Uludağ University, involved the design of a lightweight structure to be positioned on the archeological excavation site. The aim of the “Lightweight Structures, Mobile Architecture, and Archeology” workshop was to create an innovative, interdisciplinary environment for participants to creatively solve design problems in a limited time.Instructors from the Architecture Department and the Archeology Department guided 13 architecture students, and 7 archeology students through the workshop. The hypothetical structure was to be utilitarian, and demountable. It should also not damage the ground it would touch. Decisions on scale, structural choice, the choice of materials were left to the students. Informative seminars on the excavation site itself; lightweight structures; architectural patterns, mapping, and visualization; as well as architectural representation were given during the 5-day exercise.Among multiple benefits of the workshop some that stood out were: (1) students participated in a complex creative problem solving process, (2) students learned to work under time constraints, (3) students familiarized themselves with one another's profession, (4) students learned to appreciate dissimilar viewpoints, (5) students were able to visualize their designs in the context of the built environment, and (6) students were able to test and share their ideas with local residents.In addition to these benefits, suggestions for the implication of this workshop in other educational fields are discussed