How Can Students Learn to Integrate Form and Construction?

Most design assignments in architecture schools are copies of typical assignments in an architecture practice. They start with the first sketches, which are further developed in a preliminary design, and end with working drawings and design details. This sequence works for someone who masters all the aspects of architecture, and therefore can foresee the consequences for the realisation of a preliminary design sketch. But this is not the case for beginning architecture students; for whom the construction often turns out at the end of the design process as a choice of the less disturbing structure to realise their designed form. This lack of integration makes good architecture impossible, because earlier research proves that in good architecture, more satisfactory solutions encompass more topics of the stated problem at the same time. So these good solutions integrate many topics, including form and construction. A literature review on didactics bring up 3 interesting strategies to counter this problem. First, thematic assignments simplify the complexity of architectural problems and make it possible to focus on certain aspects, for example the integration of construction and form. Secondly, by working on scale 1/1, the difficulty of rescaling and problems of representation are both omitted out of the design process and reinforce the possibility to focus on form and construction. And thirdly, the order in which steps are applied in practice, does not have to be the order in which they should be taught. There are very good reasons to teach "backwards", so there is always something before you is that you already know. All three strategies were applied in a thematic studio assignment last year, that started where the design process in practice often ends: the details. The assignment started with the exploration of the formal and constructive aspects of possible connections between 2 parts of the same or different materials by building and exploring the connections in reality. And it ended with the exploration of the form and the constructive properties of vertical or horizontal structures, created by frequently repeating that connection. During the whole design process, the formal aspects of what the students were constructing, were visible and at the same time, the constructive qualities were tangible with there hands on a full size scale. While not paying attention to context, nor to function, they were able to concentrate on the integration of form and construction.status: publishe