Comprehensive Architectural Design Dr. Yasser Mahgoub
THE COMPREHENSIVE DESIGN STUDIO • The comprehensive design studio is the academic environment that comes the closest to the practice of architectural design in an office. • As such, comprehensive design is supposed to cover: – – – –
theoretical as well as practical concerns, technological and programmatic demands, communicational and collaborative pressures, formalist and contextual expectations,
• at different architectural scales including the urban, the building, the room, and the detail.
Challenge 1: Underdeveloped projects due to following traditional pedagogic scheduling and methodologies. • It is quite common to devote 75% of studio time and effort to establish a design partí and then only 25% for developing the building ‘comprehensively.’’ • As a result, there is minimal time spent on the actual design development of the building. In the rush, off-the shelf details and readymade technological solutions are imported and used without adequate critique or elaboration. • Students learn and reinforce a familiar negative stereotype: developing a building is a mostly ‘nondesign’ and ‘dreadful’ activity. In large part, the problem also points to the lack of effective pedagogies that instill integration with other curricula into the design studio (i.e., structures, environmental controls, construction technology, digital media, etc.).
Challenge 1: Underdeveloped projects due to following traditional pedagogic scheduling and methodologies. • Responding to this serious shortcoming demands that we shift the focus of the studio pedagogy toward pursuing design comprehensiveness. In our proposal we alter our teaching attention and effort by inverting the time traditionally allocated to design phases; 20-25% of the time is spent in conceptual and schematic design, allowing 75-80% for design development and technical synthesis. • The challenges for this inverse approach consist of: (1) producing strong schematic design schemes in a very short period of time (2) applying clear, systematic, and open pedagogies that teach students how to develop schematic design to a point of believable constructability; (3) (3) keeping the students interested and excited about their projects throughout the entire process.
Challenge 2: Poor and uneven learning outcomes due to a false dichotomy between theory and practice.
Challenge 2: Poor and uneven learning outcomes due to a false dichotomy between theory and practice.
FIVE TEACHING STRATEGIES (1) Intensive Design Workshop. (2) Teamwork. (3) Curricular integration. (4) Critical Ideology. (5) Analog-Digital Media Migration.
FIVE TEACHING STRATEGIES (1) Intensive Design Workshop. • The studio is jump-started by an intensive, fourday, eight hour per day, stimulating workshop (Neiman & Bermudez 1997) that quickly provides students with a strong work ethic, a design methodology, and an architectural scheme. • Accelerating the schematic design phase allows the studio to devote more attention and effort to design development. The iterative nature of the workshop insures quality responses.
FIVE TEACHING STRATEGIES (2) Teamwork. • All studio activity is conducted in groups in order to provide the necessary critical mass to deliver a comprehensive architectural response. By working in teams, students learn collaborative skills, and mature ideologically and technically through close interaction with others of different backgrounds. The students discover and develop their own strengths as individuals. Learning that successful teamwork comes from a wise management of difference prepares soon-to graduate students for architectural practice, a cooperative enterprise. • A team of instructors who have overlapping and compatible interests teaches the studio. This supportive environment encourages teamwork that is engaged with energy and rigor, while permitting the individual’s voice to find its place.
FIVE TEACHING STRATEGIES (3) Curricular integration. • A major challenge of the comprehensive design studio is bringing together diverse knowledge spread out across the curriculum. One reason is that such knowledge (usually specific and well developed) comes at a level of definition inappropriate to the fuzzy state of an evolving design. Design teachers tend to overemphasize abstract and formal issues at the expense of balancing the frequently competing demands from each allied discipline. Our Professing Comprehensive Design Studio offers a method of ‘slow approximation’ that demands just-in time technical solutions but at a ‘resolution’ consistent with the conceptual underpinnings of the team’s project. This avoids unbalancing the design process with unnecessary detail, which in turn, encourages further design exploration and integration. • Construction materials, structural and environmental systems, programmatic, and other technical issues are brought in during the process to inform and enhance design decisions. As a result, non-studio curricula become ‘evolutionary’ and intimately embedded into the design schemes. • Faculty specialists participate in the studio as guest experts and the studio instructors lead a curricular area of their expertise in addition to design.
FIVE TEACHING STRATEGIES (4) Critical Ideology. • Ideological discourse is embedded up front into the studio culture, thus permeating the design process from the beginning. Thus, a theoretical position (which is actually where the term partí comes from) must be expressed in the building form, program and site, down to the details. Technical competency in each of these areas is ultimately tested in reference to the team’s ideology. In fact, critical ideology is used to determine relevancy when trying to decide among competing disciplinary interests. By making it impossible to avoid this matter, students must confront and learn that architectural expertise and responsibility are intrinsically tied to ideology and theory (Carr & Kemmis 1989). More importantly, it becomes quickly evident that it is not possible to take on a particular ideology without personal and emotional involvement. Intellectual positioning is an internal quest for what students believe, which in turn provides opportunity for the student’s emotional and attitudinal growth in character (Brooks 2001). Most learning theories show that personal involvement is at the root of making a lasting impression and change in students. (Beard 1969, Dewey 1966, 1938, Jonassen 1992, Piaget 1972, 1971).
FIVE TEACHING STRATEGIES (5) Analog-Digital Media Migration. • Since architectural decision-making is based on representations, media techniques and methods are of outmost importance in supporting and encouraging innovative design comprehensiveness. Thus, the studio’s inquiry is pursued through innovative analog-digital media migrations. The lens of media become vehicles to zoom in, study, and advance architecture through a poetics of representation that while remaining loyal to making pushes the boundaries of what we know (Neiman & Bermudez 1997, Neiman & Do 1999). The importance of media as a synthetic environment to assist continued, personal, and reflective design experimentation cannot be understated.
http://design.lsu.edu/architecture_work/arch-5001-comprehensive-architectural-design/
• Comprehensive Architectural Design focuses on the comprehensive design of a single building, integrating material selection, mechanical, acoustical, structural, lighting, and two- and three-dimensional studies. • The studio focuses on the comprehensive design development of a building program into a terminal project emphasizing the tectonics, mechanics, and presentation crucial to the profession. • The semester is arranged as an escalation, a step-bystep expansion where each phase informs the next. • The phases draw on the skills the students have accumulated in the past three years and combined, result in architecture.
Comprehensive Design Studio Examples
2013 - Oklahoma State University Technology Integration/Design Development • Design development issues are introduced in ARCH 4116. The comprehensive design studio, ARCH 4216, utilizes a semester-long project to introduce students to the design process from schematic design through construction documents. • Emphasis is placed on technology and systems integration, lowenergy design, and tectonics. • The course strongly parallels a co-requisite project management course and utilizes a co-requisite seminar course to introduce various topics in depth. • This course is collaboratively taught by five faculty; three architects, a structural engineer, and an engineer with expertise in mechanical systems, lighting, daylighting, and sustainability. • Additionally, students make presentations to and receive feedback from a number of professional architects and engineers. Both architects and architectural engineers take this course. http://arch-ceat.okstate.edu/comp_design
UCLA 414 Comprehensive Urban Building Design Studio • COMPREHENSIVE BUILDING DESIGN STUDIO FINAL WINTER REVIEW • Students conceive and develop a design proposal for the school whose future location they were asked to designate as part of their Fall term project. • The school will be a charter middle school (grades 6-8), intended to provide a neighborhood-controlled alternative to the public school serving the same catchment area. • It has also been deemed a “Magnet”, offering a particular focus on science, technology and the arts. It is aimed (and should be designed) to attract not just local students, but those from throughout the district. This school is also distinguished by the fact that it will serve as a demonstration project for the larger district in providing special services for homeless family education, offering extended stay school services, additional health and hygienic services.
UCLA • Some notes about its specific components: the school contains an even number of classrooms, to facilitate team teaching: 12 classrooms, 5 labs and one “flex” classroom. The flex classroom also doubles as a tech center which must be accessible to community use during off-hours. This is also the case for the Multi-Purpose space. Off-hours community access to these may be provided in another location than that for school hours/student entry. Though students may always eat in the 150-seat Cafetorium, the lunch shelter should be immediately accessible from the former, as well as to the food service area. As its name implies, the Cafetorium is the also site of most school assemblies, though larger gatherings such as theatrical and sports events may be held in the multipurpose room, which should be designed with that in mind. The Library includes most elements of the new district standard: stacks and reading areas are increased in number, as are support spaces for the increased number of students.
UCLA • Finally, some notes on access/security. The school must have a single point of entry for all students, which should be adjacent to and visible from the administrative office suite. The school must also have a drop-off/pick area both for parents’ cars (enough for 3 cars to line up), as well as for buses shuttling kids in from elsewhere in the district (2 school buses in length). These may be continuous or separate. The parking lot is for staff parking only. While the outdoor play and parking areas must be fenced and securable, off hours access to both is permissible and encouraged, provided it is controlled using the school as a portal.
The Catholic University of America School of Architecture & Planning • ARCH 402/503: Comprehensive Building Design Studio (CBDS) • Comprehensive Building Design Studio (CBDS) • Exploring the Integration of Building Systems, Materials, and Construction Methods into a Cohesive Whole
The Catholic University of America School of Architecture & Planning • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
ASSIGNMENT #9: Construction Documents and Material Specifications The AIA defines Construction Documents as “the written and graphic documentation prepared or assembled by the architect for communicating the design and administering the project.” CD’s convey the quantity, quality and configuration of construction and establish the contractual obligations between the owner and contractor. Typically a building permit is filed in the middle of this phase in order to prepare for construction at the end of this phase. CD’s are used by contractors to prepare a bid to complete the work. An abbreviated set of Construction Documents (Architectural) fully coordinated between structure and mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems is required The team as a whole will be required to submit plans, sections, and elevations overall. The following drawing list / template is a guide. The addition of drawings are based on individual design teams proposals. Overall dimensions and materials should be indicated on the drawings. A-0.1 General Notes Series A-2.0 Building Elevation Series A-1.0 Plan Series A-2.1 North / South Elevations A-1.1 Site Plan A-2.2 East / West Elevations A-1.2 First Floor Plan A-3.0 Building Section Series A-1.3 Second Floor Plan A-3.1 Building Sections A-1.4 Roof Plan A-3.2 Building Sections A-1.5 Reflected Ceiling Plan A-3.3 Building Sections
The Catholic University of America School of Architecture & Planning • • • • • • • • • • •
ASSIGNMENT #9: Construction Documents and Material Specifications In addition, each individual team member must document the particular wall section assigned for Assignment 7 with dimensions and material specifications, on a construction document. Each 3/4” wall section must be notated and referred back to the plan and section series of drawings. In addition, each student should blow up details of the wall section at 1 1/2” = 1’-0” including where the roof, intermediate floor (like second floor), and the ground plane meets the exterior building envelope. Again, dimensions tied back to column lines should be notated. In addition, specific material abbreviations should be outlined and then noted to the drawing. A-5.0 Wall Section Series A-6.0 Detail Series A-5.1 Wall Sections A-6.1 Details A-5.2 Wall Sections A-6.2 Details
UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO • ARCH 553 Comprehensive Design Studio Haglund Fall 2013 • Comprehensive design seeks to integrate all major building systems. A successful project will have well-developed and well-integrated schemes for: •
UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO Component
Methods of Presentation
Structural Systems
Annotated diagrams of vertical and horizontal systems.
Building Envelope
Detailed sections of wall-roof and wall-floor connections. Opaque and glass cladding details. Opaque model of thermal properties of wall and roof systems.
Environmental Systems
Diagrammatic of primary and back-up systems for heating, cooling, lighting, and water. Energy Star target for your building type. Thermal model of building performance (HEEDor IES Gaia). Lighting model as required.
Spatial Systems & Accessibility
Diagrammatic of access (ADA?), sequence, overlap, nesting, hierarchy, served, service—all that apply.
Site Design
Show integration of building and site ecologies.
Building Materials
List of primary building materials with notations on carbon debt calculated (tons) or estimated (none, low, average, high).
Integration of Systems
Conceptual diagram of how systems intertwine beautifully.
Integrative Design or Comprehensive Design!
6 Points 1- Simplicity: single function, simple building 2- Familiarity: an architect’s office, site visits is easy for the students 3- Pre-requisites: Don’t depend on pre-requisites, information don’t have to be learned before, different levels of students, expertise of the faculty. 4- Code Research: students do research on code requirements 5- Technical Reviews: several technical reviews after schematic design 6- Products: focus on understanding and ability
1- Project Scale: very critical element 2- Documentation: document coursework log (Design Studio Book) 3- Participate in competitions 4- Before the design research studio Investigation of the program Faculty members as a “Shared resource�
1- Group effort (common mind) 2- Iterative review: How to review? 3- Course lectures 4- Local consultants from professional offices 3rd year master program studio - Move to early in the program Projects ACAS competitions Teams or independent 16 weeks – meeting 2 times a week Assessment, evaluation sheets Visiting professionals Evidence of integration
Challenges • • • •
Collaboration from the faculty More responsibility on the faculty Volume of information Restrictions: Site and Program
Department of Architecture Strategic Plan 2016 – 2019
Department of Architecture Strategic Plan 2016 – 2019 • Thematic program structure, with parallel supporting courses & cross-curriculum integration • The structure of the Architectural Engineering program is unique. With the stream of 8 design studio levels at its core (Design Foundations, Design Studios I-VI, and Senior Thesis Design Studio), the curriculum progresses through a thematic graduation of subject areas, increasing in complexity, and culminating in the comprehensive Senior Thesis Design Studio. The concept behind this structure is to introduce students to the multidisciplinary nature of architectural design covering, in an accumulative manner, the 6 disciplines of: Behavior; Form and Space; Sustainability; Structure; Technology; and Historical Context. The Senior Thesis Design Studio presents a comprehensive capstone approach to design, incorporating all 6 themes. Each of these themes is reinforced by a series of supporting theoretical courses, integrated with the design process through design modules and joint faculty.
• Strong Demand for Specialized Graduate Programs in Egypt and the region • A further opportunity, yet to be fully taken advantage of, is the plan to establish a graduate program in architecture at AUC. Although not yet launched, the benefits could be to establish ties between graduate and undergraduate work, particularly at the upper tiers of the curriculum. This would help bridge cutting edge research, practice and education, creating unique opportunities for growth and increasing relevance to timely issues within the undergraduate program. There is currently a very strong demand for graduate programs in architecture in Egypt and the MENA region in very specialized domains such as building technology, environmental design, urban ecology, etc.