FIRST YEAR STUDENTS’ VIEW OF ARCHITECTURE

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15320/ICONARP.2020.120

Keywords:

Architectural education, architectural pedagogy, architecture, schemata, prejudice structures

Abstract

Purpose

The present study investigates architecture students’ pre-established schemata or prejudice structures towards architecture before their formal education starts. This would be particularly deemed important since architectural pedagogy might be tweaked or even reformulated accordingly.

Design/Methodology/Approach

The research employs “content analysis” which is a method that uses set of tools and procedures to read texts for generating knowledge-based inferences. On such a ground, the research is based on single-sentence answers given to a simple question asked to students: “what architecture is all about.” and the recordings of a follow-up open-ended discussion with the students on the initial findings. The data is evaluated both quantitatively and qualitatively.

Findings

Findings indicate a series of pretexts in students’ responses, particularly a residing (historical) determinism, a belief in zeitgeist, a conservatism, a pessimistic, passive understanding of architecture. On the other hand, they did not relate architecture to newness, change, difference, innovation, and they did not conceive architecture as an agent of these aspects. Research shows that students’ horizon of expectations and their preconceptions about architecture seem to be quite a mismatch with any trajectory of architectural education tradition that might take these notions as essential to itself and its intellectual core.

Research Limitations/Implications

The study is aimed to be part of baseline data for carrying out future investigations, a step toward more systematic analysis of changing state of today’s architectural education and a larger/global effort to map this phenomenon with its possible effects in architectural education.

Originality/Value

The study makes an original contribution to knowledge by being one of the first studies to focus on the question of “what architecture is all about” on behalf of the first-year architecture students in Turkey.

Metrics

Metrics Loading ...

Author Biographies

Hakan Anay

Hakan Anay has bachelors, masters and Ph.D. degrees in architecture from the Middle East Technical University. Fields of interests are architectural design, design research, design criticism and theory.  He is one of the editors of the Architecture Theory Library project in ESOGU with Ülkü Özten.

Ülkü Özten

Ülkü Özten holds masters and Ph.D. degrees in Architecture from the Middle East Technical University. She teaches architectural theory and conducts design studio in Osmangazi University Department of Architecture. Fields of interests are architectural theory, design and epistemology. She is one of the editors of the Architecture Theory Library project in ESOGU with Hakan Anay.

References

Akin, O. (2001). Variants in design cognition. In C. M. Eastman, M. McCracken & W. Newstetter (Eds.). Design knowing and learning: Cognition in design education. Elsevier.

Akin, O., & Akin C. (1996). Frames of Reference in Architectural Design: Analysing the Hyper Acclamation (A-h-a-!), Design Studies, 17, 341-361.

Anderson, S. (1987). The fiction of function, Assemblage, 2, 18-31.

Bartlett, F. C. (1995) Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. Cambridge University Press.

Baudrillard, J. (2007). Utopia deferred: Writings for Utopie (1967-1978). (trans.) Stuart Kendall. Columbia University, New York, Semiotext(e).

Boullée, E. L. (1976). Architecture, Essay on Art. In H. Rosenau (Eds.). Boullée & Visionary architecture. New York, Harmony Books.

Cary, J. (2017). Design for good: A new era of architecture for everyone. Island Press.

Choay, F. (2005). Utopia and the anthropological status of built space, In Exit Utopia: Architectural Provocations 1956-1976, Munich, Prestel.

Colquhoun, A. (1981). Essays in architectural criticism: Modern architecture and historicity. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.

Craig, D. L. (2001). Stalking Homo Faber: A Comparison of research strategies for studying design behavior. In C. M. Eastman, M. McCracken & W. Newstetter (Eds.). Design knowing and learning: Cognition in design education, Elsevier.

Devlin, K. (1990). An examination of architectural interpretation: Architects versus non-architects. Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, 7 (3), 235-244.

DiMaggio, P. (1997). Culture and cognition. Annual Review of Sociology, 23, 263-287.

Gadamer, H. G. (1976). Philosophical hermeneutics. University of California Press.

Gombrich, E. (1969). In search of cultural history: The Philip Maurice Deneke Lecture 1967. Clarendon Press.

Harries, K. (1997). The ethical function of architecture. Cambridge, Mass. The MIT Press.

Hegel, G. W. F. (1943). Philosophy of right. Oxford University Press.

Hollein, H. (1968). Everything is Architecture. Bau, no. 1/2.

Jacob, F. (1993). The logic of life, a history of heredity. Princeton Science Library.

Jameson, F. (2012). Varieties of the utopian. In Atlas of transformation, JRP-Ringier.

Jauss, H. R. & Benzinger, E. (1970). Literary history as a challenge to literary theory. New literary history, no. 2 (1, A Symposium on Literary History).

Johnson, E. (1988). Expertise and decision under uncertainty: Performance and process. In The nature of expertise, Hillsdale New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Kohls, C., & Scheiter, K. (2008). The Relation between Design patterns and schema theory. In Proceedings of the 16th Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs (PLoP). Nashville, ACM.

Krippendorff, K. (2004). Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology. Sage Publications Inc.

Lawson, B. (2004). Schemata, Gambits and Precedent: Some factors in design expertise. Design Studies, 25 (5), 443-457.

Minsky, M. L. (1997). A Framework for representing knowledge. In Mind Design II. J. Haugeland. Cambridge, Massachusetts, A Bradford Book, The MIT Press.

More, T. (1988). Utopia. Cambridge University Press.

Newell, A. (1969). Heuristic programming: Ill-structured problems, Progress in Operations Research, 3, 361–413.

Oxman, R. (1994). Precedents in design: A computational model for the organization of precedent knowledge. Design Studies, no. 15 (2), 141-157.

Oxman, R. (2005). The Conceptual content of digital architecture: A content analysis in design. Arquitettura Revista, 1 (1).

Pevsner, N. (1957). An outline of European Architecture. Penguin.

Piaget, J. (1952). The Origins of Intelligence in Children. New York: International University Press.

Piaget, J. & Inhelder, B. (1969). The psychology of the child. Basic Books.

Pople, H. (1982). Heuristic methods for imposing structure on Ill-Structured problems: The structuring of medical diagnostics, in, Artificial Intelligence in Medicine. Boulder Colorado, Westview Press.

Popper, K. (1974). The Poverty of Historicism. Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Popper, K. (1945). Open Society and Its Enemies. (2nd ed.). Routledge.

Reitman, W. (1964). Heuristic Decision Procedures Open Constraints and the Structure of Ill-Defined Problems, New York, John Wiley & Sons Inc., pp 282–315.

Rowe, C. & Koetter, F. (1984). Collage city. Cambridge Mass., The MIT Press.

Rumelhart, D. E. (1980). Schemata: The building blocks of cognition. In Spiro R. J, Bertram C. B. and William F. B. (Eds.). Theoretical issues in reading comprehension: Perspectives from cognitive psychology, linguistics, artificial intelligence and education. Newark, International Reading Association.

Simon, H. (1973). The structure of ill-structured problems, Artificial Intelligence, 4, 181–201.

Tafuri, M. (1976). Architecture and Utopia: Design and the Capitalist Development, (trans.). Barbara Luigia Penta. Cambridge Mass., London, England, The MIT Press.

Tschumi, B. (2012). Architecture concepts: Red is not a color: Rizzoli.

Vitruvius (1914). The ten books on architecture. Harvard University Press.

Vidler, A. (2001). Diagrams of Utopia, in C. Zegher and M. Wigley (Eds.). The activist drawing: Retracing situationist architectures from Constant’s New Babylon to beyond. Cambridge Mass., London, England, The MIT Press,.

Voss, J. & Post, T. (1988). On the Solving of Ill-structured problems, in, The nature of expertise. Hillsdale New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Weber, R. P. (1990). Basic content analysis. Sage Publications, Inj.

Webster, H. (2008). Architectural education after Schön: Cracks, blurs, boundaries and beyond, Journal for Education in the Built Environment, 3 (2), 63-74.

Downloads

Published

21-12-2020

How to Cite

Anay, H., & Özten, Ülkü. (2020). FIRST YEAR STUDENTS’ VIEW OF ARCHITECTURE. ICONARP International Journal of Architecture and Planning, 8(2), 412–430. https://doi.org/10.15320/ICONARP.2020.120

Issue

Section

Articles