Learning in design

Critical Analysis

In this article, the author examines the architecture studio, identifying the main surface structures, pedagogical activities, and resulting container epistemology of the studio.

Design follows the tradition of Beaux-Arts, emphasizing “open-ended projects and a variety of structured conversations that culminate in a public presentation of work.” These structured conversations often occur in a small (and typically one-on-one) context, where a student and a faculty member exist in what Vygotsky calls a zone of proximal development—students are unable to yet solve a given design problem on their own, but progressively grow their skills and internalize what they are doing, under the help of someone who already has established an understanding of action. This entire process is informed by models and artifacts, as those prompt the cycles of growth. Since much of this exists in a public space, it is shaped by the norms of a community of practice, both unique to an individual school and established and embedded in the culture of the discipline.

Three elements combine to structure a studio experience. These include the surface structures, made up of time, space, people and materials; the pedagogical activities, which are primarily social; and the epistemology that underlies what makes a claim of legitimacy in the discipline.

Space is one of the most apparent unique parts of a studio experience, as students have a uniquely disproportionate amount of area in which to do their work—students often have their own workspaces, and are also provided with group meeting spaces that are both formal and informal. Students customize their personal areas with “sketches, postcards, inspirational examples of architectural design, and even candy and other junk-food wrappers pinned up as merit badges for work done through the hours of the night.”

Time is unique in a studio. Classes are longer than in a traditional classroom, and are often much less structured than a student may be used to; the “informal approach to time in the studio made it difficult, sometimes, to organize activities.” The permanence of their spaces provides a way for students to leave their work in progress, supporting this unstructured process of time. And because there was an “open organization of time and space,” students were able to engage in large, meaningful experiences with a faculty member and with other students. These individualized experiences with faculty at the desk were “almost always supportive and nonjudgemental.”

Because design has no right or wrong, but only better and worse, there is “no standardized test at the end of the semester.” The large-group critique acts as a form of customized or personalized assessment, but in public. These are blunt and often extremely critical, and faculty argue that “a design is vulnerable to criticism when it doesn’t have a compelling idea.” The criticism is theoretically then aimed at the work itself. Educationally, studio critique is a set of activities that are “co-constructed for students in the context of their design training.” Social interactions are pedagogical, as they are in part purposefully designed to protect from that critical vulnerability.

Design education is unique in that “students were not merely solving problems; they were engaged in an iterative process of expressing—and thus shaping—their identities.”

Research Value

The value of this work in informing my own research is that it:

• Connects the role of space to time, as dedicated workspaces mean that students can use the large blocks of time at their convenience because their work is always accessible
• Notes that personalization of a space is related to the culture of the learning experience
• Emphasizes the lack of uniform assessment, and the directness of individualized assessment