Concept and Ideas – Part 3

No doubt that many of you will be present for the 4th year presentation tomorrow on Thursday, 29th March 2007. In principle, I would give the students the 'benefit of a doubt' and not make any judgment calls on them until they have proven themselves. Perhaps they will prove us wrong at the very last minute.

I don't intend to speculate too much without any substantial research into this problem but all the studio masters in the 4th year and also our guest panelists during last Interim Crit, in particular Huat Lim and Syed Sobri had commented on how the graphic presentation lacked in quality in terms of showing the ideas and concept.

Many students depended on their oral presentation where they lacked in sketches but we do not want to see finished drawings. We wanted to see the development of ideas. Clearly there was an overall lack of conceptual drawings and studies including the use of precedence studies in their work.

You would expect the students to come to a certain level of communication skill and competence to show how they developed and conceptualized their ideas in the 4th year but how much you looked, you are trying to find a connection which would help you visualize better, and its not there.

Huat Lim did say that this project is difficult and in my opinion the project may be difficult because the design process's stage by stage process was not well adhered to. The students are not well versed at coming up with the massing and concept together, and many of us except Huat Lim, would argue that they lacked manual drawing techniques and they lacked the know-how on how to conceptualize at the earliest stage. Huat Lim said that theoretically a designer should be able to use any medium, be it computer aided design techniques to conceptualize and hence communicate well by visualizing their work to others. I brought forward this suggestion to Encik Bakar from UiTM who had worked with Bryan Lawson on the book 'Design in Mind', where he stated that an 'experienced designer' could probably conceptualize with the computer as he / she has the data (design in mind) to already do so, but the student does not have enough experience hence they are trapped in the mechanics of the computer.

One of the students told me in an email that he was not good at 3 dimensional drawings, and that was his reason for the poor progress in his work. At first I thought it was more on being able to draw perspectives, but later I realized that it was more than that. He was not able to conceptualize even in plan and sections. And we all know that sections are 3 dimensional in how they could work out the ideas on space and form.

Most recent was my discussion with Gary Wong, a part-time studio master in the 4th year, where Gary agreed to the whole issue so far and that the students should have created a massing model on the computer based on the area of the building and then embellished the 3D model manually. Like Megat Ariff suggested (when he worked at ZLG Design) Huat Lim did his design work, by taking the 3D massing model, using just the tip-ex (liquid paper) and a 0.6 bold Artline pen he would then shape the formal and spatial aspects to complete a sketched 3D model of a building. Then Huat would give it to the designer to complete the 3D model in the computer.

I was trained with using the T square and technical pen like many of us teaching at this school. Do we find similar issues in the 2nd and 3rd year of studio as well as the 5th year? Are there areas where we should work in finding more about graphic communication skills with the different studios? And when should we start introducing the term 'concept' in the studio? Can someone share with us whether the term 'concept' was written in your learning outcomes of your studio course proforma?

For the sake of further discussion and arguments, please find the 4th year studio second semester learning outcomes below where we will see ourselves whether its achievable.

For BAES 4276, Advanced Architecture Design II, students will be able to:

1. Discuss and debate on issues pertaining to housing by studying and presenting case studies and literature review on the subject.
2. Formulate and plan within a structured programme the design of a high density housing project with considerable technical integration.
3. Develop and produce an appropriate architectural solution to the requirements of designing a high density housing project by studying and developing the project's brief requirements, producing a comprehensive site analysis, developing the massing of the scheme and appraising the context while respecting the building codes and legislative requirements.
4. Validate the concept proposed by providing a thorough analysis and case study of similar projects, producing reasoned ideas, especially on how to create spaces for communal interaction and creating a sense of place, identity or belonging and also creating a scheme with a holistic approach to the architectural solution by also focusing on the users requirements in their accommodated living units.
5. Critique their own design-work and revise their work in progress throughout the studio programme.
6. Practice and develop the correct communication skills in graphics and oral presentation which is essential to becoming an architect.

(The text above was an email message to the architecture department lecturers.)