TRANSITIONING ARCHITECTURAL PEDAGOGY INTO THE VIRTUAL ERA VIA DIGITAL LEARNING METHODS

In an age of physical separation, a new pedagogical paradigm was established via the integration of pre-recorded videos, video conferencing, and online assessments to become hallmarks of the “new normal”. In architectural education, the hands-on learning methodologies were suddenly compromised, challenging design pedagogy to reconfigure how students integrate collaborative design, studio culture, and develop analog skills into virtual learning. This prompted the question, how can architecture be effectively taught and experimentally explored through distanced and virtual means? The recent COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted this pedagogical environment and extinguished the opportunity of accessioning collaborative facilities considering recent distancing parameters. Conducting a literature review on experiences of virtual teaching in the realm of architecture, the paper explores scenarios, surveys, and adaptations to an unprecedented full online architecture studio. The paper showcases a series of teaching modifications that prove to be useful in maintaining and improving student engagement and performance in virtual architectural pedagogy.

A pedagogical protocol for iterative robotic fabrication on remote grounds

PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to advance remote robotic fabrication through an iterative and pedagogical protocol for shaping architectural grounds. Advancements in autonomous robotic tools enable to reach increasingly larger scales of architectural and landscape construction and operate in remote and inaccessible sites. In parallel, the relation of architecture to its environment is significantly reconsidered, as the building industry's contribution to the environmental stress increases. In response, new practices emerge, addressing the reshaping and modulation of environments using digital tools. The context of extra-terrestrial architecture provides a ground for exploring these issues, as future practice in this domain relies on the use of remote autonomous means for repurposing local matter. As a result, the novelty in robotic construction laboratories is tied to innovation in architectural pedagogy.Design/methodology/approachThis paper puts forth a pedagogical protocol and iterative framework for digital groundscaping using robotic tools. The framework is demonstrated through an intensive workshop led by the authors. To situate the discussion, digital groundscaping is linked to several conditions that characterize practice and relate to pedagogy. These conditions include the experimental dimension of knowledge in digital fabrication, the convergence of knowledge as part of the blur between the fields of architecture and landscape architecture and the bridging of heterogeneous knowledge sets (virtual and physical), which robotic fabrication on natural terrains entails.FindingsThe outcomes of the workshop indicate that iterative processes can assist in applying autonomous design protocols on remote grounds. The protocols were assessed in light of the roles of technological tools, design iterations and material agency in the robotic fabrication.Originality/valueThe paper concludes with observations linking the iterative protocol to new avenues in architectural pedagogy as means of advancing the capacity to digitally design, modulate and transform natural grounds.

Ellington under Glass

In November 1957 Mies van der Rohe’s Crown Hall at IIT broke with convention when it became the venue for a jazz concert by Duke Ellington and his orchestra. This extraordinary event is reconstructed based on personal recollections, campus newspapers and other archival material. In the context of architectural pedagogy Crown Hall is appreciated as a supreme expression of Mies’s architectural philosophy, both for its spatial openness and its spiritual character. Here, influences from Mies’s own evolution as an architect intersected with developments in modern music and performance art it inspired. Parallels are uncovered between Ellington’s jazz and Mies’s steel and glass architecture, both distinctly American idioms that characterise post-war modernity. The Ellington concert at Crown Hall presented the perfect synthesis of people, space, light, music and nature. At the same time it attested to the disruptive potential that exists in jazz and modern architecture alike.

Digital cosmopoiesis in architectural pedagogy: An analysis through Frascari

This article derives from three observations of architectural drawing: the current ubiquitousness of digitization, the ongoing disputation of digitization in architectural pedagogy and the capacity of architectural drawing to simultaneously represent and communicate qualities of tangibility and intangibility. In its analysis, this article refers primarily to the writings of Marco Frascari (19452013), who was, through works such as Eleven Exercises in the Art of Architectural Drawing (2011), a strong critic of digital drawing. This article begins with an overview of the effects of digitization on architectural drawing, which are summarized in terms of their deleteriousness on the intangible qualities of architectural drawing, as seen predominantly in perspectives and sketches. This article then defines intangibility in architectural drawing and locates it within Frascari's theory of cosmopoiesis, and identifies marks, entourage (especially human entourage) and narrative as key elements of cosmopoiesis in architectural drawing. Finally, this article analyses the effects of digitization on architectural drawing from the standpoint of cosmopoiesis, with an emphasis on the key elements that were identified earlier, before concluding with some recommendations for preserving cosmopoiesis when drawing in a digital environment. This article holds that, in architectural pedagogy, a complete return to analogue drawing is neither feasible nor necessary because what is required instead is an awareness of the main areas in which digital drawing is most likely to fail, so that digital drawing retains the cosmopoietic qualities that characterize some examples of analogue drawing. This article argues that an understanding of the cosmopoiesis of architectural drawing is vital to transcending the apparent incompatibility of intangibility and digitization.