Aims

This module aims to broaden and expand your architecture and spatial design skills, building on the knowledge and learning developed during your first year of study. Importantly, the module aims to develop and nurture your evolving understanding of prominent and important topics, ideas, and agendas shaping contemporary architecture design culture.

These topics, ideas, and agendas include:

• Developing and broadening your understanding of various design methods, techniques, and strategies with a view to integrating these approaches into your own design process.

• Developing and broadening your awareness of global architecture practice and culture, inclusive of precedents, practices, ideas, and theories influencing contemporary architecture design and construction.

• Developing and expanding your understanding of the current challenges posed by the global climate emergency and how these challenges might be addressed and considered through architecture design and practice.

• Developing, broadening, and nurturing your skills in communication and representation through visual, verbal, and written methods.

• Developing and broadening your understanding of professional architectural practice and your responsibility as an emerging professional to uphold ethical standards and adhere to essential regulatory frameworks.

In addition, this module also seeks to provide you with opportunities to:

• Work both independently and collectively in small peer and study groups.

• Synthesise and integrate knowledge, learning, and skills acquired from parallel taught modules.

• Continue to shape and develop your own personal ethics and values as a designer.

Outline Of Syllabus

ARC2095 Architectural Design 2.1 is a semester long architectural design module.

The module delivers project-based learning through two design projects. These projects will allow you to develop your skills at designing a small-to-medium scale public building within a broader urban, civic, and ecological context. Across the semester, you will engage more explicitly with theories, practices and technologies of the arts and consider how they may influence your design decisions. You will also develop more in-depth insights into designing for specific building occupants with a view to translating these insights into detailed design and spatial propositions, communicated using a range of appropriate representational techniques.

Both projects across the semester require you to engage and respond to a project brief that sets-out the scope and requirements of a design you are required to develop and propose to satisfy project and module assessment criteria. Project briefs are structured to develop and nurture critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, as well as encouraging your engagement with contemporary issues and ideas shaping how we design and maintain our built and natural environments.

Throughout each project, and across the duration of the module, you are encouraged to engage and experiment with a wide variety of design methods, practices, and techniques that are introduced to you through scheduled learning and teaching activities including small group teaching sessions, lectures, module talks, and project-related workshops. Your engagement with various methods, practices, and techniques will form the basis of a clearly documented design process that you are expected to develop across the duration of each project. Your design process should inform the development of a declared design proposition that responds to key expectations and requirements of the project brief.

Opportunities will be provided for you to work both independently and collectively in small peer groups to help you develop important creative and collaborative team-working skills that are essential to professional architectural practice. You will also have opportunities to present your ideas in a variety of formats, from conventional design review 'pin-up's' through to more expansive and immersive exhibitions of large-scale models, drawings, and installations.

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Scheduled learning and teaching activities are largely delivered through small group teaching. You will meet with a small group of peers and a design tutor on a weekly basis during Semester 2 in order to discuss your work and development of your project. The delivery of these small group teaching sessions can take a number forms, from seminar style discussions through to more structured oral presentations. Small group teaching sessions operate as the primary teaching and learning activities, aiding development of module learning learning and skill outcomes through regular dialogue with both design tutor(s) and peers.

Small group teaching activities are further supported by other scheduled learning and teaching activities including lectures, module talks, and workshops that explore a variety of related and important themes and ideas associated with the module. Theses session also aid the development of both module and project specific learning and skill outcomes.

Throughout the course of the module, you will be expected to conduct both structured guided learning and guided independent study to support a thorough and well-documented submission in accordance with Semester 2 project briefs and assessment criteria. Both structured guided learning and guided independent learning should reflect and respond to discussions and dialogue conducted during weekly scheduled learning and teaching activities with your peers, design tutor(s), module leader(s), or invited guest contributors e.g. reviewers or guest lecturers.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

Summative assessment will take place at the end of the semester. Each project submission is awarded a final grade (0-100) constituting a specific percentage of the overall module grade. The final module grade will be awarded as an averaged total grade (0-100) from grades awarded for both semesters’ projects.

The assessment criteria for the semester's project submission are based on the learning outcomes and assessment criteria outlined in respective project briefs. The assessment criteria in all design projects broadly integrates the following expectations:

1) Demonstration of a considered and thorough design process offering a clear relationship to a declared design proposition.

2) Evidence of engagement with ethical and professional considerations that assist design decision-making.

3) Declaration of a design proposition.

4) Evaluation and integration of construction and material considerations.

5) Application of a range of representation techniques to coherently communicate both design process and proposition.

At certain interim points in the semester, you will receive formative feedback indicating broad performance to assist you with further developing project submissions that are consistent with project assessment criteria.