Introduction

“First we build the tools, then they build us”
Marshall Mcluhan

Over the last decade, the use of digital technologies has increasingly become a common tool for the discourse and education of architectural students . Widespread access to open-source parametric and algorithmic design tools, and fabrication technology, constitutes an evolution in the architectural design process in direct challenge to traditional teaching methods. However, there have been few reports on what students are actually learning, through digital fabrication courses, or the relevance of the skills required for implementing CAD/CAM tools at the basic design level. How students interact with ‘digital’ in their first year of architecture education greatly affects the remainder of their education. Despite exploring and experimenting for the purpose of implementing digital media into architecture curricula by various researchers (Celani, 2012; Duarte et al, 2011; Liapi et al., 2012), it is still possible to observe among graduation projects from many architecture schools that students tend to use computers as a ‘representation tool’ instead of exploiting the potentials of parametric and algorithmic design, per se.

Two directions have emerged in terms of embedding digital technologies into architectural design education: discrete and merged pedagogical models. What we call ‘discrete’ refers to the pedagogical models in which digital technologies are introduced independently from the architectural design studio. On the other hand ‘merged’ pedagogical models refer to direct embeds of digital technologies within the realm of the traditional design studio. Each direction has brought its own limitations. In recent years, it has been observed when digital technologies are introduced to first year architecture students as a discrete skill, the students often have difficulties implementing this skill further into their design process/studio. However, when digital technologies are introduced within the traditional design studio, it is often seen that the complexity of digital media interfaces and complex nature of the architectural design process, together lead to superior outcomes. At this point new pedagogical explorations, other than these bipolar strategies are required to enrich the students’ comprehension of the digital technologies. The experience of algorithmic thinking, with Carpo’s (2011) words ‘the new alphabet’ of the digital era, requires new pedagogical perspectives. We argue it is crucial when introducing digital technologies to basic design education, to enhance the connections between observable relations/algorithms of the physical world and their abstract representations in the digital environment. Digital tools may be integrated early in the design process, facilitating mock-up fabrication and allowing novice designers to interact more meaningfully when compared with common attitudes for traditional studies. Additionally,  the scope and the context of the design question need to be simplified in comparison to the traditional design process. While introducing digital technologies to first year students, decreasing of the amount of unknown variables not only encourages student motivation, but also helps them focus on exploring relatively complex interfaces. With this in mind, in order to evaluate the computational approaches for basic design education, this paper aims to discuss the interrelations between the process and the outcome of the innovative student work from Art and Design Studio-1, a one-day intense digital fabrication workshop.

The first section will investigate the context of the workshop, the intellectual search for proper curricular goals and the teaching methodologies utilized. This will be followed by a critique of the actual student work produced. Merging the workshop discussion and methods, provides a framework for a digital fabrication pedagogy and highlights the parametric design skills gained by students. This paper concludes with a review of the work from a standpoint of innovation in basic design education and showcases how the CAD/CAM pedagogies provide a rich context for students’ learning and research.

Workshop:  Magnetic Relations – Playground Design

To both celebrate and question the 10th year anniversary of the Architecture Department at Izmir University of Economics, a one day panel entitled Trans_Arch_Edu, was organized on the transformation of architectural education. The panel, composing two sessions, saw important figures from the Turkish curriculum of architectural and design education sharing their ideas on two main subjects; interdisciplinary issues in architectural education and computational design in both architecture and architectural education.

Within the faculty of Fine Arts and Design, a shared curriculum Art and Design Studio course is conducted for all students from various departments. The challenge for this workshop was to offer the same exercise to all students, 34 first-years’ and two second-years’ participated, having no prior experience in digital fabrication or modeling. The theme of the workshop touched two aspects: deconstruction and exploration of the holistic algorithm of a magnetic field, and generating design ideas for a playground in a defined site. The playground theme was selected because of its simple, open-ended design task, which can be easily approached in limited time. The structure of the workshop considered the number of students, their level of computation experience and the short time allowance. The body of the workshop covered three main parts: introducing a basic definition of magnetic behaviour in a Visual Scripting Environment (VSE-Grasshopper), adaptation of this definition to reach design goals, and final fabrication of designs through CAD/CAM tools. With this brief introduction, and challenge to produce a playground structure model, students were divided into teams and given plug-and-play freedom in order to create complete definitions for their designs. The final part would include the integration of digital fabrication with the initial design ideas, and the participants were encouraged to use sketches, drawings of the site, photos and physical models, before preparing their digital models for fabrication.

VSE, as a parametric digital design tool, is by no means simple to command, even for highly experienced designers. However, this workshop was conducted as an experiment in possibility, to gain an overview of the strengths of CAD/CAM without going through the normal channels of gaining a foundation in other 2D and 3D design tools. While reducing the actual value of possible outputs, this approach also brought simplified configuration and no escape for students to create their design in other interfaces.

When the introduction to VSE was complete, the group divided into their teams of 4-6 students. Each team comprised a mix of students from the departments that make up the Basic Design class: Architecture, Fashion Design, Interior Architecture and Environmental Design, Industrial Design and Visual Communication and Design. Each team designated members to focus on sub-tasks during the design process, with some analyzing the site and its potential functions, some creating sketches and mock-up’s for the stated requirements, and others focusing on the VSE definition. As these sub-groups performed their tasks, they also conducted a continuous feedback to the remainder of their team. This paper will present how the teams performed through the entire process of initial acquaintance with VSE, the analysis and graphical visualization of each step, and comparison of each group's design progress according to the metaphor used: Word’-’Sentence’-’Paragraph’. In addition, this paper will discuss the significance of the application on each sample design to the early design process and final product.

The ‘Word’-’Sentence’-’Paragraph’

The introduction of VSE is considered like teaching/learning a foreign language. We define the instructive introduction of the vocabulary elements of the VSE as ‘word’. The ‘sentence’ method within the VSE requires creating and understanding the relational representation of things. We use the ‘sentence’ metaphor for referring predefined algorithms of VSE. The term ‘paragraph’ refers to the explorative experiments with the algorithms.

Within VSE definition for magnetic field and predefined fabrication technique with plug-in on VSE; several teams used same fabrication option after slight changes and got their final model easily. Some groups pushed the boundaries with requests for different methods, such as triangulate the surface rather than using the presented fabrication technique of waffle structure. The variations in requests were important, as the teams could see how different definitions could be linked, and how two different complete definitions can create a paragraph.

Having learned about file-to-factory and the simple rules to create models, the digital design process ended with Computerized Numerical Controlled (CNC) fabrication, which involved laser-cutting the cardboard elements of each model. After this creative session, the groups gathered their pieces for assembly and final presentation.