STRUCTURES IN ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION: ITS TEACHING AND INTEGRATION IN DESIGN

Abstract

There has been a historical discord over curriculum and teaching practices for structures courses in Architectural education, as students are disinterested and not able to integrate learning from such courses into their design solutions. Alternative teaching practices for structures course experiment on course content and, between traditional teaching (a watered-down version of teaching practice used in engineering schools) to studio teaching (pedagogy unique to architectural education). A review of both traditional and alternative teaching practices for structures course in the architecture program for parameterslearning outcomes, teaching- learning activities, assessment, mode and learning modality, reveal two main research gaps. First questions the effectiveness of alternative teaching in learning improvement of students and, second is the need for holistic assessment of integration in students' design solutions- if integration is an indicator of improvement in learning outcomes. An assessment tool is developed from a comparative analysis of past frameworks to understand integration that assesses three dimensions of integration of structures (performance, physical and visual) against three building systems (exterior, interior and services). Around 27-30 samples are selected for each year from 1st to 4th from 3 institutions. Data for pedagogy and curriculum is also collected that is used to analyses the results from assessment of samples. It is found that the integration of structures is primarily affected by building typology as well as the inclusion of structures resolution in-studio mandate. In the second part of this research, structural equation modelling is used to analyse if the studio is the preferred mode of learning structures. Studio learning theories suggest that latent exogenous variables ‗Student- Teacher interaction‘; ‗Student –student interaction‘ and ―Student interest‘ affect the learning outcomes (endogenous latent variable). The study involves collecting responses using global measures for each of the above latent variables (15 Nos.) from architecture students in IIT-R, SPA-D, and SSAA- Gurgaon and, then applying statistical tool (SPSS and AMOS) to check for regression, model fitness, and conformation validity. The student interest plays a vital role in learning over ‗teacher-student interaction‘ and‘ student-student interaction‘ in learning outcomes. The results are validated for a sample of 30 students. This research finally brings together the findings that are useful in informing teaching methods for structures courses in architectural education.