Generic elements and differences
In regard to the first research sub-question, the results show that the elements, as proposed and defined in the framework, can be recognized in the architectural design process of all designers interviewed. They may put different emphasis on what the elements stand for in their personal process, and they may differ in naming them, however, the elements were recognizable, at least to a certain extent. In fact, the spontaneous notions and words used to describe four out of five elements, nor the content didn’t seem to differ a lot. Only for the guiding theme, designers use a lot of different synonyms and descriptions. Basically, also these notions seem to mean and refer to the same thing: some kind of constant factor, emerging in and to a certain extent directing the design process. The interviewees experienced differently that what is called in the framework a guiding theme: from a clear personal fascination to a mystical existence.
In regard to the second sub-question, the way designers describe and interpret features and aspects provides a more profound and detailed understanding of the design process and more in particular the five defined elements. The most interesting topic in this respect is—again—the guiding theme. From the start of the development of the framework, the guiding theme was referred to as a “train of thoughts” (van Dooren et al.
2014). In the interviews, this seems to be confirmed and, moreover, it became more concrete. At least two important “centres of gravity” can be seen: an overall quality or set of qualities to be achieved by the designer, often project transcending, and a “crystallisation point”, often a spatial/formal, structural sketch, specific for the project at hand.
In regard to the third sub-question personal differences can be distinguished. Designers experiment in a well-structured or rather chaotic way, they work often or seldom digitally, and the emphasis is on analysis or association. Yet, these differences seem to be relatively small. They are partly due to personal preferences, partly due to the different nature of projects. Individual differences seem to be most prominent in the guiding theme. With the guiding theme, varying from a more or less conscious choice what qualities to achieve to the experience of the emergence of a continuous factor, a designer takes position and “imposes an order” (Schön
1987) in a particular personal way. At least for a part, directly related to the personal guiding theme is a personal library or frame of reference, a preference for certain principles, patterns and examples and regularly a certain emphasis on one or two domains.
In regard to the fourth sub-question, the elements seem to outline the basic design activities. To a certain extent, the choice of elements may always be a topic for discussion.
2 At the same time, there might be some logic in the proposed elements, in the context of the criteria (van Dooren et al.
2014): the elements have to be (1) generic, always present, (2) for educational purposes, to explain and train students, and (3) easy to remember, a clear overview.
Finally, in regard to the main research question the results show that the framework makes it possible to see and compare differences in personal views and approaches in relation to the underlying design process. Overall, the impression is that the framework lives up to what it was meant to be: a simple diagram of the underlying, basic, generic design activities, aimed at achieving and keeping an overview of the much more rich and nuanced design reality itself. Interesting in this respect are some spontaneous remarks. One designer (4) considered the framework to be useful to learn about his own design process. Another designer (14)—who, as a teacher, is particularly interested in exploring ways to help students in learning to design—thought the framework to be useful for education.
Looking back at the wide variety of design examples, mentioned at the start of this paper, the framework gives a deeper insight in the differences. In particular, they seem to be expressions of personal interpretations and choices of the guiding theme.
Limitations
Each research method has its specific strengths and limitations. In summarizing and labelling the interviews, we tried to stay close to what was said. Assuming that what was said, what was meant and what really happened in the designers’ way of working are more or less directly related. On the one hand, knowing that an expert practices his or her skills mainly implicitly, a limitation of interviewing is that designers may not be able to tell everything about their design approach. Interviewees differ in their awareness of their way of working, in their ability to explain things, in the ways in which they talk about the subject, and in their ‘black spots’ or biases. Also the situation and the interviewer may influence the course and outcome of the interview. On the other hand, structuring the interviews by the five elements may have helped the interviewees to think of different aspects of the design process, they should have overlooked otherwise. And the fact that the interviewees often accompanied their talking with sketching and showing projects or other examples, helped to make implicit knowledge explicit.
Having an overview of the interviews, it became apparent that some interviewees had a more subjective way of talking, whereas others were more objective. Some of the designers focused on what they, in contrast to others, saw as ‘good’ architecture. Other designers focused on facts and features of their way of working. In fact, here we see the difference between positioning yourself within the architectural debate and describing your way of working.
Also the process of analysing and labelling may cause limitations. The process of labelling was directed by the framework of five generic elements and the questions regarding aspects and personal differences, being the main topic of the research. Although the process focused clearly on the research question, there is always a risk that this leads to a tunnel vision. To avoid this, we asked for general remarks or critique on the framework (sub question 4) and tried to stay as open minded as possible.
In the context of this research the conclusion is that interviewing designers in a semi-structured way is suitable as a first exploration to see if the framework is useful in mapping similarities and differences. During the interviews, the primary focus was on discovering if and in what way all the elements of the framework were recognized. Next to that, learning about the features and about new details and connections was also aimed at. The interviews ended at the point where no new information seemed to come up. However, then new questions emerged. These may be answered by research with a different approach: structured questioning and observation. For example, an interesting topic is the relation between on the one hand being open-minded, taking nothing for granted and on the other hand doing a lot of basic, familiar work. In the interviews the former is mentioned 4 times and the latter only 1. This seems to correspond with design education where teachers often emphasize the importance of being open-minded and “forget” to tell about the basic, familiar work. Designers may be less aware of the role of this topic in their design process. Also interesting in the context of design education would be to have more detailed examples of the elements. Observing designers at work will give a more concrete and detailed insight in their way of working. It should clarify the design process and bridge the gap between the abstract and the concrete level.
Implications for design education
The interviews show and confirm what may to a certain extent be called a Babylonian confusion of tongues; everybody speaking a different language, from different perspectives and with different ideas about the “right” approach, but in the end about the same content, about “building the tower”. In the debate and the architectural practice, it may be the way designers show their uniqueness, in design education it seems to be a gap, for students a source of confusion.
Having a first confirmation that designers recognize the elements and that the framework may help in showing differences in personal approaches in relation to underlying basic design activities, naturally, besides doing more research in this respect, the next question is whether and how the framework may be used in design education.
First, the framework may help in creating a common educational “language” about the design process. By using the same notions for the most important design activities or at least relating various notions with each other, the Babylonian confusion may be reduced. Regarding the second perspective in design education models mentioned above in the Introduction, the framework of generic elements makes use of and summarises what researchers have found out about the cognitive aspects of the design process. In a particular way it combines both directions: the framework is grounded in designing as a reflective practice, but it does not exclude aspects of rational problem solving.
Designers all have their own way of talking about the design process. Parallel to that, in their role of teachers they don’t seem to be used at all to talk about the design process. Personal observations in design classes suggest that most of the time they seem to talk with students about ‘product aspects’, such as light, spatial experience, the proportion of space or mass and technique. The framework offers teachers and students in architecture a vocabulary to make the underlying design process more explicit.
Some examples will illustrate this. Teachers could and should explain more than once that designing is a matter of experimenting. Designing is a matter of questioning yourself “what if I do this?”. It is a matter of coming up with alternative solutions and possibilities, reflection and decision making. It may be structured or unstructured. Opening one’s mind for different solutions prevents a designer from getting stuck, helps learning about the design task and improves the quality of the design at hand. Teachers should also explain that experimenting is also for expert designers in most cases only possible by sketching and making ‘quick’ models. The laboratory functions as an extended memory to store all kinds of information and is necessary to discover (unexpected) implications of experimental solutions. Teachers’ explanations could be accompanied by visuals. Not in a perfectly expert way, but simply by showing the students how they themselves have to experiment and sketch to find out what happens, what kind of implications (and surprises) may come up, what they see in a sketch and what they think of it. By doing so, they may illustrate what Schön (
1987) calls a ‘conversation with the situation’ and ‘reflection-in-action’.
In relation to the stages students go through from novice to master (Dreyfus and Dreyfus
1986; Lawson and Dorst
2009), the way in which the vocabulary could be used, may differ per stage. For example, for novices experimenting and choosing a guiding theme may be a straightforward matter, ‘applying the rules’. In later stages, experimenting and working with guiding themes may be more nuanced, complex and related to the situation at hand. Then all kinds of different aspects of the elements could be involved, such as finding your personal guiding theme or ethical aspects.
Furthermore, regarding the third perspective in design education models mentioned above, the framework could also be used within the context of the educational process, by making implicit activities in the process of learning-by-doing explicit. It may help teachers in coming up with learning goals, assessment criteria and design tasks. It should help teachers make explicit which activities students should train with greater focus to internalize ‘thinking designerly’. For example: sending students home with a design assignment ‘to work on’ or telling them to ‘think out of the box’ is a far cry from asking them to come up with a number of alternative ideas or to explore and experiment with different solutions and reflect on them. Examples of process oriented learning goals are: ‘being able to come up with different ideas and solutions and reflect on them’, ‘being able to translate a vision or idea in a concrete, project related (spatial) scheme’ and ‘being able to reduce and abstract all kinds of information into the essence’.
Secondly, in particular in the context of this paper, the framework may then also work as an anchor point, from which you can recognize and show different approaches. Regarding the first of the three perspectives in design education models mentioned above, in a multiform society the framework is meant to go beyond the cultural and personal differences in method or approach and make them explicit to students—(1) to achieve an overview of the architectural debate and all kinds of positions in it, (2) to compare them and understand all kinds of similarities and (personal) differences, and (3) as a result, to be better equipped to develop a personal approach.
Differences in approach related to the design task at hand, could and should be explained, discussed and compared. For example, working chaotically or structured, and the balance between associative thinking and analysing, are important issues within the element of experimenting. Making these differences explicit is (again) a matter of explaining in combination with experiencing them. Students should not only follow implicitly a design teacher in his or her way of designing, but should also explicitly practice different ways of working in design tasks. For example, it may be helpful for students to be told about and experience explicitly the differences between sketching-by-hand and computer modelling and the effect they have on the outcomes of their design processes. This may improve their ability to select the most adequate way of working for the design at hand.
Apart from such smaller differences, the development of a personal view on architecture is an important issue. Students often experience confusion because teachers—being expert designers—talk about architecture from their personal angle. For example, one designer (8) considers architecture as creating a place with identity, to make the city richer, whereas another designer (9) considers architecture as using technique in a smart way and a third one (1) considers architecture as sculpturing and playing with light. With the framework, designers (read teachers) might be able to position themselves. This may help in distinguishing talking about the generic design process and showing the personal design process as an illustration. It may help separating discussions on ‘what is good architecture’ from practicing generic activities. And it may help guiding students to explore their personal way of working. Students may develop a greater ability for ‘naming and framing’ (Schön
1983,
1987) and for positioning the different personal visions of designers and teachers in particular. By understanding and experiencing differences, they may be able to develop their own preferences in vision and approach.
In fact, in making explicit the design process, there could and should be an interesting role for what in the framework is called the guiding theme. In showing the differences in the personal design approaches, in coming up with all kinds of personal influences, the framework transcends the ‘technical rational’ description of common design process activities (see the second perspective in design education models mentioned above in the Introduction). The framework provides in ‘objective’ similarities and the open palette of ‘personal’ perspectives in designing the future. Here, also the door may be opened for cultural and ethical discussion as well.
With the choice of a guiding theme—being a lifelong fascination or a fascination in the context of a project—a designer takes position. Here the personal may be the most expressive. Bielefeld and El Khouli describe it this way: “Every design begins with a search for an idea or for an intuitive understanding of how an assignment should be solved. This idea is the start of a long journey on which the designer defines the idea more precisely, modifies it, adds details and repeatedly rejects results” (
2007, p. 7). “This design perspective is often directly related to the designers’ character, and is not limited to interaction with architecture. It can be an expression of an entirely personal worldview and associated with a broader social context or philosophy, developing a design perspective is this part of an individual maturation process and cannot be forced or artificially produced” (
2007, p. 14). It might be helpful for students and teachers to focus as explicitly as possible on these aspects, both in the process of learning-by-doing in the studio and in lectures and other information sources around the studio. A “philosophy of the guiding theme” should be at least concerned with (1) the particular aspects of (working with) a guiding theme, also in relation to the other elements, and (2) its character, which means an almost endless number of differences in cultural and personal views and ideas.
Moreover, a “philosophy of the guiding theme” is an example of bridging the gap between theory and practice, between courses around the studio and the studio itself. Architectural design education often seems to be (implicitly) grounded in the assumption that courses give information and students have to bridge the gap by themselves. They have to comprehend all kinds of relations between courses and in particular they have to understand how to apply knowledge in practice. Students may get a better picture when the different courses and studios are related to each other. For example, courses about all kinds of knowledge could include rules of thumb and principles and patterns, being the translation between theory and practice, and could show that knowledge provides in possible experiments in designing.
In this paper the focus is on the personal design methods and approaches (of the interviewees) in relation to the underlying generic elements in the design process. However, transcending the personal approaches, cultural tendencies could be recognized in architectural methods as well (see for example, Leupen et al.
1993; Bielefeld and El Khouli
2007; Jormakka
2008). It is expected that cultural tendencies, often described afterwards in historical overviews, might be related to the generic elements as well. A “philosophy of the guiding theme” could be extended with these cultural tendencies. Here, guiding themes, cultural situation, architectural history and ethics may come together. For example, in a course students had to design a piece of furniture with themes that originated from historical pieces of furniture. Teachers concluded that the design process became more focused (being already ‘halfway’ a guiding theme) and students learned about guiding themes and architectural history also by experience.
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To conclude: focusing on architectural design education from the perspective of the design process may add new views and connections. With the introduction of the framework, as a construction or perspective to study the design process and in particular the personal similarities and differences in the way of working of architectural designers, the emphasis on information that used to be implicit will give rise to a new understanding and experience but also to new questions. It is to be hoped that teachers and students will be triggered to talk more explicitly about their own and others design process, that they will learn about it and will develop a greater ability to define their personal position.