Lohren R Deeg
Ball State University, Urban Planning, Faculty Member
- Lohren Deeg has Bachelor of Science (Honors), Bachelor of Architecture, and a Master of Architecture Degree from Ball... moreLohren Deeg has Bachelor of Science (Honors), Bachelor of Architecture, and a Master of Architecture Degree from Ball State University, and is now a faculty member in the Department of Urban Planning. Lohren has served with two University planning and urban design outreach programs, including “Community Based Projects” since 1996, as well as the “CAP:IC” (College of Architecture and Planning Indianapolis Center) since 2001. Through these Lohren has participated in, assisted, and facilitated a number of intensive in-situ community design workshops, commonly called “charrettes,” in municipalities across the United States, as well as Italy, Australia, and New Zealand. A number of these projects have gone on to win awards from the American Planning Association as well as regional awards.
Lohren collaborates with the Sustainable Communities Institute, in Muncie, Indiana. The SCI’s mission is to facilitate sustainable strategies and practices for food, water, and energy at the municipal and neighborhood level. SCI promotes the use of closed loop aqua-ponic agricultural systems as a method of growing food and providing employment in challenged communities. Lohren has worked on a comprehensive plan for the town of Bremen, Indiana, a food hub for a North-west neighborhood in Indianapolis, and has contributed to a number of site plans for sustainable living and growing center concepts. Lohren’s work with SCI received a people’s choice award for a competition entry to the Baltimore Growing Green Initiative that included a number of entrepreneurial, educational, and urban agriculture concepts. That project also went on to win an Honor Award for best proposed project at the 2014 Making Cities Livable Conference in Bristol, United Kingdom.
Previous collaborations included the firm of S3 Architects in Muncie. Lohren’s work with them led to a third place judge’s award for the Indianapolis Monument Circle Ideas Competition in 2011. Other collaborations include work with Eden Collaborative of Indianapolis, illustrating several concepts for the Carmel (Indiana) Urban Design Initiative in 2006. Continuing collaborations with MKM Design Inc. and the Indiana University Center on Aging and Community allow Lohren to engage with design and planning issues for aging populations.
Lohren also maintains a small illustration practice as a member of the American Society of Architectural Illustrators (ASAI) with a small number of clients and projects across the architecture, urban design, and planning disciplines.
Engaging citizens with graphic media in a “before and after” comparison has proved to be an effective medium of democratic, open communication and discussion in the conversations of architecture, historic preservation, planning and community development. The facilitation of community visioning is a driving force of Lohren’s practice, skills, teaching, and research.
Lohren’s designs and illustrations have been published in several newspapers, action and comprehensive plans, a number of books, and have been exhibited as part of a number of national and international design competitions. Lohren’s international travel and current research into successful urban design practices and projects is culminating into a book in process called The Details of Placemaking.edit
This paper is a reflection on several artistic and illustrative works completed over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, culminating in prepared studio activities, a faculty salon exhibit at the author’s host university, and a gallery... more
This paper is a reflection on several artistic and illustrative works completed over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, culminating in prepared studio activities, a faculty salon exhibit at the author’s host university, and a gallery talk with fellow faculty. Ideas, insights, and implications for future student exercises and projects are explored here. Confronting the persistent questions of how does one begin a drawing or a design process is investigated. New interpretations and the social media dissemination of traditional media, particularly during the lockdown period, imply a new and refreshed respect for 2D and 3D creativity and expression in the midst of the information age and the emergence of AI engines in design processes and representation.
Research Interests:
In the interests of enhanced collaborative methods of design thinking, design communication, representation and rapid ideation, this article examines how a series of related activities and events, ‘catenated’ together, or forming a... more
In the interests of enhanced collaborative methods of design thinking, design communication,
representation and rapid ideation, this article examines how a series of related activities and events,
‘catenated’ together, or forming a ‘catena’1 of design thinking, could create a clearer, more meaningful
and more efficient portfolio of work for a beginning design studio. Drawing inspiration upon the
operative verbs found in the work of sculptor Richard Serra,2 and using the artefacts from such activities
to create generative design products and iterations across a semester schedule, this paper chronicles a series of active in-class collaborations over the course of a semester that allowed a cohort of students to connect a series of design projects together, rather than experience a series of unconnected learning objectives as was typical. References to learning theories including Jerome Bruner’s spiral curriculum and David Kolb’s theory of experiential learning3 informed the inquiry.
representation and rapid ideation, this article examines how a series of related activities and events,
‘catenated’ together, or forming a ‘catena’1 of design thinking, could create a clearer, more meaningful
and more efficient portfolio of work for a beginning design studio. Drawing inspiration upon the
operative verbs found in the work of sculptor Richard Serra,2 and using the artefacts from such activities
to create generative design products and iterations across a semester schedule, this paper chronicles a series of active in-class collaborations over the course of a semester that allowed a cohort of students to connect a series of design projects together, rather than experience a series of unconnected learning objectives as was typical. References to learning theories including Jerome Bruner’s spiral curriculum and David Kolb’s theory of experiential learning3 informed the inquiry.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In the interests of enhanced collaborative methods of design thinking, design communication, representation, and rapid ideation, the authors of this paper examine how a series of related activities and events, borrowing the term “Catena”... more
In the interests of enhanced collaborative methods of design thinking, design communication, representation, and rapid ideation,
the authors of this paper examine how a series of related activities and events, borrowing the term “Catena” (1), could create a
clearer, more meaningful, and more efficient portfolio of work for a beginning design studio. Drawing inspiration from
collaborative games the Surrealists used to generate ideas, and using the artifacts from such activities to create generative design
products and iterations, this paper chronicles a series of active in-class collaborations over the course of a semester that allowed a
“post-millennial” (2) generation of students to envision Italo Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities (3) in ways that addressed their
observed attention spans in this decade of the information age and in the context of a distance learning situation spurred by a
global pandemic.
the authors of this paper examine how a series of related activities and events, borrowing the term “Catena” (1), could create a
clearer, more meaningful, and more efficient portfolio of work for a beginning design studio. Drawing inspiration from
collaborative games the Surrealists used to generate ideas, and using the artifacts from such activities to create generative design
products and iterations, this paper chronicles a series of active in-class collaborations over the course of a semester that allowed a
“post-millennial” (2) generation of students to envision Italo Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities (3) in ways that addressed their
observed attention spans in this decade of the information age and in the context of a distance learning situation spurred by a
global pandemic.
Research Interests:
This paper will examine questions regarding effective and efficient graphic communication in the context of community planning, as well as the documented reactions of the general public to the imagery and ideas that community-based design... more
This paper will examine questions regarding effective and efficient graphic communication in the context of community planning, as well as the documented reactions of the general public to the imagery and ideas that community-based design and planning charrettes produce. Key questions regarding the political relationship between recognized public participation methods and charrette drawings will also be examined. Student and alumni feedback, as well as literature review, will evaluate the effectiveness of said techniques, as well as their applicability to opportunities of collaborative design and planning across the allied disciplines. This paper and the course it describes are intended to showcase and inspire the re-visiting of hand drawing and sketching techniques that can unlock potential in design communication and design-based planning activities conducted in the public interest.
Research Interests:
In the design process, the choice of media itself is an influence on the product of the thinking. The bold gestures of the felt tip pen can yield great mystery in the ambiguity and contrast of tone. The fine line pen yields a precision... more
In the design process, the choice of media itself is an influence on the product of the thinking. The bold gestures of the felt tip pen can yield great mystery in the ambiguity and contrast of tone. The fine line pen yields a precision and attention to great detail, and is a slowing effect to the thought process when covering areas of tone and pattern. The graphite pencil yields expressive subtleties in light, shade, and shadow. Watercolor works with graphite in a fluid, loose, expressive pass, and a great attention to layers and drying. Pixel painting demands a level of precision and realism along with a collage mentality. Different methods yield different results, and perhaps yield different insights into design thinking. When designers are challenged with problems that require intense thought, problem solving, and visioning, they are often drawn to their favored methods of design communication to formulate ideas and ground them in a rich media specific tradition, whether traditional, digital, or hybrid. They are also often challenged with a short timeline, whether pressed with a limited number of billable hours, or other time constraints. In a diverse, digital world with a vast network of design communication and illustration professionals, eager to win commissions, visioning has become a line item for some professional practices, outsourcing delineation, illustration, and even conceptual design. The author regularly receives emails from twelve time zones away advertising these services for a fraction of what is typically charged domestically. Visualization and representation is still an integral part of design education in the environmental design professions, with drawing conventions and skills steeped in history, valued by educators and professionals alike. Further, the ability to generate images quickly in minutes, as opposed to hours or weeks, is both remaining and recovering its value to emerging and practicing designers.
Research Interests:
Capturing a message of meaning as contained in the milieu of the contemporary city and its architecture presents new challenges for a student often classified as a digital native. As a response, the authors of this study chose to use... more
Capturing a message of meaning as contained in the milieu of the contemporary city and its architecture presents new challenges for a student often classified as a digital native. As a response, the authors of this study chose to use music and gaming as vehicles to engage students in processes of abstraction, analysis, interpretation, and craft. The sense of time and meaning, as embodied in instrumental music and the ancient game of chess, challenged design students to develop ideas
associated with sequential space and city form. Mobile media technology in the form of analyzing music, learning the game of chess, mapping and providing information in field study, and surveying student reactions were employed. Structured methods of traditional representation and drawing assisted the construction of physical models and communicated aspects of space, time, and meaning for the student.
A translation of music into a limited vocabulary of points, lines, and planes
As part of their first semester of study in the field of environmental design, students were given a project that embraced a limited and elemental vocabulary of point, line, plane, and volume as a means to translate a piece of instrumental music into a spatially defined passageway within a confined framework. Students were asked to consider the elements as a sequential series of informed components as a means to capture a series of spaces that at times may constrict, swell, or shift in direction within the predefined framework. To minimize the occurrence of preconceived elements such as stairs, ceilings, and floors, the passageway was to be conceived as a gravity-free environment, thus promoting concepts of compression and release in place of ascent and descent.
The inclusion of music as a thematic inspiration for the project offered the students both a series of constraints and strategies as they began diagramming their initial interpretations of the given selection towards the physical embodiment of the music into defined spatial passage. Concepts such as rhythm, tempo, pitch, or transitions have a dependency on time, and therefore, suggest two initial approaches for the project – one that focuses on the creation of volumetric centers, or swells, along the passage and then develops the transitions between these centers, or an approach that embraces the development and manipulation of a spine that reacts to the various translated information and directly confronts, dictates, and affects the movement of the user through the defined path.
At the conclusion of the project, students are asked to consider how the changing of scale for their physical models might affect the meaning of how they use point, line, and plane to create a defined volume. The students are asked to shift the scale from the representative environmental condition of their design to that of 1:1. Criteria are then given to construct a collective threshold out of the series of projects that relates directly to that of the human scale, thus introducing a new associative meaning to the project as they work collectively to define and capture space using the original elemental vocabulary of point, line, plane, and volume.
A translation of precedents into the typologies of a chess set
The game of chess is one of the most recognizable products of civilization. The Chicago skyline, as a home to many distinctive high-rise buildings, is an intersection of design and planning across multiple scales and epochs. Students were challenged to examine how the pieces, the game board, and the rules associated with chess could potentially embody the variety of designers and planners who shaped Chicago and the trajectory of environmental design across approximately a 150-year period. Students could then recognize the city skyline as a design project that evolves over a period of time. The meaning of these individual expressions then can be read as part of the meaning of a collective whole, and a city’s overall visual and physical identity.
Students were introduced to a brief history of chess sets, ranging from archaeological findings dating from 12th century Scotland, through to the 19th century legacy of British writer Howard Staunton, who endorsed the general design of the sets we often see today. Students were assigned a literature and image review of six personalities that practiced in Chicago to influence the design for six piece typologies found in a standard chess set. Students chose at random six names from a list of 50 people associated with Chicago architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, or public art. A mobile app was also developed prior to a four-day field trip to the city, giving students a geographic and digital reference to many of the sites and personalities who shaped Chicago architecture and planning.
Given Chicago’s noted heritage and tradition of tall buildings, students were asked to consider the potential role of tripartite division of form. As conveniently observed, the traditional Staunton chess sets possess similar divisions, becoming a vehicle for visual discovery.
During the literature / image review, students were asked to sketch a comfort pallet of details, forms, concept sketches, geometries, and pictorial interpretations from the work of the six assigned inspirations, and from examples experienced in Chicago. Students created sketches using digital tablets or sketchbooks.
Students then constructed a set of chess pieces, using materials of their own choosing, and were challenged to document the construction process, whether using an additive, subtractive or hybrid method of craft. An emphasis on procedural design process was communicated here, as well as the notion of the ergonomic / look and feel of the pieces, and whether their interpretations were still able to function in game play. Students were also asked to consider the assigned “move” behavior of each piece. Such challenges, interpretations, and learning opportunities seasoned and imbued the students’ design thinking and process throughout. A group-wide chess game day was held to test the effectiveness of the sets and game boards.
As a final step, students made two sets of drawings. One set became the procedural story of one chess piece in isometric view, as depicted in four to six steps. Such a set of drawings was intended to show how the piece was made. A second drawing challenged students to think of their chess pieces as a collective city skyline in frontal elevation projection, imagining the chess pieces in the scale of city buildings. Both drawings were rendered using a paper cut out method, placed behind a translucent sheet of vellum that contained the line art. Discussions of how these two layers and methods of representation stimulated discussion.
Conclusion
It is hoped that the exploration of music and gaming in these two design projects shall serve as an effective vehicle of communication between notions of space, time, and meaning as embodied in two forms of art and culture that can stimulate a student’s imagination and design
thinking. The authors are confident the exploration across scales, metaphors, narratives and forms found in the contemporary city and in architectural space can create rich inquiry in the mind of the beginning design student and form a foundation for continued dialogue between experience and representation.
associated with sequential space and city form. Mobile media technology in the form of analyzing music, learning the game of chess, mapping and providing information in field study, and surveying student reactions were employed. Structured methods of traditional representation and drawing assisted the construction of physical models and communicated aspects of space, time, and meaning for the student.
A translation of music into a limited vocabulary of points, lines, and planes
As part of their first semester of study in the field of environmental design, students were given a project that embraced a limited and elemental vocabulary of point, line, plane, and volume as a means to translate a piece of instrumental music into a spatially defined passageway within a confined framework. Students were asked to consider the elements as a sequential series of informed components as a means to capture a series of spaces that at times may constrict, swell, or shift in direction within the predefined framework. To minimize the occurrence of preconceived elements such as stairs, ceilings, and floors, the passageway was to be conceived as a gravity-free environment, thus promoting concepts of compression and release in place of ascent and descent.
The inclusion of music as a thematic inspiration for the project offered the students both a series of constraints and strategies as they began diagramming their initial interpretations of the given selection towards the physical embodiment of the music into defined spatial passage. Concepts such as rhythm, tempo, pitch, or transitions have a dependency on time, and therefore, suggest two initial approaches for the project – one that focuses on the creation of volumetric centers, or swells, along the passage and then develops the transitions between these centers, or an approach that embraces the development and manipulation of a spine that reacts to the various translated information and directly confronts, dictates, and affects the movement of the user through the defined path.
At the conclusion of the project, students are asked to consider how the changing of scale for their physical models might affect the meaning of how they use point, line, and plane to create a defined volume. The students are asked to shift the scale from the representative environmental condition of their design to that of 1:1. Criteria are then given to construct a collective threshold out of the series of projects that relates directly to that of the human scale, thus introducing a new associative meaning to the project as they work collectively to define and capture space using the original elemental vocabulary of point, line, plane, and volume.
A translation of precedents into the typologies of a chess set
The game of chess is one of the most recognizable products of civilization. The Chicago skyline, as a home to many distinctive high-rise buildings, is an intersection of design and planning across multiple scales and epochs. Students were challenged to examine how the pieces, the game board, and the rules associated with chess could potentially embody the variety of designers and planners who shaped Chicago and the trajectory of environmental design across approximately a 150-year period. Students could then recognize the city skyline as a design project that evolves over a period of time. The meaning of these individual expressions then can be read as part of the meaning of a collective whole, and a city’s overall visual and physical identity.
Students were introduced to a brief history of chess sets, ranging from archaeological findings dating from 12th century Scotland, through to the 19th century legacy of British writer Howard Staunton, who endorsed the general design of the sets we often see today. Students were assigned a literature and image review of six personalities that practiced in Chicago to influence the design for six piece typologies found in a standard chess set. Students chose at random six names from a list of 50 people associated with Chicago architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, or public art. A mobile app was also developed prior to a four-day field trip to the city, giving students a geographic and digital reference to many of the sites and personalities who shaped Chicago architecture and planning.
Given Chicago’s noted heritage and tradition of tall buildings, students were asked to consider the potential role of tripartite division of form. As conveniently observed, the traditional Staunton chess sets possess similar divisions, becoming a vehicle for visual discovery.
During the literature / image review, students were asked to sketch a comfort pallet of details, forms, concept sketches, geometries, and pictorial interpretations from the work of the six assigned inspirations, and from examples experienced in Chicago. Students created sketches using digital tablets or sketchbooks.
Students then constructed a set of chess pieces, using materials of their own choosing, and were challenged to document the construction process, whether using an additive, subtractive or hybrid method of craft. An emphasis on procedural design process was communicated here, as well as the notion of the ergonomic / look and feel of the pieces, and whether their interpretations were still able to function in game play. Students were also asked to consider the assigned “move” behavior of each piece. Such challenges, interpretations, and learning opportunities seasoned and imbued the students’ design thinking and process throughout. A group-wide chess game day was held to test the effectiveness of the sets and game boards.
As a final step, students made two sets of drawings. One set became the procedural story of one chess piece in isometric view, as depicted in four to six steps. Such a set of drawings was intended to show how the piece was made. A second drawing challenged students to think of their chess pieces as a collective city skyline in frontal elevation projection, imagining the chess pieces in the scale of city buildings. Both drawings were rendered using a paper cut out method, placed behind a translucent sheet of vellum that contained the line art. Discussions of how these two layers and methods of representation stimulated discussion.
Conclusion
It is hoped that the exploration of music and gaming in these two design projects shall serve as an effective vehicle of communication between notions of space, time, and meaning as embodied in two forms of art and culture that can stimulate a student’s imagination and design
thinking. The authors are confident the exploration across scales, metaphors, narratives and forms found in the contemporary city and in architectural space can create rich inquiry in the mind of the beginning design student and form a foundation for continued dialogue between experience and representation.
Research Interests:
The sketching trip is a time honored architectural tradition rooted in field-based observation and recording. To learn from great examples of the constructed environment, and transmit those lessons to a project-based design studio,... more
The sketching trip is a time honored architectural tradition rooted in field-based observation and recording. To learn from great examples of the constructed environment, and transmit those lessons to a project-based design studio, students are first asked to experience the spatial, social, and material dimensions and details of a place. The experiences gained by walking through cities and major sites is at the core of our educational approach. A dozen students enrolled in a field study follow their instructor around a corner and down a street, dutifully take photographs of a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and then follow around a bend, up an avenue, and into a church yard to sketch a quaint and contemplative cloister. They’ll do this all day long, and, yes, they will be learning. It is a core foundation for formal architecture education and remains a memorable learning experience for generations of students.
Research Interests:
In an attempt to align emerging methods of design thinking and emerging methods of representation, the author investigated an opportunity for students to explore tablet-based sketching with operative methods. At the 2012 gathering of the... more
In an attempt to align emerging methods of design thinking and emerging methods of representation, the author investigated an opportunity for students to explore tablet-based sketching with operative methods. At the 2012 gathering of the Design Communication Association, Architect Friedrich St. Florian argued that in the importance of design skills, " none is more elementary than drawing, " (1) that " the transfer of ideas, the critical ideas (of) the design process, from idea, to the gestalt, to the drawing " represents the most " fundamental skill of design communication. " Observed behavior of young college-age students and their relationships to mobile devices also inspired the study. A study of a chosen urban context through both mapping and observational photography was enhanced with recent mobile apps, including those developed by the Morpholio project (2) that digitally mimic the sketching methods designers have practiced for decades. The union of sketching as a thinking process, and the immediate communication and collaboration potential that a digital artifact allows, supported the streamlining of this ideation.
Research Interests:
Reflecting on the ability of design representation to inquire, question and wonder, this paper focuses on recent collaborative sketch activities of three interdisciplinary faculty colleagues. Inspired by the " dot the dot " technique of... more
Reflecting on the ability of design representation to inquire, question and wonder, this paper focuses on recent collaborative sketch activities of three interdisciplinary faculty colleagues. Inspired by the " dot the dot " technique of the so-called Texas Rangers (1) which took place in the mid 1950s and the Surrealists' parlor game known as " the exquisite corpse, " and framed through Freudian theories on dreaming, visualization, and music, the authors chronicle a cooperative sketching exercise they completed together to interrogate their particular gestural methods of visual thinking in an effort to better understand the role of playful representation, making, and thinking in the present day.
Research Interests:
Communicating a culture's constructed heritage to students yearning to design within a relevant and communicative context is a complex task of pedagogy. In an age of instant access to information, the importance of a grounded experience... more
Communicating a culture's constructed heritage to students yearning to design within a relevant and communicative context is a complex task of pedagogy. In an age of instant access to information, the importance of a grounded experience in the stories and artifacts that communicate a society's cultural heritage is necessary for design to be relevant in the present and loved in the future. Engaging the senses, particularly the haptic, is also vital to the formation of memories and experiences in defining meaningful spaces for people. This paper examines two design projects and one built example that are intended to inspire students to explore, embody, and translate stories of cultural heritage into relevant projects of architecture, vibrant proposals for landscape architecture, and rooted plans for urban development.
Research Interests:
The first days of foundational-level education are an impressionable time for a student. Concepts of ordering systems, organizing systems, composition and balance, abstraction, and patterns found in the natural and constructed... more
The first days of foundational-level education are an impressionable time for a student. Concepts of ordering systems,
organizing systems, composition and balance, abstraction, and patterns found in the natural and constructed
environments stimulate the beginning of design thinking and process. Tendencies that exist within a design student’s
mind are revealed, and opportunities to challenge those tendencies can be made with collaboration, interchangeable
parts, and new patterns of arrangement that stretch a student beyond his or her aesthetic inclinations.
A problem still observed in the studio, as James Lowell Adams defined in his 1974 book Conceptual Blockbusting, is
that “Few people like problems; hence the natural tendency in problem solving is to pick the first solution that comes to
mind and run with it.” (1) This paper examines methods to induce students to look beyond that first solution.
This paper will also explore the use of the second Merriam-Webster definition of palimpsest as “something that has
changed over time and shows evidence of that change” (2) in a two-dimensional drawing and in a design project that
engages skills in observation, sketching, craft, and mobile technology to collect and record the pictorial abstraction of
an image, and the compositional possibilities revealed when new arrangements emerge, as well as the seeds of
computational and systematic thinking.
organizing systems, composition and balance, abstraction, and patterns found in the natural and constructed
environments stimulate the beginning of design thinking and process. Tendencies that exist within a design student’s
mind are revealed, and opportunities to challenge those tendencies can be made with collaboration, interchangeable
parts, and new patterns of arrangement that stretch a student beyond his or her aesthetic inclinations.
A problem still observed in the studio, as James Lowell Adams defined in his 1974 book Conceptual Blockbusting, is
that “Few people like problems; hence the natural tendency in problem solving is to pick the first solution that comes to
mind and run with it.” (1) This paper examines methods to induce students to look beyond that first solution.
This paper will also explore the use of the second Merriam-Webster definition of palimpsest as “something that has
changed over time and shows evidence of that change” (2) in a two-dimensional drawing and in a design project that
engages skills in observation, sketching, craft, and mobile technology to collect and record the pictorial abstraction of
an image, and the compositional possibilities revealed when new arrangements emerge, as well as the seeds of
computational and systematic thinking.
Research Interests:
environmental design speaks to the collaborative and iterative value of the studio as an incubator of ideas and the staying power of the studio in said curricular offerings. The collaborative, interactive, spontaneous, and fluid nature of... more
environmental design speaks to the collaborative and iterative value of the studio as an incubator of ideas and the staying power of the studio in said curricular offerings. The collaborative, interactive, spontaneous, and fluid nature of studio based education has changed the way several levels of education have approached pedagogy and information delivery, and is one that seems to be perpetually supported by those who know it best.
However, in the age of social networking and digital communication, the authors have observed that the powerful combination of a wireless connection, a personal computer, peripherals, and an online social network can isolate a pupil within the studio, nullifying any benefits that this environment was intended to provide. Interaction with classmates and instructor, two crucial pillars of studio based education, fall quickly under distractions that students are encouraged, or enticed to use in order to maintain a constant level of entertainment. Recent observations on the state of North American design schools also raise concerns and lend energy to evaluating and enriching the traditional studio environment.
These conditions have prompted the authors of this paper to investigate teaching methods that created more structure within the studio’s scheduled class time, and that desired an outcome and a product within the course of a single studio session. The outcome of the day’s work could then quickly become a tool that helped to generate additional discussion and launched the student into further self-guided discovery.
This design methodology began as a series of “charrettes” – borrowing from the interactive and public participation exercises that are used to generate and exhibit ideas quickly. In the studio, an whole afternoon “in class charrette” was not intended to replace a student’s own self-discovery, rather, to allow an indecisive, unmotivated, or struggling student to commit to ideas quickly, and react to those decisions in a chain of events. The exercise encouraged the student to return to self-discovery immediately thereafter, even if their charrette product was less than successful in the student’s judgment.
The charrette process involves the rapid and interactive crafting of small study models or sketch models, and the trading of subject matter between students as a way to generate many design concepts that can then be evaluated, developed or rejected, and evolve as students test constructed prototypes. Descriptions of these exercises, and well as student testimony following these exercises, will constitute the body of this paper.
However, in the age of social networking and digital communication, the authors have observed that the powerful combination of a wireless connection, a personal computer, peripherals, and an online social network can isolate a pupil within the studio, nullifying any benefits that this environment was intended to provide. Interaction with classmates and instructor, two crucial pillars of studio based education, fall quickly under distractions that students are encouraged, or enticed to use in order to maintain a constant level of entertainment. Recent observations on the state of North American design schools also raise concerns and lend energy to evaluating and enriching the traditional studio environment.
These conditions have prompted the authors of this paper to investigate teaching methods that created more structure within the studio’s scheduled class time, and that desired an outcome and a product within the course of a single studio session. The outcome of the day’s work could then quickly become a tool that helped to generate additional discussion and launched the student into further self-guided discovery.
This design methodology began as a series of “charrettes” – borrowing from the interactive and public participation exercises that are used to generate and exhibit ideas quickly. In the studio, an whole afternoon “in class charrette” was not intended to replace a student’s own self-discovery, rather, to allow an indecisive, unmotivated, or struggling student to commit to ideas quickly, and react to those decisions in a chain of events. The exercise encouraged the student to return to self-discovery immediately thereafter, even if their charrette product was less than successful in the student’s judgment.
The charrette process involves the rapid and interactive crafting of small study models or sketch models, and the trading of subject matter between students as a way to generate many design concepts that can then be evaluated, developed or rejected, and evolve as students test constructed prototypes. Descriptions of these exercises, and well as student testimony following these exercises, will constitute the body of this paper.
Research Interests:
The pedagogical issues involved regarding a sustainable (re)starting in beginning environmental design education represent a wide range of scales. Students are subjected to a buffet of sustainability issues, but rarely grasp the... more
The pedagogical issues involved regarding a sustainable (re)starting in beginning environmental design education represent a wide range of scales. Students are subjected to a buffet of sustainability issues, but rarely grasp the implications of this broad range of systematic thinking with a beginning design studio project. The three departments of the Ball State University College of Architecture and Planning seek to explore these issues with its common first year program, designing projects to introduce thinking at several scales, and support the cooperation that is becoming necessary to address sustainability in a relevant manner. Contrary to studio formats in the past, it may be argued that the most sustainable structure or site is one that is already there, containing with it the embodied energy, labor, materials, and connections to infrastructure. It is in this spirit that the faculty team designed a project that stirred multiple constraints into a curriculum originally founded in largely in abstract thinking and modernist principles.
The design of the “Space Pod” as a first year interdisciplinary project sought to explore the possibilities of the expression, dimensions, and scales of a linear sequence of small interior spaces. Restricting form language to include all elements meeting at 90 degrees, students learned to prioritize and shape their design ideas given the material and dimensional realities often found in the built environment. For pure inspiration (concept, theme), students explore the linear notions associated a piece of instrumental music, about five minutes in duration, to translate into this architectural space.
Students were assigned a dimensional “framework” in which an individual project could “dock” or attach within. Such a constraint models the type of thinking attributable to topics in Open Building and the constraints of reusing existing structures as introduced by N.L. Habraken. These “space pods” then docked into a stacked, clustered dwelling colony reminiscent of the Taos Pueblo or Habitat 1967 by Moshe Safdie. Students cooperated in the design and construction of a colony either in a portion of the college facility or in a constructed landscape.
This cooperative effort again explored constraints. The construction of the colonies was not conducive to full democratic participation, and thus necessitated appointments for “city planners” as leaders in the construction. Given the personal and linear scale of individual projects and their constraints, and accepting the number of projects as predetermined kit of parts combined with a series of “ordinances” given by instructors made for lively discussions of how to model community / city form. Students were questioned if the whole was indeed greater than the sum of the parts. Results were revelatory of students’ current views of the built environment in the first third of a semester schedule, and bridged traditional modernist design education with new constraints and multi-scale thinking found in a changing world.
The design of the “Space Pod” as a first year interdisciplinary project sought to explore the possibilities of the expression, dimensions, and scales of a linear sequence of small interior spaces. Restricting form language to include all elements meeting at 90 degrees, students learned to prioritize and shape their design ideas given the material and dimensional realities often found in the built environment. For pure inspiration (concept, theme), students explore the linear notions associated a piece of instrumental music, about five minutes in duration, to translate into this architectural space.
Students were assigned a dimensional “framework” in which an individual project could “dock” or attach within. Such a constraint models the type of thinking attributable to topics in Open Building and the constraints of reusing existing structures as introduced by N.L. Habraken. These “space pods” then docked into a stacked, clustered dwelling colony reminiscent of the Taos Pueblo or Habitat 1967 by Moshe Safdie. Students cooperated in the design and construction of a colony either in a portion of the college facility or in a constructed landscape.
This cooperative effort again explored constraints. The construction of the colonies was not conducive to full democratic participation, and thus necessitated appointments for “city planners” as leaders in the construction. Given the personal and linear scale of individual projects and their constraints, and accepting the number of projects as predetermined kit of parts combined with a series of “ordinances” given by instructors made for lively discussions of how to model community / city form. Students were questioned if the whole was indeed greater than the sum of the parts. Results were revelatory of students’ current views of the built environment in the first third of a semester schedule, and bridged traditional modernist design education with new constraints and multi-scale thinking found in a changing world.
In various course offerings and in the media, environmental design students are subjected to a wide range of newsworthy sustainability issues in their beginning year of college or university level education. Contrary to environmental... more
In various course offerings and in the media, environmental design students are subjected to a wide range of newsworthy sustainability issues in their beginning year of college or university level education. Contrary to environmental design studio practices in the past, typically presenting new development or construction as a model for problem solving exercises, Architect Carl Elephante argued in 2007 that " We cannot build our way to sustainability; we must conserve our way to it. " (Elephante 2007). Teaching students to shape their design thinking with models that suggest the use of embodied energy, labor, materials, and existing sustainable practices found in nature were the intent of two studio-based projects. In the first instance, students were asked to translate a piece of instrumental music into a linear sequence of architectural space. Each student was assigned a dimensional 'framework' as a given, in which an individual project could 'dock' within. Such a constraint models the type of thinking attributable to topics in 'Open Building' and the constraints of reusing existing structures as introduced by N.J. Habraken. Projects were then stacked into several arrangements or 'colonies' reminiscent of the Taos Pueblo or Habitat 1967 by Moshe Safdie. Students cooperated in the design and construction of a colony either in a portion of the college facility or in a constructed landscape. In a subsequent semester, the topic of " bio-mimicry " was used a vehicle for investigation and inquiry. The online lectures of Janine Benyus inspired a two-stage project beginning with literature review of either a specific 'exotic' biome and its corresponding geography, or a specific organism that constructs or shapes their specific habitat for living, feeding, hunting, or breeding activities. Discussion of how these organisms responded to their specific climactic or natural systems generated conceptual ideas for a hypothetical human environment in a corresponding geographic location. Structures built by organisms in nature were argued as a model for lessons in sustainable design and construction. These two projects found in an interdisciplinary first year 'foundation' level curriculum for undergraduate tracks into landscape architecture, urban planning, and architecture were seen by participating faculty to have fruitful engagement and discussion surrounding issues of sustainability in a beginning level design studio course, and provide teaching faculty and leadership good discussion for shaping future curriculum and investigation into principles and systems of sustainable practices in environmental design.
Research Interests:
This study examines the reuse potential of industrial land and infrastructure left abandoned or otherwise underutilized. The goal of this study is to open discussion and dialogue into such cases in North American cities that currently are... more
This study examines the reuse potential of industrial land and infrastructure left abandoned or otherwise underutilized. The goal of this study is to open discussion and dialogue into such cases in North American cities that currently are liabilities and offer guidelines and methods for approaching preservation and reuse of such properties in a manner that contributes to community health, safety and welfare while maintaining historical character and significance.Abandoned or underutilized industrial land and infrastructure often pose significant environmental, safety, and land-use liability issues for municipalities. The application of creative reuse ideas centered on the notion of preserving industrial character, while creating new housing and recreation options for citizens is a major opportunity for communities struggling to cope with the negative aspects of these properties.The design project portion of this study was performed as part of an `ideas competition' conducted in 2003 by the `Friends of The High Line,' a not-for-profit organization dedicated to preserving a 1.5 mile stretch of abandoned, elevated rail bed in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan Borough, New York City.
This volume was published with the support of a generous donation from the Eloise Kruger Fund for Interior Design, in cooperation with the Kruger Collection and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, College of Architecture. Copyright ©2007... more
This volume was published with the support of a generous donation from the Eloise Kruger Fund for Interior Design, in cooperation with the Kruger Collection and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, College of Architecture. Copyright ©2007 by the University of ...