Architecture Students Still Wanting Change
The readings for this week described the university revolt that was happening in the late 1960s and early 1970s by architecture students, and desired changes that architecture students had for their education. There was also an overview of different value systems and problems associated with architects not being able to connect to different usergroups to gain input into the design process.
Architecture students still want change, which was evidenced by the Studio Culture grassroots movement started by American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS) in 2002 where they identified problems with the architecture school culture of unhealthy work habits. AIAS developed five overarching values that summarized the changes they wanted to make within the architecture school: engagement, innovation, optimism, respect, and sharing. Two years later in 2004 the NAAB accrediting board for architecture schools requires all accrediting architecture universities to have a studio culture policy in order to be an accredited institution that can issue a professional degree.
All of the three year track M-ARCH students were at the studio conference room table in 2015 where Clemson University School of Architecture reexamined our school's studio culture policy and sought to update it. This was a good thing, and it was publicized with e-mails and meetings that the School of Architecture was re-examining it. (That was because we were having our school's NAAB review the following year and they wanted to make sure they had crossed it off the list.)
Is Clemson's studio culture policy helpful to students regarding practicing a healthy lifestyle while in graduate school (or undergraduate school)? In my opinion, it is really easy for graduate architecture students to have an unhealthy, unbalanced life where architecture design studio takes all of the time that you can give it with fast paced projects and rapid deadlines.
Speaking of connecting with user groups, the spring 2017 design build studio had a design charrette where we opened up a discussion about the Lee Hall building problem where we had plan drawings and asked people for their input with graphic options where they could draw on the board and we had surveys where people could write in their values and comments. We served pizza to draw in a crowd, and hosted it during the middle of the day at the lunch hour as an intended method to draw a bigger crowd. I think we had about 50-60 occupants who attended the event overall - most of them were fellow graduate students who heard about the free pizza and were interested in the possibility of making Lee Hall better through some architectural improvement.
At the end of the day I felt somewhat like the design charrette was somewhat successful because it was a confirmation of the values and questions we had raised in discussion within the studio, as well as people identifying areas within the building that we saw potential for making changes to the building and made us feel like we were on the right track. We ended up not using much (or any) of that feedback when we moved sites from our design build project moving from Lee Hall to Summerton, SC - and I wondered if the user groups felt like they had been asked for their opinions and then nothing ever happened within the Lee Hall building.
Architecture students still want change, which was evidenced by the Studio Culture grassroots movement started by American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS) in 2002 where they identified problems with the architecture school culture of unhealthy work habits. AIAS developed five overarching values that summarized the changes they wanted to make within the architecture school: engagement, innovation, optimism, respect, and sharing. Two years later in 2004 the NAAB accrediting board for architecture schools requires all accrediting architecture universities to have a studio culture policy in order to be an accredited institution that can issue a professional degree.
All of the three year track M-ARCH students were at the studio conference room table in 2015 where Clemson University School of Architecture reexamined our school's studio culture policy and sought to update it. This was a good thing, and it was publicized with e-mails and meetings that the School of Architecture was re-examining it. (That was because we were having our school's NAAB review the following year and they wanted to make sure they had crossed it off the list.)
Is Clemson's studio culture policy helpful to students regarding practicing a healthy lifestyle while in graduate school (or undergraduate school)? In my opinion, it is really easy for graduate architecture students to have an unhealthy, unbalanced life where architecture design studio takes all of the time that you can give it with fast paced projects and rapid deadlines.
Speaking of connecting with user groups, the spring 2017 design build studio had a design charrette where we opened up a discussion about the Lee Hall building problem where we had plan drawings and asked people for their input with graphic options where they could draw on the board and we had surveys where people could write in their values and comments. We served pizza to draw in a crowd, and hosted it during the middle of the day at the lunch hour as an intended method to draw a bigger crowd. I think we had about 50-60 occupants who attended the event overall - most of them were fellow graduate students who heard about the free pizza and were interested in the possibility of making Lee Hall better through some architectural improvement.
At the end of the day I felt somewhat like the design charrette was somewhat successful because it was a confirmation of the values and questions we had raised in discussion within the studio, as well as people identifying areas within the building that we saw potential for making changes to the building and made us feel like we were on the right track. We ended up not using much (or any) of that feedback when we moved sites from our design build project moving from Lee Hall to Summerton, SC - and I wondered if the user groups felt like they had been asked for their opinions and then nothing ever happened within the Lee Hall building.
It is important that the users can continually adapt a space to suit their needs. Providing a framework of what you can and cannot do (ex: blocking fire egress) and making a space able to be adaptable is vital to the success of the architecture. When the users are no longer able to adapt to their current and future needs, they rebuild. We are constantly rebuilding our environment in order to adapt to our needs as users.
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