Parallel session Studio-Based Learning

Paper 191

Reflecting the other; communication design students engaging with complex practice.
Neal Haslem
RMIT University

The design student becomes the client.
Brief – they write a little bit about themselves, their hopes, dreams, and no names. These get rotated and one of the other students has to create a gift for that person. At the end of the project they get to present the gift to the person they designed it for. Being the designer and the client. They reflect back on the experience, and capture what they learnt.
It helps that they design for a real person. They keep reflective journals, in which they need to describe the positive and the negative experiences. It creates an experiential experience of the effects. The projects usually run for 12 weeks.
The assessment includes the journal, as well as assessment of the reflection. Also involves a “client” grading. The idea is to see if the output changes. Is the shift temporary or complete?

Paper 78

Mapping the place and defining the space: exploring the interrelationships of context and program within a second year architecture design studio.
Dijana Alic
The University of New South Wales

Undertaken in the 2nd year of a 5 year architecture course.
Reworking briefs, so that they work in a non-static way. They become interchangeable, often to development, giving a real life feel. Once students have done research and found out how the project is going to work, they then have to rework the brief – going on to rediscovery.
Mapping here is a discovering of new worlds within the past and present ones.
All the steps of the project and going back are what create interesting solutions. The idea behind this exercise is the practice of the process.