Archnet > Publication > Intelligence-Based Design: A Sustainable Foundation for Worldwide Architectural Education

Architectural theory as currently taught in modern universities throughout the world no longer provides a plausible basis for the discipline and practice of architecture. Students studying within this model are left to their own inventions if they hope to gain an architectural degree. Forced to formulate a body of work constrained by the paradigm of contemporary design, students learn to copy fashionable images without understanding their geometry; or simply invent forms that look as if they possess a contemporary sense of architecture. By their very nature, such forms are irrelevant to human needs and sensibilities. Contrary to what students are led to believe, this practice does not provide a broader base for creativity, but instead effectively restricts choices to a very narrow design vocabulary. Most architectural institutions continue to propagate a curricular model that has sustained their particular ideals and ideologies for decades. While many innovative didactic materials and ideas for revising the architectural curriculum are available today, they are often overlooked or ignored. If implemented, these new ideas could drastically improve the educational model, allowing students the world over to participate in a learning experience specific to their immediate and local context. By re-situating the education of an architect in more practical and contextual terms, we emphasize components of building design that relate directly to human existence, human perception, and the human values and beliefs that have for millennia served to establish culture and identity. A new model of learning is developed here for students wanting to make real architecture, and for educators and practitioners that seek the same. The following proposal is predicated on the knowledge of human interaction with the physical world and the necessity of corporeal engagement with the built environment. Furthermore, our model re-institutes values in the practice and education of architects, values that once sprang forth naturally from local cultures and traditions throughout the world, but which have in recent decades been usurped by the influence of global capital.

Type

journal article

Year

2008

Architectural theory as currently taught in modern universities throughout the world no longer provides a plausible basis for the discipline and practice of architecture. Students studying within this model are left to their own inventions if they hope to gain an architectural degree. Forced to formulate a body of work constrained by the paradigm of contemporary design, students learn to copy fashionable images without understanding their geometry; or simply invent forms that look as if they possess a contemporary sense of architecture. By their very nature, such forms are irrelevant to human needs and sensibilities. Contrary to what students are led to believe, this practice does not provide a broader base for creativity, but instead effectively restricts choices to a very narrow design vocabulary. Most architectural institutions continue to propagate a curricular model that has sustained their particular ideals and ideologies for decades. While many innovative didactic materials and ideas for revising the architectural curriculum are available today, they are often overlooked or ignored. If implemented, these new ideas could drastically improve the educational model, allowing students the world over to participate in a learning experience specific to their immediate and local context. By re-situating the education of an architect in more practical and contextual terms, we emphasize components of building design that relate directly to human existence, human perception, and the human values and beliefs that have for millennia served to establish culture and identity. A new model of learning is developed here for students wanting to make real architecture, and for educators and practitioners that seek the same. The following proposal is predicated on the knowledge of human interaction with the physical world and the necessity of corporeal engagement with the built environment. Furthermore, our model re-institutes values in the practice and education of architects, values that once sprang forth naturally from local cultures and traditions throughout the world, but which have in recent decades been usurped by the influence of global capital.

Salingaros, Nikos A., and Masden II, Kenneth G. "Intelligence-Based Design: A Sustainable Foundation for Worldwide Architectural Education," in ArchNet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research, vol. 2, issue 1 (2008).