Pedagogy 2025

Abstract

In contemporary architectural education, students increasingly design within digital environments—scaleless, infinitely zoomable spaces where minute details can be obsessively refined yet remain imperceptible when plotted. As digital modeling software becomes dominant, physical models and hand sketches are often dismissed as inefficient or costly, leading to a diminished understanding of scale and bodily experience. Even with scale figures embedded in digital representations, students frequently struggle to design for comfort and human occupation. To counter this drift, a vertical design studio—comprising graduate and undergraduate students in architecture—introduces a foundational project centered on embodied analysis, drawing inspiration from UX design’s use of low-fidelity prototyping. Students examine a case study through drawings, models, and full-scale mock-ups constructed using painter’s tape. This “tape method” enables students to translate spatial details directly onto surrounding walls and floors, creating a distilled version of the case study environment. The act of taping compels students to engage physically with space, recalibrating their sense of scale through bodily movement and spatial inhabitation. This tactile process encourages students to visualize spatial relationships and material transitions in real time, fostering a deeper awareness of how design decisions affect comfort, accessibility, and experience. When site visits are impractical, this method offers a low-cost, efficient alternative for exploring formal, spatial, and material strategies. As a pedagogical tool, the “tape scape” bridges the divide between digital abstraction and physical experience. It cultivates designers who are better equipped to adapt existing environments and shape new ones with empathy, precision, and care—grounding design in the lived realities of human scale.