Teaching Beyond the Curriculum
Abstract
As a project-oriented teaching method, architectural project design course aims to cultivate “design thinking” for comprehensive problem-solving, through “leaning by doing” in design studio and interdisciplinary contents of art, history, science and technology. In recent years, its cross-disciplinary characteristics have been valued by colleges and universities implementing STEAM education. As the first case in Chinese university, the School of Architecture of Southeast University (SEU-Arch) has introduced architectural project design teaching method to the whole university since 2021. Each semester we open an 11-week elective course “Art and Design Thinking” to all non-architectural major undergraduates. There are three main goals: 1. Cultivating creative thinking through exercises of artistic and space design; 2. Guiding students’ attention to the basic architectural and urban issues; 3. Studying the role of “design thinking” in promoting the learning of other majors. The sub-course “Spatial Aesthetics” combines teaching plans of SEU-Arch’s teaching group “Design Basics” and the teaching unit“Grupo 4!” of Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (ETSAM-UPM). Both groups are dedicated to initial project design course. The teaching plan of “Spatial Aesthetics” is adjusted according to the class hours, teacher-student ratio, and students’ professional background. The course begins with instinctive artistic creation, developing to design a single form related to any “possible architecture”, as well as a rational organization of an urban district through models of different scales. This article will show the whole process of teaching, presenting specific manners of transforming professional teaching method into a liberal education course from four aspects: teaching plan preparation, classroom organization, teaching implementation, and feedbacks, and discuss the value of “design thinking” in cross-disciplinary education.
ZHANG Yingle is Lecturer at the School of Architecture, Southeast University, currently he is participating in the teaching group of Project design of the first grade. He is B.Arch from the School of Mechanics, Civil Engineering and Architecture of Northwestern Polytechnical University, M.Arch and Doctor in Advanced Architectural Design from the Higher Technical School of Architecture of Madrid, Technical University of Madrid (ETSAM-UPM).
Javier Mosquera González holds a PhD and M. Arch. Architect in Advanced Architectural Design from the UPM ETSAM. He is assistant professor in Architectural Design at UPM ETSAM and PhD professor in Architectural Design at UEM. He was a Tulane Design Teaching Fellow in 2019, Tulane School of Architecture. He is a researcher at TRANS_Observatorio de prácticas transdisciplinares en arquitectura, and participant in several international congresses.