exercises in design learning

by Benamy Turkienicz and Eduardo Westphal

Abstract

The use of concepts such as “thinking in design” and “tooling design” can lead to improvements in design studio teaching methods if they are structurally organized as pedagogical contents. This paper describes how these concepts can be exercised in a pedagogical environment, the Cognitive Studio, where the gradual learning of architectural syntax is achieved through a series of exercises divided in three stages: De-Fixation, Shape and Pattern Generation and Shape and Function Emergence.

Some results suggest that the experience should be scrutinized and evaluated in more detail in order to evolve from a proxy (as it stands right now) to a coherent basis for a theory about design teaching methods in its own right.

Introduction

In recent years, design studio teaching methods have experienced a consistent evolution from a practice based on student designs being critiqued by their teachers, towards a strategy based on the structured exploration of the students’ cognitive processes. This strategy puts its emphasis on the learning processes and, at the same time, deliberately relieves the students from frequent harsh, sometimes aggressive, criticism from their teachers. Concentrating attention in the student’s lines of thought, the teacher becomes an educational rather than a “corrective” agent in the learning process.

The new methods have been fostered by ideas about designerly ways to think (thinking in design) and the understanding that cognitive processes could be assisted by learning tools (tooling design) in order to facilitate the students’ understanding about different concepts and needed skills. The argument for a new approach in design teaching processes has already been made by Akin (1986), Oxman (2001), Eastman et al. (2001). Knowledge about design learning processes and developments in cognitive modeling (Eastman et al., 2001) have led to a gradual shift in the goals and targets to be achieved in the architectural studio.

A cognitive-based approach is now under way, based upon the students’ exploration and formulation of knowledge structures and reasoning in design (Oxman, 2001). However, we run short of explanations on how the new approach has helped to structure a new design teaching method, i.e. correlating the results of the application of a particular method to the new theories. Most of the investigation about cognition in architectural design is related to the designer itself or devoted to an analysis of its means, ends and tools. The available literature does not leave a clear indication on how to reach a ‘conventional’ architectural product applying the new theoretical approaches.

This lack of information has served as a motivation to shed some light on the problem: this chapter describes a process of design learning and development of creative thinking by architectural design students in the 3rd year of the Faculty of Architecture of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. It is divided into 3 parts: in part 1, different design teaching concepts are analyzed. In part 2, the The Cognitive Design Studio experience is described, along with its three stage sequence. And in part 3, results are discussed and conclusions drawn.

Teaching concepts

Traditional design teaching methods involve reasonably well-defined steps related to the evaluation of programmatic, functional, economic or context dependent constraints, while steps related to the creative process, to architectural language, or to individual style are poorly defined. Given a design brief and a site, the students must set a design proposal that has consequences and implications to be solved in both formal and functional realms. The students must establish their formal preferences as choices whose consequences and implications must be further developed – all within an emerging field of constraints and alternatives (Schön, 1986).

Traditional design studios have the design brief as a starting point. Although studio teaching styles may differ under many points of views, they are generally based on the ‘problem solving‘ paradigm. This paradigm has led to the consolidation of pedagogical strategies which tend to reproduce the pathway of the professional practitioner, under the argument that the ‘fundamentals’ of the profession are to be taught “during the game” i.e. during the elaboration of building or urban design themes.

Academic projects normally depart from a chosen theme and a corresponding design brief. This combination is normally situated in two language levels (Tversky, 2002). For example, ‘house’ is considered a basic level language, which refers to a superordinate level (building) and to a subordinate level (a summer house, for example). Each of these three levels embrace different numbers of features, increasing top-down from the superordinate to the basic level and, with less intensity, bottom-up from the basic to the subordinate level.

One remarkable feature of academic project themes is the fact that the superordinate level is taken for granted (e.g., all architectural projects must be buildings), while the basic and subordinate levels are generally conveyed by the design brief. Because the design brief is the first given step, visual references searched by students normally fall into a database comprised by building types belonging to the already adopted levels. More often than not, illustrated by images, these levels end up constituting a fixed repertoire to solve the problem.

Although images are valuable guidelines for the creative process, the initial correlation of the design brief with building type references related to basic or subordinated level languages may lead to cognitive limitations and to a universe of preconceived solutions or schemas of buildings (a house and their rooms, bedrooms, kitchens) and parts of buildings (beams, columns, windows, doors). The consequence of this procedure is the narrowing of the students’ formal repertoire and, under a cognitive point of view, the limitation of their capacity to generalize and to make analogies about shapes and functions.

As Purcell and Gero (1996) put it “(…) a common and often commented on form of fixation is the premature commitment to a particular problem solution, observed in students and practitioners alike. As in other domains, the designer appears trapped by the characteristics of a possible solution that has been developed or an existing precedent solution. However, in the design domain, the majority of the discussion of this phenomenon is essentially anecdotal and not based on either principled argument or the results of empirical research”.

Architectural design teaching concepts feature different principles related to strategies to develop architectural knowledge and to develop architectural design skills. In architecture schools these teaching concepts are not exclusive, i.e. they might merge into one ‘hybrid’ mode, and some schools may be even applying different ones, simultaneously. The Cognitive Studio constituted a shift in the architectural education of the UFRGS’ 3rd year students and it is described in the following sections.

Three Stages

The experience departs from the assumption that architectural students’ creativity is directly proportional to their ability to make generalizations and analogies about how things work as much as about means and ways to perform actions. The method is based upon the inversion of the traditional sequence of the ‘Critique’ Studio. Instead of departing from a design brief, students perform a series of exercises focused on shape vocabulary, and the design brief is introduced only in the last part of the term. On the other hand, cognitive abilities needed to solve the proposed brief problems, are exercised in the beginning of the term.

The three stage design learning sequence starts with a set of Functional De-Fixation exercises, continues with Pattern Generation applications, and is finalized with Form and Function Emergence exercises. The sequence was based on the assumption that any knowledge concept is related to mental processes of understanding, knowing or recognizing through experience or association. As all of these processes are memory dependent, and learning implies acquiring and restructuring knowledge, the exploration of how memories are created and reached could indicate some productive ways to teach and learn design.

According to Minsky’s Theory of Memory, to learn by building knowledge-lines means to record not the solution to a problem, but the way to think in order to find the solution, so that knowledge becomes easy to reach and easy to use (2006). Building knowledge-lines or “K-lines” means to get the relevant resources that were active at the time when a problem was solved into a structure that could be activated to do a similar task. Minsky (1977) calls “K-lines” such a structure, which acts as a sort of “snapshot” of the mental state at the time of a solution.

The compatible resources of the K-lines activated by resemblance of current situations in combination to current resources might work together to solve a problem. This allows the creation of new K-lines which, in turn, constitutes a new way of thinking. This way, learning by experience means to build structures of a mental state that might be re-activated by similar tasks; problem solving then involves the finding of general resemblances between previous experiences and present circumstances and goals.

Minsky’s ‘Level Bands’ (1986) provide a framework for memory to encompass levels of description where certain aspects are recorded firmly and other weakly or not at all.

The lower fringe is concerned with the structure of things and indicates objective details and the configuration of reality through its syntax. The mid-level or mid-level band corresponds to the K- lines. The upper fringe is concerned with generalities and functions of things. It has, therefore, objective or subjective concerns with goals and intentions acting at the semantic level.

Minsky (1986) considers some details stored at the lower and upper bands as weak attachments, often irrelevant or non-appropriated to be used on a new situation. He claims that to recognize relations between structures and purposes is to build bridges between the means and the ends, i.e. to connect things you recognize with a problem to solve. Minsky’s concept of Frames of Mind is related to a generic structure allowing for the attachment of data in appropriated blanks or slots named terminals (Minsky 1974).

Such structures are acquired in the course of previous experiences and we have to learn how to adapt our frames to each particular experience. As he puts it, “(…) such default assignments would have subtle, idiosyncratic influences on the paths which an individual would tend to follow in making analogies, generalizations, and judgments, especially when the exterior influences on such choices are weak. Properly chosen, such stereotypes could serve as a storehouse of valuable heuristic plan-skeletons; badly selected, they could form paralyzing collections of irrational biases”.

Relating the above concepts to the Design Studio, the badly selected stereotypes could be compared to the functional fixedness behavior. In the Cognitive Design Studio, objects are compared to physical models of frames or generic structures to which, in successive reformulations, new features are added as to complete these structures as new objects. “Knowledge itself is insufficient; framing is an essential activity (…) the education process needs to support framing so that students can gain experience and exposure to the framing process” (Gao & Kvan, 2004). As design education is very much oriented towards problem solving, and knowledge is an insufficient tool, intelligence development is therefore important in order to provide a combined framework not only for problem solving but for problem formulation as well.

Intelligence is defined by Minsky (1986) as the ability to solve problems. Simple problems might be solved through trial and error, successively generating and testing all possible solutions within a certain universe of possibilities. However this is a very time-consuming method, not suitable for more complicated problems, which might be solved using the ‘progress principle’. This method is based in the gradual improvement towards a goal that can be achieved and in whose terms the problem is previously formulated. Architectural design can be described as a hard problem and, as such, it has to be split into smaller problems and formulated in terms of goals and sub-goals which can be progressively achieved.

The idea behind the formulation of a structured sequence of exercises was to create a process whereby the student could intuitively connect each given step to its precedent and, somehow, anticipate the coming one. In all stages of the process, students had to produce a broad set of alternatives, having in mind that any of these could fit as open ended objects. This attitude allows for the re-setting of design alternatives at any point of the process, even from the earliest stage.

By proceeding this way, one would get closer to the splitting method proposed by Minsky (1986), in that the structured sequence resembles decision making behaviors during any design task or creative process. By bringing their visual reasoning capabilities to conscious levels, the students become more confident with the potentials of the method and eager to pursue new challenges.

The term involves a sequence of exercises divided in three stages: De-Fixation, Shape and Pattern generation, and Shape and Function emergence. Each stage has a set of intertwined exercises aimed to explore different strategies.

Functional De-Fixation, refers to the first stage of exercises aimed to develop the students’ ability to generalize on shape, function and context as an important design strategy. The de-fixation stage consists of two steps: shape and function, shape and context. These steps involve shape analysis, dimensional parametric transformations and the inferring of meaning from shape properties and from its relations with context using scale and materials experimentation.

Techniques for Shape and Pattern Generation constitute the conceptual core of exercises used to structure a learning sequence whereby students were guided to create original design patterns starting from a generative element. In the shape pattern stage, generative principles were exercised in order to bring to conscious level the syntax of objects and shapes by generating and recognizing patterns. Shape and pattern generation exercises are sub-divided into two steps: shape grammar and pattern generation.

Exercises in Shape and Function Emergence were used as to link cognitive capabilities (visual thinking and visual reasoning) to problem solving. Shape and Function emergence is divided into three steps: in step one, students learn how to identify embedded 2D patterns in the previous symmetry and shape grammar exercises. The second step explores three-dimensional shape emergence and the third step associates design briefs to the previous step’s 3D shapes.

The Learning Sequence

The learning sequence departs from the temporary suspension of the known functions of existing objects and from the gradual abstraction of shape. During the whole learning process, the student is asked to develop concepts and to infer functions from selected perceptual views of the original object. The sequence of exercises is based in successive derivations of this object, called generative element. Through different composition strategies the students learn to assign meanings to generative elements and patterns. The use of generative elements belonging to the original object allows students to understand rule-based strategies as related to the grammar and to the order (proportion and harmony, for example) of a composition. Compositions are therefore always free from the original object’s function. It is through the composition strategies that students add new meanings to generative elements and generated patterns.

Stage 1: De-Fixation

According to Arnheim (1986b), productive thinking is based on perceptual imagery and all active perception involves aspects of thought. Design learning processes are supposed to exercise visual thinking in a way as to correlate shape and function and to develop concepts. For the purpose of concept formation, one must go beyond the particular. As Arnheim (1986b) puts it, “(…) generalization is precisely what is needed for thinking”.

The development of generic cognitive structures constitutes an important asset to design thinking as it helps the knowledge needed to design processes to become explicit. The acquisition of generic cognitive structures implies giving up pre-existing concepts, what, in turn, requires a means-end reasoning of:

a) the necessary properties of a shape to perform a function, in order to inquire into a formal repertoire for one satisfactory shape to perform a certain function under specific context and conditions, and

b)the designer’s intents or goals.

Duncker (1945) identified as Functional Fixedness an observed limitation in the ability to ignore usual functions of objects in order to allowing the perception of the objects as being used for another purpose.

Functional De-Fixation is the ability to overcome functional fixedness based on thinking according to what things are good for instead of what they are for. According to Tversky’s (2002) use of the affordance concept, as actions can be enactments of functions, affordances can link spatial features to functions. She has therefore claimed that “(…) creative design explores, in the realm of existent designs, possible analogies or affordances allowed by intertwining relation between syntax and semantic of shapes”.

With this ability, the designer should be able to infer functions from formal properties or “to produce functional interpretation of designs”, checking them against the functional requirements set out in the formulation of the problem (Mitchell, 1992). In other words, expertise in design implies that the designer has enough knowledge about the conditions or spatial properties that an object’s shape must satisfy in order to perform a certain function and about how functional connections must be made.

De-Fixation involves the assessment of the relation between shape and function under Minsky’s Body-Support (1986) concept as a means-end strategy: “(…) the ‘body’ represents those parts of a structure that serve as the direct instrument for reaching the goals” and the ‘support’ represents all the other secondary features. In other words, this concept explains how different things can be described in unified terms according to certain properties and not only by their apparent shape resemblance.

Figure 1. Body-Support concept

For example, a chair can be remembered as its image, a standard chair as a seat typically having four legs and a back for one person, or as something you can sit on, which is its primary function. The same object in its more general description could allow other functions rather than only to sit on. A flat horizontal surface with a back and legs or any structure to keeping it away from the floor is a context dependent concept which allows multiple shapes. Thinking of a chair as flat horizontal surface with legs and its admissible shapes in a context according to its expected performance liberates the designer from preconceived ideas about objects or shapes. In the same way, thinking about a chair from its function, as something you can sit on, can allow quite different solutions. To develop a creative reasoning in the design process the students must think in terms of the needs to perform actions and shape affordances.

Figure 2. Minky’s Level Bands theory applied to Frank O. Gehry chair – a student’s choice as initial object.

De-Fixation has helped students to understand how broad a spectrum of possible alternatives could be. As Tversky (2002) states, “(…) if we treated each encounter with each object or event as the unique thing it is, we would be unable to generalize, unable to learn, unable to remember, unable to communicate.” Therefore ignoring differences underlies any cognitive process.

De-Fixation deals with relations between shape and function and can be extended as to embrace a tripartite relation involving shape, function and context. The following text describes the unfolding steps of the De-Fixation strategy in detail.

Context

Context refers to the interrelated conditions or circumstances in which actions occur, including the environment in which they take place. Much of the meaning and information about things derives from the context in which they are inserted or accessed. A change in context has consequences in the perception of spatial features and relations between shapes, what in turn allows for the emergence of new functionalities.

There is a universe of solutions that can work adequately for a range of design problems. Objects may be functionally equivalent in one context but not in another, i. e. they may be fitted to different but overlapping ranges of actions. Analogical thinking is often useful in problem solving and can be derived from different sources as real things, events and solutions or from an image retrieved from memory and transformed, or actually reconstructed and reorganized almost from scratch until its representation is suggestive enough so as to allow the mapping and transfer to a candidate target that is being constructed (Goldschmidt, 2001).

Since function may vary with context, objects might be reclassified by recognizing “that x will make a good y” if it is placed in a new context (Mitchell, 1992) or transformed in its syntax. Picasso’s bull’s head, originated from the juxtaposition of the handlebars and saddle of a bicycle, or She-Goat (1950), a bronze cast from an assemblage of flowerpots are good examples of this creative process.

Context exercise sequence starts with the students’ choice of an initial object. Next the students are asked to make alterations in the object’s original context. The context shift was used as preliminary strategy to demonstrate the object’s affordance potential, as proposed by Tversky (2002) and to stimulate a relative autonomy in the students’ re-interpretation of the shapes.

The re-design of the original object was guided by its potential for acquiring new meanings in different contexts. In other words, reasoning about the object’s shape somehow established a kind of “context searching mechanism” whereby the students started to search new contexts for their objects in order to infer new meanings. This inferring action inverts the conventional order of the design process where the context is prior to the object’s design (or re-designs). Here, the object precedes the context, which, in turn, must be “designed”.

Proportion: parametric transformations

Parametric transformations modify the relations between the object’s parts and the whole. This learning strategy is generally used to show how the object might be adapted to perform new functions. Using computational applications such as Microsoft Word, students generate different meanings through the deformation of pictures. This way the students gradually reach levels of innovation without having to invest time in producing drawings and models. This is a straightforward technique, which allows a rapid response.

Material and Technology transformations

Experimentation with changing surface attributes (materials, textures, colors and transparency/opacity), and structural and articulation properties of the original object add another level of conscience to the students. After realizing that shape constitutes in itself a powerful agent, students are stimulated to explore materials using mockups or computer programs (CorelDraw, SketchUp, 3DStudio, etc). Changes in materials often lead the students to rethink the structural attributes of the original object. Students are additionally stimulated to review the object’s structural principles in relation to the new adopted materials and their correspondent properties.

Many objects carry articulation properties. Students are requested to preserve articulation properties from the original object and to incorporate them in the transformed objects. This way, the students learn that the same type of articulation may work for a different purpose, in a different context. The intuitive understanding of the potential for shape alteration and the correspondent generation of new meanings has prepared the students’ hearts and minds for the next stage of the sequence, when the exercises would require a higher level of structured knowledge. The following part of this chapter describes the intersection between the body of knowledge on symmetry and shape grammar and the correspondent set of exercises aimed at the development of Visual Thinking capabilities.

Stage 2: Shape Analysis and Pattern Generation

Shape Analysis

In the first step of Stage 2, Shape Analysis exercises are performed to stimulate a better understanding of geometrical principles governing previous intuitive arrangements. Theoretical principles are consistently studied to geometrically explain the previous exercises. The idea behind these studies is to offer the students a structured background for what they have been doing, using intelligence and developed skills.

Shape grammar

Shape grammar concepts are thoroughly explained and tested, using the students’ generative elements. The students deconstruct and analyze their objects to describe their geometrical attributes (semantic and syntactical), in order to explore, in a subsequent exercise, its shape within the framework given by a set of generative rules.

Symmetry

Symmetry exercises have been designed to stimulate the development of skills related to the creation and recognition of attributes such as movement, tension, rhythm and balance in formal arrangements. Simple AutoCAD commands have been used to execute symmetry operations according to a method developed by Celani (2003), allowing the user to generate, visualize, modify and update symmetrical compositions. The conscious analysis of the created patterns enhances the students’ understanding of the broad concept of symmetry and of the different semantic possibilities involved in the exploration of forms and shapes in two or three dimensions. The conscientious creation and the structured analysis of the compositions stimulate the development of syntactic and semantic aspects of visual reasoning, enhancing the students’ visual repertoire.

Symmetry Pattern Generation

To recognize and to generate patterns implies a prior knowledge about the rules that organize and originate them, as well as transformations that can generate patterns. Manipulation of simple operations like repetition, combination and transformation of one or more elements can generate patterns. As Cha and Gero (1998) put it, “patterns encapsulate blocks of design knowledge”.

Symmetry studies constitute the basis for a set of exercises concerned with the generation of patterns and shapes in two or three dimensions. Symmetry transformations allow students to establish compositions through different strategies involving different rules of generation (symmetry groups). The design by rules reinforces the idea of generation of multiple shapes through a simple concept or generative element. The learning of shape grammar and symmetry principles enables the students to test at least two alternative strategies for shape generation. These capabilities are explored in the next stage, Shape and Function Emergence.

Figure 3. Sequence of Exercises in Symmetry pattern generation, shape and function emergence of the student Cassio Sauer

Stage 3: Shape and Function Emergence

Having explored the potential for abstraction through visual reasoning in the two previous stages, the third stage is characterized by the association between shape generation strategies and design briefing. In order to achieve this goal the last stage is divided into three parts.

In the first step, students depart from symmetry and shape grammar exercises in order to identify imbedded 2D patterns. According to Gero (1996), “emergence of shape semantics is the phenomenon of making explicit meaningful visual patterns, which were not explicitly indicated, by grouping explicit or implicit structures of objects in defined ways”.

The identification of non-explicit patterns require the development of visual intelligence capabilities, defined as the ability to solve problems involving vision and the perception of planes, lines and shapes, primary and emergent. Primary shapes are the ones explicitly represented and emergent shapes are the ones implicit in the others (Gero and Yan, 1993). Shape emergence is the method to identify them, producing new explicit representations from former implicit shapes (Gero and Saunders, 2000). Known as Semantic Shapes, they can be differentiated according to the Gestalt Laws – proximity, similarity, good continuation, closure and figure/ground reversal. The creation, recognition and meaning of forms and shapes, aspects of visual reasoning involved in design, constitute sub-problems of the architectural design process.

In the second step, students use the already acquired capabilities to identify 2D patterns in order to attribute 3D properties to emergent planes, shapes and lines. From the universe of possibilities created by using symmetry operations in the method developed by Celani (2003) and shape grammars, the students discover how different compositions can emerge from a pattern or shape. The exercise consists of choosing a sample of emergent shapes originated in the frieze or wallpaper symmetry pattern transforming two-dimensional patterns into three-dimensional spatial compositions. This is a crucial step in the design learning process, as previous knowledge and skills are associated in order to construct a 3D pattern with vertical and horizontal planes.

The third step associates emergent shapes and design briefing. The learned cognitive abilities are generalized as to allow the emergence of functions. As Gero (1996) and Finke (1990) put it: “(…) emergence is not limited only to structure. Emergence can also apply to behavior and function”.

The third part is constituted by two exercises: in the first exercise, students used 3D generated patterns to construct a lamp (Turkienicz, Beck, Stumpp, 2005). The lamp design fulfills a twofold pedagogical objective: on the one hand to recall the De-Fixation Stage; on the other hand to construct an object and not only its representation. The exercise plays a key role in architectural design learning processes. The 1:1 scale serves to illustrate how every detail affects the object’s perception and fruition. Finishing is stressed as a very important fundament; electric and electronic appliances have to work properly as to demonstrate the importance of the close association between the object’s form and its function. The lamp exercise works as a foreground for the last exercise concerned with the association between emergent shapes and the design brief of a house.

After developing De-Fixation, Pattern Generation, Shape and Function Emergence capabilities, the students are considered prepared to identify a pattern suitable for a house. The process does not start with the spelling of the house design brief. The initial step is constituted by the generation of a number of alternatives in which lines can be converted in vertical surfaces and spaces between lines can be reinterpreted as voids or horizontal surfaces in different heights, resulting in an abstract 3D shape pattern originated in a previous 2D pattern. At this point, students build a paper model to represent their choice of vertical and horizontal planes retrieved from the computer-generated patterns. The mockup symbolizes a sort of rite of passage in that it deals with a form of representation that resembles floors and walls. By associating planes to walls and floors, students can clearly identify possibilities for associating the learned capabilities to design briefs.

Figure 4. Complete sequence of exercises by the student Yvy Rebesquini

The inverse paradigm, if compared to the conventional sequence where the design brief is prior to shape manipulation, allows for a wide range of alternatives concerning the relation between form and function. Their previous experience has been built upon a non-deterministic relation of form with respect to function and vice-versa: function can stimulate the generation of new shapes and, by the same token, shapes can shed light over functional aspects never been thought. From these initially abstract compositions, new functions can emerge, inferring living spaces from new contexts. This way, Function Emergence can be considered to play an important role in the introduction of new schemas and consequently new variables (Gero, 1996).

The unfolding steps of this exercise are concerned with the actual production of working details and adjustments involving ergonomics, environmental control, structural and other building elements. The students use conventional technical knowledge about these subjects and are very often tutored in the Beaux Arts style, with individual assistance in regular studio hours supplemented by week-end charrettes. All work is documented in the students’ term portfolio and presented for internal and external assessment in the A1 format.

Conclusions

The experience suggests that the enhancement of the repertoire of design strategies may constitute an important foothold in the building of cognitive abilities used in the architectural design processes. The widened understanding of symmetry, along with other tools related to the understanding of syntactic and semantic aspects of form became key factors for the acquisition of blocks of design knowledge. This understanding partially answers Oxman’s question on how design knowledge might be acquired and learned.

The exploration of the different means of representation and the inclusion of computational programs as generative tools might have played an important role in the students’ capacity to test and evaluate different design alternatives. It may be suggested that further knowledge relative to the impact of these tools allied to the knowledge about geometrical syntax of composition is necessary to the development of consistent pedagogical strategies in design teaching. This association may well constitute an important basis for the improvement of the internal representational capabilities of the learner.

The results obtained with the sequence of exercises have shown that internal representations of knowledge can be learned and taught as long as they are structured both in terms of order and timing. In other words, the process is quite dependent on the ‘reading’, by the teachers, of their students’ progress. Some of the exercises had to be repeated because the students did not understand their principles. The capacity to detect or interpret the students’ work completely transforms the teacher’s role in the architectural design studio. Instead of criticizing the product, the method instigates the teacher to explain why the student did not understand the exercise’s principles.

This is not a secondary conclusion. On the contrary, it constitutes the hub of this chapter in that it shows that design teaching strategies can be taught if teachers are willing to learn about the cognitive structure of their students. In the Cognitive Studio the teacher has to constantly conceptualize and define exercises in order to improve his/her students’ design learning processes, relating specific contents to the theory and practice of design and cognition. Failures which might occur can then be shared between the students’ difficulties to understand the exercise and the actual quality of the design exercise.

The reported experience is an effort to associate pedagogical strategies and design learning sciences, in other words, bringing theory and research to the design studio. Further work must certainly involve rigorous evaluations of the proposed learning process, for example, with content and protocol analyses, in order to acknowledge the experience as a coherent basis for a design teaching method in its own right.

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