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01: Digital Pedagogy :: C - Digital Curriculums: Effective Integration of Digital Courses

Nancy Yen-wen Cheng

An Approach to Digital Design Teaching

Students need to use digital techniques throughout the curriculum to understand how computing

can support architecture's diverse endeavors and thinking modes. In particular, students must be

able to explore and communicate design ideas fluidly using digital and traditional media suitable

to specific queries.

Schools should provide exposure to a palette of current and emerging techniques and foster

development of a personalized set of media skills. Along with basic design and drawing, most

beginners need a guided introduction to digital media. As in language learning, basic skills need

to be immediately applied to problems of increasing complexity. Technical concepts will be most

easily absorbed when they are introduced in support of design tasks on a need to know basis,

with help available on demand. Baseline competency in 2D and 3D expression should be

confirmed by portfolio screening, with remedial support available. Once fluency is reached,

designers are empowered to experiment with media that supports their goals.

To reach fruition, a digital design sensibility must pervade the school culture. Faculty, staff and

students need access to internal knowledge sharing as well as external educational opportunities.

Students need to understand conceptual frameworks and strategies for approaching new

technology, so faculty with broad knowledge are needed as well as instructors experienced in

specific software applications. Peer tutors and small student-teacher rations can make training

exercises work for individuals of differing abilities. A positive learning community is crucial to

making computers effective in architectural education.

02 - Digital Tools

Ganapathy Mahalingam

In the early stages of their engagement of computer technology, architects approached the

technology as an assistive technology that would enhance the practice of architecture. The scope

of the engagement was captured in the phrase ‘computer-aided architectural design.’ In the four

decades since, the role of computer technology in architecture has gained a marked significance.

The scope has now been extended for architects to contemplate ‘totally computer-mediated

architectural design.’

The key in the development of digital tools to enhance the practice of architecture has been the

facility with which the various tasks involved in the practice of architecture have been

represented, enabled or enhanced using computer technology. The digital representation of

architectural entities and the digital manipulation of those entities have provided alternate means

to produce architecture. Drawing, modeling, performance simulation, design collaboration,

construction management and building fabrication are now routinely performed using computerbased

technology. This success has revealed the untapped potential of the computational

representation of architecture.

Advances in computing based on the study of natural processes such as neural processing,

genetic evolution and emergence now suggest that the elusive nature of creative architectural

thought can be articulated enough to be applied in a technologically-mediated environment.

Digital tools may finally reveal what other architectural tools have hitherto concealed – the

architectonics of architecture. Therein lays promise. The future of digital tools rests on the extent

to which architects can accept that exemplary architectural designs can be created in a computermediated

environment and that digital thinking is indeed architectural thinking.