In two previous posted blogs, I covered the topic of model sketching. The first one explored how a set of iterative sketch models—typically out of clay and at a reduced scale such as 1/32”—assisted students in defining what we call an architectural mass model.  The second blog focused on the importance of creating rapid sketch models that exhibited the first unencumbered physical artifact that translated an idea—vague and amorphous as many first ideas are—into a three-dimensional object; the latter model technique emphasized the student’s intuition so often associated with a hands-on approach while crafting spatial qualities.

Architecture programs, at least those that I have been associated with as a faculty member and administrator, have favored hands-on/minds-on and learning by doing pedagogies—the latter often referred to as learn-by-doing in the model of education espoused by American philosopher John Dewey.  Recently, I have understood that these modes of “learning through reflection on doing,” are equally defined by the term experiential learning; a concept that emphasizes active experimentation with concrete experience, and abstract conceptualization that ends with the student’s need for a reflective observation on their work and process. Notwithstanding the particularities of each approach, each of these models refers to a theory of education that emphasizes the student’s direct interaction “with their environment in order to adapt and learn.”

Questions of section, Part 2. After thirty years of teaching architecture studio at the undergraduate level, I maintain that translating ideas into space is one of the most challenging aspects of design that college sophomores need to learn on their journey to becoming architects. This is particularly true when working in section.