Enhancing architectural engineering students’ acquisition of artistic technical competences and soft skills

Abstract

In architectural engineering, artistic technical competences and soft skills have become particularly crucial for remaining competitive globally and for fighting against uniformized and/or disharmonized urbanized landscapes. The Design and Sculpture Studio taught at Wrocław University FA-WUST (Poland) illustrates the efforts made to teach these abilities. We investigated how students in architectural engineering develop artistic technical competences and soft-skills by means of the studio teaching method and to assess their role for the training of today’s architectural engineers. A survey using a 5-point Likert-scale was carried out among students who completed the Studio. Statistical analyses revealed that soft skills play a critical for the students’ training in architectural engineering. Furthermore, we found evidence validating the hypothesis that teaching design and sculpture by means of studios is fruitful for acquiring both soft skills and artistic technical competences. The findings of this study revealed that (i) creativity and innovative thinking, as well as knowing how an object should be integrated in the space and in the landscape as the most important for the training of today’s architectural engineers, (ii) the studio teaching method is particularly useful to increase the students’ acquisition of these abilities, and (iii) the recent awareness of the importance of soft skills in architectural engineering education in the Central-European context.

Keywords

• architectural engineering education
• course assessment
• studio teaching method
• institutional culture
• student-centered learning