Collaborative pedagogy in architectural design studio: A case study in applying collaborative design

Abstract

Architectural design has always been a collaborative process that involves participatory practice. It requires experienced individuals working together; this includes architects, engineers and clients to achieve a singular goal. Therefore, there has been increased interest in achieving a collaborative design studio and developing architecture students’ skills.Architecture students need to interact, communicate and debate in design studios with their peers and their instructors. Moreover, they need to co-operate to achieve the same goal in a manner to be prepared to the highly collaborative nature of the architectural practice they will enter (Crosbie, 1995; Daniels, 2002) [9,10]. This leads to raising the question of “How can collaborative techniques be addressed in the design studio to enhance the skills of the students and prepare them to profession challenges?”The purpose of this paper is to discover how collaborative design studio can be improved to enhance each participant’s contribution in the design process. The study was conducted as a ten days workshop that includes ninety-two students from the third year from the Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Egypt. The researcher used quantitative analysis in forms of questionnaires along the workshop and used tools like “time and task schedule” and “peer assessment” to assess their effectiveness. Keywords: Architectural education, Design studio, Collaborative learning, Coordination, Participatory design