Over the last year, we were experimenting with a very bottom up approach. We would give the students problems which completely throw them off and force them to question if that is what architecture was. Our projects revolved around strong theoretical ideas and issues and we were able to raise important issues through conceptual solutions that students unknowingly brought to the table. The faculty was interested in thinking with the students and I felt, it was an interesting way of working.
However, by the beginning of second year, we realized that students had no idea of scale and proportion and still drew their drawings as if nothing mattered. They had no idea of logistics of space or proportion. Staircases were randomly placed or unresolved, rooms were obnoxiously proportioned, there was no relationship between sequencing of spaces, no response to anthropometrics - something that we thought was a matter of observation. However, students failed to even think about all of it. This year, it was scary to have designs which had no idea of proportion and scale - even when questioned about it, students were in oblivion. This is when we realized that we need to address this aspect critically in our upcoming projects.
As a result, we started thinking of very pragmatic projects, limiting the scope of thinking and response. The project like the play school, which the second yearites are currently working on - is a fairly simple, infact simplistic project. Inspite of this, I do not see conceptual ideas coming through. There is a big gap in the students' mind in relating the programme with the space and user. There is no inquiry into how the user behaves. No one thought of their own childhood - all are working like scientists, trying to manifest it into a formal idea, which itself is based on very weak grounds.
If I was to say that our initial projects in first year were about form (Marrying Machines), constructability (Building out of waste), expression (Expression space) and function (Building New Grounds), in respective order, the students have completely ignored the learning out of it and infact brushed it off. It was disheartening to hear from them that they felt that those projects never addressed 'practical' design issues. I felt that was too myopic a judgement made. However, accepting their feedback, we thought we must try working with them on a practical project and see how well they receive it. It is always difficult to channelize a project without a theoretical stand point for me. The project "Playschool" does not appeal to me, because one does not know how to channelize thought. They have been asked to work out the design through mathematical principles (eg. Fibonacci, fractals, modular, etc.).
Before the mathematical principle, one has to arrive at an idea. This idea across the class is a landscape of randomness - none of the students have come up with a relevant idea, that even relates to a child, or a play school or the organization of a building. Probably what I mean is in such a project, any idea is workable - and then, how do you contextualize? None of them have yet, gone into their childhood to dig out any aspect that they could manifest into a project. But then, there are these vague ideas of working with rhymes, music, dance, sound - all of which can we dealt with in so many ways. The lack of theoretical stand point does not allow to channelize a direction specifically for this particular project.
But eventually, we are moving towards the same random design method of the old school: give a project - student brings an obscure idea - nudge it to make a project. Eventually it will become something. My problem with this is a large amount of literal translation that becomes foolish buildings in our built environment. For example: a child is like a blooming flower, so the building becomes a flower; or children like basic shapes, so the building is a concoction of triangles-circles in plan, which eventually extrudes into a cake form. That the school is a place where knowledge grows - so the graph of growth of knowledge becomes a building; that it should be a happy place, hence curved forms. Such cliches shape our physical environment and a brief like this does not address it at all, in fact, it allows them to take it forward and make it build-able. It is the academia which has to address such issues. However, that's not happening right now.
We always chalk out objectives of the project but we never evaluate at the end of the project if students have achieved them. Most of them don't. And with the current 2nd year class, they ignore much of it, rather, they question the objectives itself! That's silly. But this pedagogical shift which embraces the old school programme driven projects are disappointing and unfortunately become monotonous engagements with a singular site.
I know this post has become fussy - I am not clear on any thing mentioned here. I have not stated what is the deviation, because I am not finding the right words to articulate...but eventually I would elaborate.
