with his words, 'by trusting the student to see, think, and do things that we
cannot, the growth of something that cannot be seen yet is supported with an
emergent sensibility' (url-2). It is clear that new ideas lead the field to multiple,
critical, student-oriented and open-ended level. At this point, the notion of
connotation act as a key point for a cognitive design operation within the
participants of the studio. Within this research, the notion of connotation will
be used as a tool for investigating prospective understanding in architectural
design education.
Connotations
Today, architecture is perceived as a totality of very complex sequences of
actions and performances.
The architect, or any other architectural producer, creates material
conditions in which the decision of whether architecture is immaterial, can be
made (Hill, 2006). The immaterial condition of architecture necessitates
elaborate attitudes. Over the course of this creation, new attitudes emerge
during the acts and performances from the fragments to the whole, within a
very complex network of relations, rather than the limited interaction and
materiality of the built product of architecture and user habits. One of the
significant approach that is now being considered is 'chance' as a new focus in
approaching to immateriality of architecture. Design is a live event, an
experienced reality, an embodied activity happening in the present, not
separate from living and is therefore implicated in the realm of chance
(Manolopoulou, 2013). Moreover, associative and imaginative characteristics of
living state, therefore performative design activity, would also relate with the
concept of 'connotation' which is included in the realm of chance.
The activities in the design studio, the design problem, objects, people,
moving and stable images, texts, ideas, emotions, memories, phases, moments
and many others trigger relevantly or irrelevantly the thinking, meaning and
making based on connotations and stimulate the design action. The design
process is multidimensional; it bears energy and is fed by intellectual curiosity.
It is not a 'black box' as defined in the seventies but a 'black hole' where all
kinds of information and energy is sucked in and unpredictable designs are
created (Yurekli, 2004). Connotations are the flow of information and energy,
the flow of thinking within 'a black hole' in the broadest sense. The human body
is capable of hundreds of separate functions and to each of these there
correspond flow experiences; the body does not produce flow merely by its
movements, the mind is always involved as well (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).
Annotations or denotations may interrupt this flow, so they can be avoided or
limited to a certain degree. Thus, connotations relate with architecture as
creators of intensities and uncertainties that come up with situations and
events and are fulfilled by the environment of relationships.
The design operations developed within connotations in the studio is
neither related to formal curriculum of orthodox pedagogies nor to a hidden
curriculum. The orthodox pedagogies employed in the studio is marked by
serious flaws, such as the legitimation of hierarchical social relations, the
about trends or uncritically accepted received ideas, but about everything that
can be stimulated. That is why the design studio should be inclusive and active.
The structure of the design studio that is fed by multiplicities of
connotations is the ideal setting for discovering the performative dynamics of
architecture. Today, many components that triggers the material and
immaterial conditions of architecture, are instrumentalised, however, the
necessity of feeding the flow by these components and more, without an
interruption, indicates an open-ended field of experiment. The paper will be
constructed on this field of experiment through a series of design experiments
within different tasks of 'Otherminds' which is an undergraduate first year
architectural design studio.
Studio experiments
In order to understand the connotational way of thinking profoundly,
presenting studio experiments would be explanatory. Three cases of
experiments within three different studio tasks will be discussed within the
frame of connotations. The studio tasks are realised within 'Otherminds' studio
in Spring semester of 2013. The studio tasks are The Gaze, Places of Curiosity
and Wetlands respectively. They are unlinked major design tasks assigned for
separate objectives within the Spring term, however 'Otherminds' planned and
discussed all the design tasks through broader contexts of 'otherness' and
'parallax view'. For giving an idea about the studio setup of 'Otherminds', it
should be indicated that it aimed to introduce students to the Field of
Otherness, in which they would design by continual as ifs and oscillations and
meet the other, precisely the unfamiliar, unexpected, unknown and
inexperienced (Alma, 2013). Thus, the studio of 'Otherminds' generated with
an intention of alternatively designed situations for as many encounters
possible.
1. The Gaze
The subject of the gaze was confronted both in the beginning and the
middle of the term. The opening design task was 'The Gaze', in which students
were assigned to gaze and to represent the topography, the scene, the wind,
the light, the sound in order to discover the things that transforms the gaze. It
was a one day task of discovery and perception. They were asked to gaze the
same place until the place changes. The representations, namely 'Diagrams of
Gaze', was for triggering new ideas as well as expressing how the gaze was
situated.
'The Gaze Machines of Field' was a three-week period design, production
and representation task of the semester which was also linked to the former
task of 'The Gaze'. The main concern of the design task was to explore the
potentiality of the view, the focus and the tool of intervention and produce new
scapes and scopes among them in collaboration with other studio participants
(Aydemir, Alma, 2014). The first step of the task was the field, which was a
physical, topological, existential, intuitional and instrumental investigation of
the study area. The second step was the gaze, which was building the context
collaboration with local university students, spending time for exploring the
sites, collecting samples, sketching with observation and memories and so on.
For accomplishing the objectives, triggers were designed as minor
assignments. Micro studies was one of those triggers. Students were asked to
collect smallest things that are characteristically connected to the site; such as
seed, leaves, flakes like a botanist; eggs, bugs, small animals lie a zoologist;
pieces of rocks, sand grains, soil samples like a geologist (Kknar et al., 2013).
The assignment to collect small things shifted their attention from the human
scale to micro scale, coercing them to realize and observe realms beyond
human scale. The shift connects you to the place on a different level opening
the possibility to understand extended consequences of human intervention to
the ecosystem, repositioning human body on larger context (Kknar, 2013).
Acknowledgement
This paper is based on the PhD proposal of 'Connotations in Architectural
Design Education' supervised by Prof. Dr. Arzu Erdem. The design cases were
carried out by Other Minds, a team of the lecturers of the first year
undergraduate architectural design studio in Istanbul Technical University. The
Other Minds studio program designed and tutored by Assist.Prof.Dr. Sait Ali
Kknar, Dr. Burin Krtnc, Res. Assit. Bihter Alma and Res. Assist. A. Zeynep
Aydemir during 2012-2013 academic year. The author would like to thank
Prof.Dr. Arzu Erdem, Other Minds and students.
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