‘Architectural literacy’: Functions of architectural drawing

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-97
Author(s):  
Robin Schaeverbeke ◽  
Hélène Aarts
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Base ◽  
Teaching Practices ◽  
Artistic Expression ◽  
Large Field ◽  
Architectural Drawings ◽  
Architectural Drawing ◽  
Reflective Conversation

‘Literacy’ refers to the ability to both assign meaning to – and to create messages. Transposing this concept to ‘architectural literacy’ could refer to the assigning of meaning to architectural messages and the ability to create such messages. ‘Architectural literacy’ suggests that architects employ a distinct language to communicate, process and design spatial propositions and that the knowledge of such literacy could be of importance to a broader community. In architectural practices, drawing is used to discourse about forms and spaces. Our approach to disassemble architectural drawings in a set of functions, aims to add understanding about a specific ability to learn and understand architecture. Disassembling architectural drawing in a set of functions stems from a reflective conversation upon our practices as drawing teachers in architectural faculties. In an attempt to (re)structure the didactic foundations of our own teaching practices, we started discussing the kind of drawings architects resort to. This research gradually revealed a set of distinct, yet interrelated functions and activities. We introduce architectural drawing as a specific faculty of a large field of drawing practices, which revolves around the convergence of perception, imagination, disclosure and artistic expression. Learning about the distinct activities and abilities to process forms and spaces provides a knowledge base to explore foundations of architectural reasoning.

Learning formative assessment in the field

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 197-216
Author(s):  
Su Gao ◽  
Katrina Liu ◽  
Marilyn McKinney
Keyword(s):  
Preservice Teachers ◽  
Formative Assessment ◽  
Student Learning ◽  
Teaching Practices ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
Elementary Classrooms ◽  
Mentor Teachers ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Reflective Conversations ◽  
Reflective Conversation

Purpose It is suggested that mentor teachers engage in reflective conversations with preservice teachers to develop formative assessment as a teaching skill. However, there is minimal evidence documenting this process. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the process and impact of reflective conversation on preservice teachers’ learning about implementing formative assessment in the classroom. Design/methodology/approach This study draws on two dyads of mentor and preservice teachers to examine the role of conversation in helping preservice teachers learn to use formative assessment in elementary classrooms in the USA. A comparative case study method is used to analyze and synthesize the similarities, differences and patterns across both cases. Findings Qualitative data indicate that reflective conversations enable preservice teachers to reflect on their teaching practices and learn how to conduct formative assessment. However, a lack of critical reflection in the conversations results in generic solutions that do not focus on specific aspects of student learning. Practical implications This study suggests that mentor teachers using reflective conversation to guide preservice teacher’s critical analysis of their prior assumptions and teaching practices while referencing actual student learning is an essential element in learning to use formative assessment in the classroom. Originality/value This study contributes to the line of research that explores conversation between mentor and preservice teachers and provides an empirical analysis of conversations focused on learning to use formative assessment in elementary classrooms.

scholarly journals Teaching Practices and Knowledge Base of English as a Foreign Language Teachers’ Communicative Language Teaching Implementation

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Anchalee Jansem
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Base ◽  
Teaching Practices ◽  
Major Elements ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Multiple Roles ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Pedagogical Content

This small scale study aimed at identifying (1) the characteristics of teaching practices in CLT classrooms, (2) teachers’ opinions underlying such practices, (3) their positions while adopting CLT, and (4) a knowledge base used as a framework of CLT implementation. Eight Thai teachers who regarded themselves as CLT proponents voluntarily took part in this study. Data collected via classroom observations and post-teaching semi-structured interviews indicated that CLT involved four common features including promoting ‘small talk’ in the target language, beginning the lesson with the combination of lead-in and presentation strategies, positively reacting to students’ linguistic errors, and emphasizing semi-communicative activities. The participants’ opinions underlying CLT implementation centered on playing multiple roles including lesson designers, class managers, and English users with certain levels of English proficiency. Content, pedagogical content, and subject matter knowledge served as their major elements of the knowledge base for teaching when conducting CLT lessons.

scholarly journals The Machine Stops

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
William du Toit
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Mining Operation ◽  
Gold Rush ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Economic Prosperity ◽  
Architectural Drawings ◽  
Mining Operations ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Architectural Drawing ◽  
The Cost

<p><b>Before the discovery of gold, the majority of the South Island of Aotearoa was relatively uninhabited, until the 1860s gold rush which quickly propelled the Otago region into economic prosperity. Once the gold dried up, the mining operations were quickly abandoned, with many of the workers losing their jobs as the industry declined.</b></p> <p>The historic goldfields in the Otago region now lie in various states of decay, with the industrial remnants and environmental scarring slowly being reclaimed by ecological processes. Each mining operation centred around a stamper battery, a giant stone-crushing machine used to separate the gold from the quartz ore. Consisting of a large timber framework and a number of half-ton weights used to crush the ore, they were deemed too difficult to remove after the mining operations had ceased—abandoned to slowly decay in the irrevocably damaged landscape.</p> <p>Of these many sites, the Homeward Bound goldmining operation, located 30km northwest of Arrowtown, offers one of the most complete examples of this historical process due to the area’s dry climate—each stage of the mining process still being physically represented by a trace or fragment in the landscape. These remnants represent both the story of extracting the gold that led to the region’s prosperity, as well as the story of irreversible environmental destruction that resulted. As such, each of the man-made and natural remnants represents a different point of view regarding this complex heritage event. This design-led research investigation proposes to use speculative architectural drawing to provide a voice to each of seven unique points of view: the Mineshaft, Schist Tailings, Redirected Stream, Stamper Battery, Water Race, Aerial Cableway, and a Battery Footprint left behind when a previous stamper battery was swept away in a flood.</p> <p>E.M. Forster’s short story “The Machine Stops” is an example of allegorical narrative fiction that portrays a story with a similarly dialectic premise to the tale represented by the abandoned Otago stamper batteries. This design-led thesis investigation uses Forster’s short story as a literary provocateur to investigate how such a narrative can be conveyed using speculative architectural drawings. Forster’s theme of technological dominance and disregard for the natural environment is effectively a type of ‘morality play’ also represented by the Homeward Bound goldmining site—where the economic prosperity of the region came at the cost of devastating the native landscape.</p> <p>This thesis investigation proposes to preserve this heritage story though the lens of an allegorical architectural project—a way to safeguard it as a valuable lesson for future generations. It explores how orthographic drawing, architectural notation strategies, and layering techniques can be assimilated together in ways that help to reawaken and preserve a heritage story about New Zealand that is soon destined to be lost forever.</p>

scholarly journals Architecture and Living Traditions Reflected in Wooden Rafters of Śrīvilliputtūr Temple

1970 ◽  
Vol 78 ◽  
pp. 229-266
Author(s):  
Deepak John Mathew ◽  
Parthiban Rajukalidoss
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Present Article ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Architectural Drawings ◽  
Architectural Drawing ◽  
Doctoral Thesis ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
South Asian Art ◽  
The Temple

The present article cursorily examines the wooden images set in exterior hall of the Vaṭapatraśāyī complex. The temple priests told me these images were part of an old temple car, tēr that existed in the nineteenth century. A collection of 135 wooden sculptures is packed in this hall of which select specimens are reported. Each image is supposed to be housed in a vimāna. The unique features of the images vis-à-vis their architectural setting is investigated. It is understood the different Mūrtis appearing in the sculptural illustrations are likely to represent the presiding gods of Vaiṣṇava divyadeśas at Śrīvilliputtūr, Māliruñcōlai, Araṅkam/Śrīraṅgam, Vēṅkaṭam/Tirumala-Tirupati, Dvārakā, Śālagrāma and so on. The vimāna typologies seem to represent the models popular in South Asian art. Architectural drawing of the examined specimens is designed to facilitate better understanding of the religious traditions of the Indian subcontinent. Parthiban’s doctoral thesis on the architectural setting of the Śrīvilliputtūr includes a survey of the sculptural wealth of the Great Temple (Tamil peruṅkōyil) dedicated to Āṇṭāḷ and Vaṭapatraśāyī. A number of architectural drawings are presented to pinpoint the programme of images within the macro twin-temple and the micro maṇḍapas or other parts where icons are accommodated.

scholarly journals Drawing in Perspective: A Proposition for a Discursive Architecture in the Age of Digital Representation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Laura Coates
Keyword(s):  
Computer Aided Design ◽  
Ground Plane ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Picture Plane ◽  
Linear Perspective ◽  
Architectural Drawings ◽  
Digital Representation ◽  
Architectural Drawing ◽  
Architectural Representation ◽  
The Relationship

<p>Contemporary architectural practise has come to depend upon digital representation as a means of design and for the production of architectural drawings. The computer is common place in architectural offices, relegating the drawing board as a machine of the past. Today, the architect is more likely to draw with a mouse than a mechanical pencil. The proposition of this research suggests such a dramatic shift within representational technology will not only affect how architects design, but also, what they design. Digital modes of architectural representation are reliant on mathematical code designed to artificially simulate visual experience. Such software offers strict alliance with a geometrically correct perspective code making the construction of perspective as simple as taking a ‘snap shot’. The compliance of the digital drawing to codes prescribed by a programmer distance the architect from the perspectival representation, consequently removing the architect’s control of the drawing convention. The universality of perspectival views is enforced by computer programmes such as Google Sketch-Up, which use perspective as a default view. This research explores the bias of linear perspective, revealing that which architects have forgotten due to a dependence on digital software. Special attention is drawn to the lack of control the architect exerts over their limits of representation. By using manual drawing the perspective convention is able to be unpacked and critiqued against the limitations of the system first prescribed by Brunelleschi. The manual drawing is positioned as a powerful mode of representation for it overtly expresses projection and the architect’s control of the line. The hand drawing allows the convention to be interpreted erroneously. The research is methodology driven, focusing on representation as more than a rudimentary tool, but a component of the design process. Thus, representational tools are used to provide a new spatial representation of a site. Computer aided design entered wide spread architectural practice at the end of the 1980’s, a decade that provided an ideal setting for speculative drawn projects. Such projects proved fruitful to architects critically approaching issues of representation and drawing convention, treating the drawing as more than utilitarian in the production of architecture. Whilst the move into digital imagining is not a paradigm shift for the act of drawing, it fundamentally shifted the way architects draw, separating drawing conventions onto visually separate ‘sheets’. The architectural drawing known today was that discovered in the Renaissance, Renaissance architects, the first to conceive of architecture through representation, thus was their endeavour to produce a true three dimensional image. The Renaissance architect executed absolute control of perspective, control, which has since defined the modern architect. Positioned within research by design, the ‘drawing-out’ process is a critical interpretation of perspective. In particular the drawing of instrumental perspective is unpacked within the realm of scientific research. The picture plane, horizon line and ground plane remain constant as the positions of these are well documented. The stationary point, vanishing point (possibly the most speculative components of the drawing) or the relationship between the two, behave as independent variables. In breaking the assumptions that underlie linear perspective as a fixed geometric system we may ask ourselves if we are in control of representational methods, or if they control us. Since architects are controlled by their means of representation this question is paramount to the discipline, particularly today, when digital drawing has shifted the relationship between architect and representation. The implications of this new relationship may result in monotony across the architectural disciple, where the production of critical architecture is secondary to computer technology.</p>

Teaching in a Makerspace

2020 ◽  
pp. 26-51
Author(s):  
Catherine Otieno
Keyword(s):  
Learning Environment ◽  
Knowledge Base ◽  
Teaching Practices ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Learning Goals ◽  
Learning Needs ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
Learner Centered ◽  
Depth Study

This chapter provides an in-depth study of the teaching practices of instructors who primarily guide and facilitate learning in a makespace. With a close look at the pedagogical practices that govern teaching and learning in the maker classroom, this study presents instructors who modeled these frameworks. In addition to their own knowledge base and expertise, they were able to efficiently and effectively integrate multi-resources in a unique learning environment while helping learners succeed and adopt the maker mindset. Makerspaces are changing how we perceive learning and teaching. Instructors highlighted in this chapter put forth activities and learning goals that were learner centered and interesting to various learning needs. They designed and created a learning environment that safeguarded learners and allowed them to experiment with ideas and materials, creating different iterations of learning and redefining what success and failure means.

scholarly journals Frank Gehry’s Self-Twisting Uninterrupted Line: Gesture-Drawings as Indexes

Arts ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 16
Author(s):  
Marianna Charitonidou
Keyword(s):  
Continuous Process ◽  
Spatial Relations ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Use Of Self ◽  
Architectural Drawings ◽  
Slow Food ◽  
Architectural Drawing ◽  
Built Form ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Frank Gehry

The article analyses Frank Gehry’s insistence on the use of self-twisting uninterrupted line in his sketches. Its main objectives are first, to render explicit how this tendency of Gehry is related to how the architect conceives form-making, and second, to explain how Gehry reinvents the tension between graphic composition and the translation of spatial relations into built form. A key reference for the article is Marco Frascari’s ‘Lines as Architectural Thinking’ and, more specifically, his conceptualisation of Leon Battista Alberti’s term lineamenta in order to illuminate in which sense architectural drawings should be understood as essential architectural factures and not merely as visualisations. Frascari, in Eleven Exercises in the Art of Architectural Drawing: Slow Food for the Architects’s Imagination, after having drawn a distinction between what he calls ‘trivial’ and ‘non-trivial’ drawings—that is to say between communication drawings and conceptual drawings, or drawings serving to transmit ideas and drawings serving to their own designer to grasp ideas during the process of their genesis—unfolds his thoughts regarding the latter. The article focuses on how the ‘non-trivial’ drawings of Frank Gehry enhance a kinaesthetic relationship between action and thought. It pays special attention to the ways in which Frank Gehrys’ sketches function as instantaneous concretisations of a continuous process of transformation. Its main argument is that the affective capacity of Gehry’s ‘drawdlings’ lies in their interpretation as successive concretisations of a reiterative process. The affectivity of their abstract and single-gesture pictoriality is closely connected to their interpretation as components of a single dynamic system. As key issues of Frank Gehry’s use of uninterrupted line, the article identifies: the enhancement of a straightforward relationship between the gesture and the decision-making regarding the form of the building; its capacity to render possible the perception of the evolution of the process of form-making; and the way the use of uninterrupted line is related to the function of Gehry’s sketches as indexes referring to Charles Sanders Peirce’s conception of the notion of ‘index’.

scholarly journals The Machine Stops

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
William du Toit
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Mining Operation ◽  
Gold Rush ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Economic Prosperity ◽  
Architectural Drawings ◽  
Mining Operations ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Architectural Drawing ◽  
The Cost

<p><b>Before the discovery of gold, the majority of the South Island of Aotearoa was relatively uninhabited, until the 1860s gold rush which quickly propelled the Otago region into economic prosperity. Once the gold dried up, the mining operations were quickly abandoned, with many of the workers losing their jobs as the industry declined.</b></p> <p>The historic goldfields in the Otago region now lie in various states of decay, with the industrial remnants and environmental scarring slowly being reclaimed by ecological processes. Each mining operation centred around a stamper battery, a giant stone-crushing machine used to separate the gold from the quartz ore. Consisting of a large timber framework and a number of half-ton weights used to crush the ore, they were deemed too difficult to remove after the mining operations had ceased—abandoned to slowly decay in the irrevocably damaged landscape.</p> <p>Of these many sites, the Homeward Bound goldmining operation, located 30km northwest of Arrowtown, offers one of the most complete examples of this historical process due to the area’s dry climate—each stage of the mining process still being physically represented by a trace or fragment in the landscape. These remnants represent both the story of extracting the gold that led to the region’s prosperity, as well as the story of irreversible environmental destruction that resulted. As such, each of the man-made and natural remnants represents a different point of view regarding this complex heritage event. This design-led research investigation proposes to use speculative architectural drawing to provide a voice to each of seven unique points of view: the Mineshaft, Schist Tailings, Redirected Stream, Stamper Battery, Water Race, Aerial Cableway, and a Battery Footprint left behind when a previous stamper battery was swept away in a flood.</p> <p>E.M. Forster’s short story “The Machine Stops” is an example of allegorical narrative fiction that portrays a story with a similarly dialectic premise to the tale represented by the abandoned Otago stamper batteries. This design-led thesis investigation uses Forster’s short story as a literary provocateur to investigate how such a narrative can be conveyed using speculative architectural drawings. Forster’s theme of technological dominance and disregard for the natural environment is effectively a type of ‘morality play’ also represented by the Homeward Bound goldmining site—where the economic prosperity of the region came at the cost of devastating the native landscape.</p> <p>This thesis investigation proposes to preserve this heritage story though the lens of an allegorical architectural project—a way to safeguard it as a valuable lesson for future generations. It explores how orthographic drawing, architectural notation strategies, and layering techniques can be assimilated together in ways that help to reawaken and preserve a heritage story about New Zealand that is soon destined to be lost forever.</p>

scholarly journals Discursive Practices and Teaching Mediation to Support Learning in Mathematics and Italian in Primary School from Fenix Program

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 28
Author(s):  
Daniela Maccario
Keyword(s):  
Primary School ◽  
Knowledge Base ◽  
Teaching Practices ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Previous Article ◽  
Good Teaching ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Teaching Principles

In order to define teaching principles to be adopted to support learning in Mathematics and Italian in primary school classes starting from the use of Fenix Program, the research was aimed at increasing the knowledge base available through the recognition of good teaching practices from the point of view of teachers in the form of professional routines. In a previous article (Maccario, 2016) we described some findings on the criteria that you can follow in the development of teaching sequences. This article presents a further order of the results concerning the dialogic-discursive structures that represent an important dimension of teaching mediation in accordance with the operational perspective of teachers. Also in this case it is phenomenology which refers to the practical knowledge as a source to be exploited for the construction of teaching principles and scientifically based knowledge in Didactics.

Toward Virtual Reality in Architecture:Concepts and Scenarios from the Architectural Space Laboratory

1995 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerhard Schmitt ◽  
Florian Wenz ◽  
David Kurmann ◽  
Eric van der Mark
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Architectural Drawings ◽  
Architectural Drawing ◽  
Architectural Space ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Federal Institute ◽  
History Of ◽  
Institute Of Technology ◽  
The Impact

Virtual reality is the logical step that started way back in time with the appearance of the very first architectural drawing. This has been a long history of development: architectural drawings in Europe, which date back to the tenth century, were the first kind of abstraction that appeared “virtually real” to potential clients and builders—real enough to base decisions on. With the discovery of perspective techniques, drawings became more refined and developed into a form of art with numerous branches, ranging from technical drawings to presentation drawings. Wooden models appeared even before the Renaissance and were supplemented in the nineteenth century with cardboard models. Each new invention helped to improve the understanding of projects and architecture by reducing abstraction, while increasing the complexity of the representation (Schmitt, 1993). Toward the end of the twentieth century, the majority of architectural projects were and are never realized. Prominent projects, such as the new Berlin Government Centre, result in several hundred professional competition entries. With the advent of virtual reality (VR) techniques, architects will at first intensely criticise the new technology, before adopting and improving it, and they will modify it with domain specific contributions. The knowledge of architectural abstraction and simulation is useful to the further development of VR and vice versa. Today, the newest methodological and technical instruments help designers to create a more responsible architecture, many aspects of which can be experienced and tested before construction. This includes the possibility of expanding the number of senses addressed for the explanation of an architectural idea. To structure the discussion about VR in architecture, we first describe the theoretical framework, then move to the description of a Architectural Space Laboratory at the Architecture Department of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zürich, and follow this with examples of program development. We conclude with speculations on the impact of the new technology on the architecture of the future.

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