IT Teaching in the Welsh School of Architecture
		Peter Lewis

The Welsh School of Architecture (WSA) shares many of the problems faced by Architectural departments who are trying to accommodate the need for new technology within existing courses. This article describes how these difficulti es have been addressed in the University of Wales, Cardiff.		Overview
		Introduction First Steps Current Position First Year Second Year Third Year Final Year Integration With Studio Work

Overview

Introduction Many schools of Architecture now include an introduction to computer skills as part of their course. The challenge lies in finding how this may be done effectively in the face of inadequate equ ipment, too few tutors and a course largely focused on design projects. Over the last few years, the WSA has tried various ways of raising the profile of IT and believe that we now have a package that offers architecture students a reasonable grounding i n computer skills within the time and equipment available to us. Some schools will do rather more than we can and others will feel that our facilities are beyond their capability in the foreseeable future. In any event, I hope our experience will provid e a useful point of comparison.

Overview

First Steps A brief note on the history of IT teaching in the WSA. We started seven years ago with what seemed to be a major investment at the time: five 286 machines with 40MB hard disk drives and 640K RAM. These were operated as stand-alone computers running AutoCA D Release 10. The course was in the form of an option at second year level that combined learning CAD with energy efficient design. The brief required the students to design an energy efficient house or group of houses and to present their schemes using A utoCAD. The project lasted for four weeks during the summer term after the examination period. It was intensive since students needed to move from a standing start with no previous CAD knowledge to a point where they presented (typically) 2D plans and 3D perspectives of their design proposals. Although only a single project, many of the students who took the option found it helpful in finding a job during their year in practice. As demand for CAD skills rose, we realised that it was not enough to treat CAD as an option but that IT skills were something that all students needed. With years of seventy or more students, this required a great deal more equipment than could be afforde d within the departmental equipment budget. Our solution was to obtain a loan from the university, repayable over a five year period, which allowed us to replace the five 286 machines with a teaching classroom of twenty-four networked PCs, each workstatio n comprising a 486 DX2-66 processor with 16MB RAM. Output devices consisted of an A4 laser printer, an A3 colour plotter and an A1 monochrome thermal plotter. With this hardware, we were able to teach one third of a year at a time and ran two courses in the first and second years in which all students were given a basic introduction to IT and CAD. Since then, student intake has increased so that we now need to divide each year into four groups when running a course.

Overview

Current Position The School now has a policy that all graduates should have a high enough level of CAD and IT literacy to be able to work with confidence in a fully computerised architectural office. This is the first year in which the full course has been introduced and so we are still monitoring its success, but having just completed the first block course in the first year, the results are encouraging. Our general strategy is to build up IT skills in new students to a level where the use of computers is seen to be a natural part of their working lives. That is to say, that students should be comfortable with:- wordprocessing graphics editing spreadsheets CAD E-mail desktop publishing the Internet and the World Wide Web. We concentrate most of our IT teaching schedule into a block course run early in the first year, which introduces all the principal themes in outline. From then on, teaching consists mainly of smaller exercises which serve to extend basic knowledge and gi ve students practice in integrating different software packages.

Example photomontage

First Year Block Course The first year course forms part of what is known as the Quartet project, so named because the students are divided into four groups, each group covering in sequence four teaching units concerned with communication. The units are: Introduction to CAD/IT, ‘Adopting an Architect’ (a library based written study of an architect chosen by the student from a supplied list), Drawing Skills, and the Container Project (conversion of a standard shipping container to a living unit). This structure was necessary to c ope with the fact that we have insufficient computers to teach more than one quarter of the year at a time, so we have to give the other three quarters something to do! In practice, the ‘week’ consists of three full days rather than five, since regular lectures continue throughout the course. The course is comprised of the following:- DAY ONE - Introduction to the university IT facilities Students learn how to logon to the university network, work in the Windows environment, send and receive E-mail, and search for information on the World Wide Web. They then carry out exercises using wordprocessing (Microsoft Word) and image processing software (Adobe Photoshop) .

2D AutoCad Example

DAY TWO - 2D CAD The problem in setting an introductory CAD exercise is that learning the basic commands can be tedious. After a number of attempts at choosing an interesting drawing for the first exercise, we have settled on the plan of Palladio’s Villa Rotunda. This has several useful advantages; it covers most of the key commands necessary to produce and edit a 2D drawing; it introduces them in a way in which students feel a sense of progress where commands are reinforced; the end product is attractive and the regular geometry means that it is only necessary to draw one quarter of the plan, which with two simple steps can be mirrored to produce a very satisfying geometry of the full plan. This exercise is quite testing and has to be closely tutored but, once accomplished, makes the remaining work straightforward. The software we teach is AutoCAD, not because we feel it to be the best for architectural design but because it is the industry standard.

3D AutoCad Example

3D CAD - The Container Project The container is essentially a 3D AEC exercise using libraries of symbols. Students find it easy and enjoyable after the concentrated effort of the Rotunda exercise. It gives them a sense of control and they appreciate the usefulness of CAD for visualisat ion. The students produce both horizontal and vertical multi-floored versions of a container fit-out.

Overview

DAY THREE - Students’ Own Container Design Having completed the container exercise, students are then in a position to input their own schemes. The more adventurous use 3D Studio to render their images. It is also worth pointing out that the ‘Adopting an Architect’ project, although based in the library, involves computers both in searching for references and producing reports. The intention is that, once students have completed the introductory course, they will understand the advantages and limitations of CAD and perceive it as simply another tool to be used where appropriate in the design and presentation of their work.

Overview

Second Year Computer facilities are available throughout the school on a 24 hour basis and second year students are free to use them and indeed encouraged to do so. The main formal teaching unit on the handling of visual material is in the form of a one day ‘Presentation Workshop’. Students are again divided into four groups and carry out two exercises:- The production, processing and integration of images and text. Images are scanned using a flatbed colour scanner or produced using AutoCAD/3D Studio, manipulated in Adobe Photoshop and integrated using CorelDraw. Output is available via our newly acqu ired HP DesignJet 750C colour plotter. Production of a slideshow of images using Microsoft Powerpoint. The presentation workshop occurs in the first semester. In the second semester, we then run a modelling/prediction week as part of the architectural science/building technology module. Students are introduced to energy calculations, condensation predictio n, reverberation time and daylighting predictions.

Overview

Third Year There is no compulsory CAD exercise in the third year. There is however a computer based option which runs for four weeks in which students take a building that they have previously designed and use a range of computer software to present it. The software used includes Adobe Photoshop, 3D Studio, CorelDraw, Adobe PageMaker, Microsoft Powerpoint and Autodesk Animator Pro. Some of the results are of a strikingly high standard and can achieve magazine quality. All students c omplete a dissertation as part of this year which is inevitably produced using a desktop publisher.

Overview

Final Year By this stage, all students have worked in an office, often exclusively on CAD and many have developed a high level of skill in this area. Computers have become an integral part of their design, drafting and presentational equipment [E xample].

Overview

Integration with Studio work Although we have made good progress in introducing computers into the course, it is fair to say that IT is still treated in many ways as a ‘bolt-on’ component and has not yet been integrated into the general work of the school. We are well on the way to a chieving our goal of making students computer literate and the facilities for word processing, library searches, E-Mail and increasingly the WWW are in regular use. However, the use of computers is still treated separately from the main task of design edu cation and not a natural part of it. My personal aim is that students evolve a working method whereby a design is developed using computer and manual methods in a complementary way, as seems to be the case in architectural practice. There are exceptions of course. At undergraduate level, some students use CAD extensively in design development and presentation, and crits are starting to take place using the computer as a presentation tool. This process is particularly well established in the final year due to the CAD experience that many students have had in practice. Some have even bought their own PC’s. There is at least one example of a house occupied by final year architectural students, which has had its own network installed. This situation reflects a subject in transition. After a slow start, computers have now become well established in architectural practice and have moved from the administration section into the design office. The advantages of readily making design change s and being able to communicate with other members of the design team have become appreciated and have fundamentally changed the working practices of many offices. These changes are slowly being reflected in architectural education but are held back both by lack of resources and staff attitudes. We have been fortunate in the Welsh School in that we have a supportive Head of Department and were able to make a relativ ely early start. There is now increasing interest from studio and lecturing staff about the possibilities that facilities such as an image database, a video library, and a CD-ROM server can offer and we have been asked to make a presentation to a staff me eting next month. If this awakening of interest is reflected in other schools, as I am sure it will be, the CTICBE can expect to be busy over the next few years!

Peter Lewis Welsh School of Architecture University of Wales Cardiff Bute Building, King Edward VII Ave Tel 01222 874000 Email:- LewisP@cf.ac.uk

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