3D MODELING AS EDUCATIONAL PROCESS OF DOCUMENTING STUDENTS PROJECTS: ARCHITECTURAL EXERCISES. (original) (raw)

EURAU 2016 European Symposium on Research in Architecture and Urban Design: In Between Scales. EURAU 2016 – PROCEEDINGS

Article presents the instrument and verification learning through 3D modeling as educational process of documenting students projects as architectural exercises. The discussions starts with curricular topics and settings presentation within architectural studio in experimenting synthesis projects in last years of study at Faculty of Architecture, continuing with an observational tutoring in formatting abilities and points of view for approaching architectural design process for future architect(s). Experimenting projects and models is a current practice in architectural education, and the activity within architectural studio is the main learning process in the school of architecture. As acquired information at different courses need to be verified through practice and connected through decisions in the process of design, the architectural education is based on practicing visions, shapes and ideas as architectural exercises, for forming future design. The process of tutoring and mentoring within architectural studio is based on guiding the succession of ideas, the process of sketching and prioritizing different settings and inputs, but not at least as formative ability to enhance the perception on different types of models from the mental-hand-drawn perspective, feeling the space through different plastic materials (cardboard-plaster-canvas, etc.) and understanding the complexity of possible architectural space through 3D modeling (sometimes this process ensuring a generation of the real model or possible fabrication of architecture in the future profession. In this sense, the article presents three case studies of architectural exercise within school of architecture. Findings: 3D Modeling as Educational Process of Documenting Students Projects: Architectural Exercises. Each case study illustrates a different focus on thematic and topic of the project general theme: structural-architecture and designing process. Students’ final designs have consisted in a complex architectural exercise, but the 3D modeling process was a particular process of documenting and constructing their designs. The fabrication of the design consisted successively in: • sketches – as first ideas of the imagined space –, • 3D modeling as fabrication process of the architectural shapes – also as mathematically construction of balanced form and volumetric. • realization of a real model, with different rules of construction from the virtual world. From the three method of evaluation within the architectural exercise, the 3D design modeling offered the possibility of: • testing the ideas, first ideas as paths of conceptual demarche; • experimenting the found solutions from documentation and from the city image resources; • working with software tools and transforming them in architectural instruments; • thinking of a wide possibility of fabricating architecture also in real or virtual space; • enhancing their vision with special features of scaling, lighting, atmospheres, and not at least compensating urban environments evaluation be-fore a real model to be thought in a place; • comparing typologies of architecture and learning tools from the three different types of evaluating the same design project. Both art, science and craft architecture education and teaching needs 3D modeling as a creative tool as constructing the design, imaging boundaries, interpreting set-ups, but also enhancing vision of what architecture is in all the stages of the project, from the idea to a possible reality or virtual space, as needs will require. Architecture as education supposes learning information, history, models as primary images and typologies, imaginative skills and writing scenarios and atmospheres, - while evaluating cultural contexts, but also creative tools that permits continuous transformation of the conceived shapes and different types of perspectives of design.