Author : Passaint M. Massoud

This paper is built on architectural students’ engagement and performance in schools of Architecture who are dealing with different cultures of construction like European and north African ones, where students need more in-class activities to deal with the target course outcomes and content. Based on several faculty discussions conducted at the French university in Egypt and INSA Strasbourg and mutual visits from the two sides it was highlighted that student engagement and the effective design of in-class activities are the key factors to get the course target outcomes. This paper presents in-class activities designed for detailed design studio course Studio D to integrate both construction cultures they are introduced to and the computational approach in architecture as a motivation for increasing the students engagements , the paper explores the planning and assessment aspects for effective and engaging in-class participation activities as well as integrating the computational approaches to enhance the student engagement experience within their course context. The paper demonstrates the activities and outcomes of the studio. It then demonstrates how concepts of computational and parametric design are incorporated to propose an activity that engages students in designing, fabricating and operating responsive systems in different phases of the detailed design process. A discussion follows regarding dynamics of detailed design studio considering the proposed class activities.

Keywords: Construction cultures, computational Architecture, students’ engagements, detailed design studio.

Article published in International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology, Vol.8, No.6 (Nov/Dec 2018)