Reflections on Architecture Design Education in Khartoum: Understanding the Role of the Design Method

: A growing dissatisfaction with design failures in architecture design studio appears to be the main concern of researchers and academicians around the world [1]. The main problem in teaching architectural design lies in that the assessment is focused on the product of student’s efforts not on the process. The real danger in the studio, as Keith McAllister [2] sees it, is that students in paying so much attention to the end product they ignore the development of the essential design process skills. Similar problems were reported in Khartoum. The ongoing discourse over architecture design studio in Khartoum has in the recent years raised questions in relation to various aspects of design education and revealed misconceptions about the role of design method. Criticism has been particularly directed to the teaching approach, which is often focused on presentation drawings not the process. This policy, in addition to other reasons, encourages students to ignore the design method, turn their attention to form making relying only on intuition and artistic skills. This approach leads to lack of balance between rationality and creativity in the design process. Using design method is a legacy in architecture design education in Khartoum, but probably has diverted its original path and has become implicit through years of unchecked practice. Many difficulties associated with the conventional design method are related to its implicit nature, other important reasons include the lack of a clearly defined role, structure and procedures of design methods. The aim of this paper is to discuss the problems resulting from the earlier factor that is the usage of the implicit design method, while the other ones will have to wait for future studies. The specific aim of this paper is to discuss why the implicit model fails to act as a systematic approach to design and why it is necessary to introduce an explicit methodical design model.

Source: World Journal of Islamic History and Civilization

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