Abstract:

Architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design and planning are site-related disciplines, aiming to design the physical environment, so on-site research, excursions, and field trips are important components of architectural education, for comprehension of the complex relations between buildings and their sites, landscapes and environment. In this article, we investigate how the COVID-19 crisis and the lockdown have impacted the architectural education at the Faculty of Architecture of the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Slovakia, in summer semester 2020. We focus on the constraints which it has imposed on organizing excursions, field trips, and conducting on-site research, which is specifically important for the analytical part of the design process in architectural, landscape architectural, and urban design studios. The investigation focuses on physical versus virtual forms of visiting and exploring space, and the constraints which occurred in both forms are discussed.

Keywords:

On-site research, virtual field trips, COVID-19, coronavirus, ‘new normal’ in education.