HOW IMPORTANT IS GRAPHICAL PRESENTATION IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN EDUCATION?

Architectural Design Education is a complex field in which several approaches, theories, conventions and clichés exist. It is also a fact that Architectural Design Education has become the focus of an extremely complicated set of issues and debates. It happens to be several approaches in guiding Architectural Design Studios according to different Schools of Architecture. As an academic who has instructed in Architectural Design Studios and Architectural Presentation Techniques Course for more than 10 years, the author believes that it seems to be a concensus on the necessity of a finalized formal graphical presentation of any design project. When a belief in an effective and skillful graphic presentation becomes the most essential element of a successfull jury presentation, it becomes the most important preoccupation of a design student. This preoccupation may demonstrate an affirmative attitude on behalf of the student towards the discipline and the jury. This is most likely to enhance the student’s credibility but on the other hand, it may take away the valuable time from the design process and raises several questions about its educational value or validity.

This paper argues that Architectural Design Education still favors the dominance of final presentation over the design process itself. Design juries seem to have an appeal for pleasent drawings. It seems to be an overall shift of emphasis to presentation from the project itself. The author argues that the graphical presentation stands within a formal aesthetic agenda and has limited contribution for educational concerns.

The approach is tested among design students of Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3 studios of Bahçeşehir University, Faculty of Architecture and Design. A questionnaire is administered to relevant students and they are asked for their personal assessments of the importance of a set of statements associated with graphical presentation according to their impact on final evaluation. It seems to be a tendency to think that design jury should not ignore some important design phases while promoting the Final Graphical Presentation. The results indicate significant differences among the students at different levels.