Abstract:

The paper will discuss the involvement and participation of the human being in architecture which is generated through computation. The original premise is that contemporary computational architectural design at times neglects human beings from its process. In times of new definitions of the human being its interaction with others and its existence and presence in virtual public spaces such as the Facebook and Twitter the student workshop that will be described tried to redefine a teaching methodology that with the aid of information technology wished to propose innovative ways of conceiving, designing and fabricating architectural space that would be appealing to a particular group of human beings that of children. Children learn through playing. The workshop worked on inventing learning experiences for children to use and exploit. Cognitive psychology was a firm foundation at the conceptual stage. Computational design through the use of existing software on spatial experimentation and representations were used extensively and finally computer numerically controlled equipment was used to produce the actual learning and interactive environments at 1:1 scale.

Three spatial experiences were designed and fabricated following the demands of the open-ended brief that was circulated to the students.
The workshop was taught to thirty undergraduate students from various education environments by 12 tutors from various institutions across the Globe. The paper will describe how the theme of the workshop was decided, what was the pedagogical approach followed during the workshop, what was the evolutionary process both students and teachers worked on and what were the results of the workshop. Finally the limitations and constraints that hindered the workshop will be discussed as well as the avenues it opened up for further research.

Keywords:

Computational design, digital fabrication, cognitive pshychology, pedagogy.