Residential environmental design with nature inspired forms

Abstract

Students’ works in Environmental Design Project 2 (EDP2) course which focus-es on creativity and functional formation were analysed in this study. This study deals with the experiences of the 2nd-year landscape architecture students in the EDP course in regard to developing design and creativity skills and morphological efforts. The landscape architecture education can be defined as decision-making, designing spaces and organizing human activities and in Environmental Design Studios (EDS) these are addressed as a whole. For this reason, “EDS” make up the most dynamic milieu of the landscape architecture education. These are courses that synthesize problem-solving skills built on the information and creativity obtained from other courses. Thus, students are expected both to come up with problem-solving suggestions with their knowledge and use their creative capac-ities in these suggestions within the scope of the course. Consequently, students are expected to produce creative designs suitable for the objective of the courses. However, the studies on how students perform these tasks in the landscape architecture education are quite limited. In the 1st stage of this study, an approach that will develop the creativity of the students was investigated, and it was aimed to share the experiences on this subject. In the 2nd stage of the study, the students assessed how they utilized inspiration by nature and the benefits of inspiration by nature to their educational and developmental processes.