Teaching Architectural Design through Character Reading

Abstract

Teaching the understanding of critical thinking within architectural design education supportsstudents to develop design thinking and strengthens individual creative design processes. To comprehendarchitectural design teaching through critical thinking more effectively, an approach to introduce characterreading as a design methodology was investigated in a second year architectural design studio. Through aguided process, students were asked to explore distinctive qualities of characters appearing in a novel andimplement them into an architectural design for residential use. The student’s performance was measured byevaluating their argumentative approach and their final design. As an outcome, most students successfullyshowed improved creative and visible development of their designs through character reading and itsimplementation as a design methodology. Critical thinking as well as character reading proved to be acritical in design education and design thinking.