The New Normal for Architecture Design Studio: Conceptualizing a Design Implementation Model

Abstract

Architectural design studios are the crux and core of architecture education. The closure of face-to-face Design studios due to the COVID-19 pandemic during the years 2020 and 2021 has indeed posed a set of challenges to architectural education. Through a rigorous set of research methods, the paper investigates the various possibilities and perspectives of making the challenges into opportunities to rethink, innovate and move on. The paper aims to develop a model for implementing studio-based learning innovative, appropriate, and conducive to covid and post-covid environments. The first objective dealt with in this paper is to find the consensus on the directives to solve and respond to the contemporary challenges of the pandemic for the SBL. The second is to arrive at a toolkit or a model that strategically summarizes the processes for the directives. The School of Architecture, Building, and Design from Taylor’s University Malaysia has been the case study of the investigation. The research methods involved conducting focus group meetings with various stakeholders, such as the Students, Tutors, Studio Coordinators, Program Directors, and the Head of the School. The findings firstly offered a set of shifts in paradigms of SBL and secondly, a toolkit that we named as Design Implementation Model (DIM) for a hybrid studio pedagogy that we envisage and envision to be the future of architectural education.