Integrated Approach for Year One Design-and-Build Studio

Communicated modules in architectural education target, in the first place, enhancing and developing students’ understanding of design requirements, via improving their innovative capabilities. Architecture students are expected to practice the integration of gained knowledge that affect the architectural design-construction-use phases, obtained through all taught modules, into their design projects; such knowledge would include construction technologies, ecological considerations/technologies, socio-cultural influences, tangible/intangible heritage, building regulations…etc. Achieving such integration, several approaches have recently been employed in different architectural pedagogical systems all over the globe. In United Kingdom, as an example, the integrated process within architectural design studios is an essential requirement that is stressed by both the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the Architects Registration Board (ARB). This paper displays the University of Nottingham’s approach in teaching core ‘Integrated Design in Architecture’ modules. The proposed study focuses mainly on the most recent integrated design-and-build project (functional cardboard shelter) undertaken in the undergraduate architecture course’s Qualifying Year, at Ningbo Campus, in China. The project employed a learning-by-doing approach, where the project’s brief employed non-ordinary conditions for the students to think of design basic requirements. The paper analyses the outcomes of the project, compared to its objectives; measures the effect of the students’ experience upon their designs, by comparing anonymous sample design work before and after conducting the shelter project.