An unexplored domain: Researching value communication in architectural design studio

Abstract

Architectural education is an enculturation process which enables students to acquire the required architectural skills and values to apply expert knowledge. Values, as cognitive structures, play an important role in determining architectural design decisions. Researchers emphasize the importance of values and the urgency to develop a studio based on making values explicit. An architectural design education that considers values and value differences is necessary for the education of the architect, for architecture to serve society better. Therefore, we need to depict how values related to design knowledge operate during design activity, how students externalize these values, and how the tutor responds professionally and pedagogically.
This article aims to propose a model to be employed in researching value communication in design education, in the studio. It is based on Bourdieu’s agency-structure theory which considers values in the context of subject and object relationship. While values exist independently within the habitus of both the student and the tutor, they become operational during their practices of design or education and become externalized in the subject’s embodied actions and the (body extension) objects in the field, specifically in the studio. It explains the existence of values through ethos, eidos, and hexis as mental schemata together with cultural, social, and symbolic capital as the content of the habitus. To evaluate the future of architectural design studios, the model considers current value communication through the dialogues that take place in the studio between students and tutors, by establishing a relationship with the tutors’ and students’ habitus.