Evidence-based design thinking: an interdisciplinary teaching approach for architecture students

The proposal combines core concepts from cognitive science and the didactics of the architecture design studio. The aim is to promote evidence-based design thinking. The approach developed in this project will provide students with hands-on experience of using evidence-based tools for designing. In doing so they will gain additional perspectives on how to anticipate human reactions to the built environment.
The initiative has four core elements: 1) theoretical input; 2) spatial analyses including space syntax; 3) behavioural observations; and 4) computational analyses. The pedagogy of this course is based on the cross-department co-teaching of professors, assistants and researchers from the Chair of Architecture and Urban Design and the Chair of Cognitive Science. Seminars and tutorials will be complemented by a set of workshops, where the user-centred quality of the design projects will be evaluated jointly by cognitive scientists, design educators and external experts.
The project is initially targeted at one Masters-level design studio, with the aim of introducing the teaching initiative in other design-based courses once it has been developed.

• Concepts and methods of cognitive science (in particular of spatial cognition) are taught in such a way to encourage students to implement them into their design projects.
• The development and dissemination of a targeted toolbox kit for applying methods from the field of spatial cognition in design studio projects.
• The long-term collaboration between D-GESS & D-ARCH, preparing a platform for interdepartmental teaching between the two departments.

This trans-faculty teaching initiative aims to trigger an interest for science in architectural design by introducing empirical and analytic methods into the design studio.

Students gained new insights into their design projects through the methods introduced as part of the collaboration. The implementation of the toolkit, introduced as part of the collaboration, proved to be a challenge within the time-limits of a semester studio.

• The collaboration was very informative and helped me reach design decisions.
• The results of the collaboration helped us reconsider and adapt design interventions.
• The collaboration made it easier to reach many design decisions, because the effect of different interventions could be directly tested. Thus less convincing alternatives could be identified and justifiably discarded.

• The key to the successful implementation of the cognitive science toolkit in the urban design studio was the close collaboration between the two Institutes, as well as the selection of the appropriate methods for each specific project.
• The timing of the input during the semester was a critical factor, and changed from semester to semester.