Studio Foundations – an Integrated Design Course

«Studio Foundations» is the new, innovative first-year design studio for the revised Bachelor Curriculum in Architecture. The course will lay the foundation of architectural design for approximately 400 D–ARCH students and will be co-taught by a collective of eight professors. The course’s didactic concept is rooted in the seamless integration of multiple disciplines within a project-based learning framework. This competence-oriented approach promotes a complex, systemic and interconnected understanding of architecture, allowing students to address architectural problems from multiple perspectives.
«Studio Foundations» centers on the students, orchestrating the application of disciplinary knowledge, skills and behavior in design over two semesters. Through direct and sensory engagement, students grasp fundamental concepts such as context and landscape, climate and energy, light and sound, meaning and form, and material and structure, and understand their impact on architectural design. The course emphasizes interdisciplinary and hence critical thinking, connecting abstract concepts with real-world experiences on multiple scales—from living spaces to urban landscapes.

The proposed integrated studio addresses this imbalance by merging technical, humanistic, environmental and design disciplines within the design studio itself. This structure fosters real-time application of theoretical and technical knowledge directly to design projects. By eliminating competition between disciplines for students› time, the integrated studio creates a cohesive learning environment where each subject reinforces the others, leading to a deeper, more comprehensive and competence-oriented architectural education.
By promoting mutual coordination between disciplines and lecturers, this approach mirrors architectural practice, where design solutions must consider technical, historical, environmental and humanistic dimensions. Embedding disciplines within the studio ensures that students continually apply and reflect on the knowledge gained from diverse fields, providing a more immersive, multi-perspective and practice-oriented architectural education.
Emphasizing collaborative development of design exercises and assessment, “Studio Foundations” promotes a clearer, more realistic understanding of student workload. This transparency ensures that mental well-being is actively considered, while design reviews, conducted by two atelier leaders and a professor, guarantee fairness in evaluations. Discipline assessments are integrated with architectural design, reflecting their respective credit weightings.
«Studio Foundations» also introduces a competence-oriented assessment model, the “Competency Compass,” developed by a working group led by D–ARCH’s educational developer. This model, based on D–ARCH’s new Competency Chart, ensures continuous feedback between atelier leaders and students and provides a visual representation so that students can track their learning progress throughout the semester. It also includes an online application to facilitate easy and efficient handling of both formative and summative assessments for large student cohorts. This approach offers an intuitive understanding of each student’s progress and development over time and promotes continuous reflection and growth within a supportive and transparent learning environment.

Students: «Studio Foundations» places students at the center and coherently orchestrates the application of disciplinary knowledge in design throughout the two semesters of the first academic year. The direct and sensory application of disciplinary knowledge emphasizes its central importance and enables students to grasp fundamental concepts such as context and landscape, climate and energy, light and sound, typology and form, material and structure, and understand their impact on architectural design as well as the significance of interdisciplinary thinking. The competence-oriented assessment model that will be developed by this Innovedum project, ensures continuous feedback between teachers and students and provides a visual representation so that students can track their learning progress throughout the semester. This approach promotes continuous reflection and growth within a supportive and transparent learning environment.
Teaching Staff: By sharing a common Mittelbau, the eight professors committed to co-developing and co-teaching «Studio Foundations» create an opportunity to elevate the role of the Mittelbau. They are actively encouraged to develop their own identity, reflecting the responsibility and trust placed in them. Through the work of the Atelier Leaders and integrators, a dynamic and lived diversity is intended to emerge, transcending the individual perspectives of the participating professors. Additionally, the teaching assistants will develop their competencies and skills as they are instructed and coached by the integrators in disciplinary knowledge. A continuing education program developed with PBLabs will further support career development and later be available to assistants in regular studios. The online assessment tool also enables efficient evaluation and communication of student progress.
Department: The D-ARCH bachelor program will greatly benefit from this new approach to introducing students to architecture. It will not only provide a solid foundation for further learning in the second year but also showcase a new, integrated culture of teaching and learning. This culture has the potential to propagate throughout the entire department and beyond, fostering a more collaborative and interdisciplinary approach to architectural education. Additionally, The «Competency Compass» will serve as both a tool for transversal design studios and a «Curriculum Compass» for the revised Bachelor Curriculum.