Assistance de l’enseignement de la conception architecturale par la modélisation de savoir-faire des référents

Conducted in a period of transition in the representation and communication strategies in architecture, the present research focuses on architectural design teaching and especially on the contributions of digital means to this process. Based on a qualitative methodology, including participative and exploratory approaches, this research evolved around a progression of questions, the first one being “How could architectural design teaching take advantage of digital technologies?” Our objective was to define computer-assisted teaching methods and digital devices that could enrich the students’ design methods.   A starting point of the research was a comprehensive literature review of the domain, including in-depth studies of the role of architectural referents in the design learning process, as well as of the integrated design approaches. The findings from these theoretical studies were then confronted with evidence from observations of the students’ design processes when working on a small architectural task. This revealed some discrepancies between the theoretical positions and the teaching practices in the digital architectural studio. The research question was precised in consequence, in order to address them. Specifically, the present research proposes efficient and innovative methods for resolving the discrepancies between theory and teaching practice, based on cognitive aspects of the underlying processes. Focusing on theories of knowledge, learning and design process, we were able to identify some pertinent cognitive strategies for attaining the objectives of this research, namely the necessity for multimodal representation of referents, the importance of representing the process and not only the result, as well as the advantage of motivating the students to work in their ‘zone of proximal development’. As a result of these studies, a complementary design teaching method was defined. It incites the students to perform design explorations based on manipulations of architectural know-how during the conceptual phase of the project. Pedagogic and didactic strategies for the implementation of this method were developed. A prototype of a library of interactive architectural referents (LibReArchI) was created in order to enrich the students’ ‘design space’ and to serve as shared resource between students and tutors.  The main results from this research show a positive role of the proposed design teaching method for architectural know-how learning in the digital studio. It was found that this method has the potential to assist some integrated design strategies and to stimulate the generation of ideas. At the theoretical level, we propose a model of one cycle of the conceptual process when performed with digital means. In conclusion, some limitations of the research are mentioned and perspectives for its future development are drawn.

Keyphrases: architectural design teaching, interactive referents, architectural know-how, integrated design, generative and performative modeling, digital architecture, library of design precedents, cognition, cognition, shared conceptual space, LibreArchi, LibreArchi, digital environments